“All the old crap of the thirties is coming back again — the sh-t about the ‘class line,’ the ‘role of the working class,’ the ‘trained cadres,’ the ‘vanguard party,’ and the ‘proletarian dictatorship.’ It is all back again, and in a more vulgarized form than ever.” So declared the anarcho-ecologist Murray Bookchin in his 1969 pamphlet, Listen, Marxist!

Sixty-odd years later, do these words ring true again? Some of the phrases remain on the margins. Yet something that spooked Bookchin is afoot in our troubled land: a return of Marxist-Leninist slogans and the eclipse of a New Left esprit. A sign of the times: A new book from a socialist publisher, Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism?, exemplifies and ratifies this revival.

Its author, Gabriel Rockhill, draws a sharp contrast between the supposed virtues of Soviet-inspired Marxism and the supposed failings of the New Left’s leading intellectuals, notably those associated with the Frankfurt School. But he fails to deliver a fair criticism of his subjects. Rather, he resorts to innuendo and guilt by association in a bid to demolish their reputations. He might be viewed as a Marxist-Leninist in the school of Donald Trump: use any means to defame your foe.