Marx deemed Islamicate societies stagnant and lacking the preconditions for capitalism.

Evidence

In his Grundrisse, Marx speaks in broad outlines of the Asiatic, ancient, feudal, and capitalist or bourgeois modes of production. He argues that each is dominated by a particular social class which expropriates the economic surplus through a specific set of social relations. The Asiatic mode (which is only sketchily developed) is that to which, in Marx’s view, countries such as China, India, and those of Islam belong. It is characterized by: (a) stagnation, (b) an absence of dynamic class struggle, and (c) the dominance of a swollen state acting as a sort of universal landlord. The conditions for capitalist development are here absent. Marx hated the capitalist system; nevertheless, he saw it, in contrast with the Asiatic mode, as progressive and dynamic, sweeping old structures aside, driving social development forward. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 672

Categorization

• DEFINE: Pins down the ‘Asiatic mode of production’ as a specific theoretical construct — essential field vocabulary.
• XREF: Directly relevant to downstream Islamophobia readings on Orientalist Marxism (e.g. debates about ‘oriental despotism,’ Edward Said’s critique of Marx).
• ADDENDUM: Relates to the Islamic world being framed as stagnant/other — parallel themes of exclusion through civilizational typology.