Those who enjoy the wages of imperialism are more likely to have disdain for, or disinterest in, the complex struggles for national liberation in the periphery, which is dismissed as “the savage barbarism of the East,” in the choice words of Max Horkheimer.

This chauvinistic attitude has become so foundational to Western Marxism that theorists in this tradition often behave as if there were no need to actually study the history of socialist states in any serious manner. In fact, the attempt to do so is often looked upon with suspicion, as a sign that one might be a boor siding with the slaves, rather than a professional intellectual with a keen sense of what is worthy of scholarly inquiry.

• Gabriel Rockhill - From the introduction to Losurdo’s Western Marxism