Behemoth was Institute recognition denied because its methodology strayed from Critical Theory

Evidence

Gurland’s unwillingness to discount the perseverance of monopoly capitalism was also shared by Neumann, to whose Behemoth we can now finally turn. Ultimately to become a classic, although suffering a relative eclipse during the Cold War, Behemoth was a work of enormous and painstaking scholarship, all the more remarkable for Neumann’s distance from his sources. In several areas, such as the history of the German labor movement, Neumann was able to draw on his own personal experience before 1933. All of this was recognized by Horkheimer and the other members of the Institut’s inner circle, but Neumann’s conclusions and the methodology that he had used to derive them were sufficiently foreign to Critical Theory to prevent the inner circle from considering Behemoth a real expression of the Institut’s views. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 505

Categorization

• QUESTION: What specifically about Neumann’s methodology made it ‘foreign’ to Critical Theory, and how did this affect later reception of Behemoth?
• XREF: connects to: The Institute’s non-European studies relied on orthodox Marxist methods, not Critical Theory. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 435; Neumann diverged from Critical Theory in method, not conclusions — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 470; Marcuse and Neumann preserved Critical Theory’s political project that Horkheimer and Adorno abandoned — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 31

Broader Connections

• Neumann diverged from Critical Theory in method, not conclusions #corroborates (0.92) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 470
• Marcuse and Neumann preserved Critical Theory’s political project that Horkheimer and Adorno abandoned #complicates (0.75) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 31