The Institute’s autonomy from party control enabled its theoretical achievements

Evidence

When, however, personal inclinations led to a greater commitment to theory than to party, even when this meant suspending for a while the unifying of theory and praxis, the results in terms of theoretical innovation could be highly fruitful. It will be one of the central contentions of this work that the relative autonomy of the men who comprised the so-called Frankfurt School of the Institut fur Sozialforschung, although entailing certain disadvantages, was one of the primary reasons for the theoretical achievements produced by their collaboration. Although without much impact in Weimar, and with even less during the period of exile that followed, the Frankfurt School was to become a major force in the revitalization of Western European Marxism in the postwar years. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 93

Categorization

• XREF: This autonomy thesis parallels the diamond bourse’s extralegal independence and social capital theory’s point that autonomy-from-obligation enabled productive outcomes. — connects to: The Frankfurt School’s institutional autonomy from party discipline enabled its theoretical innovations. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 93
• CANDY: The irony that the least party-aligned Marxists produced the most lasting Marxist theory is a clean, quotable observation.