The Institute’s China research challenged the orthodox Marxist stage-of-history scheme

Evidence

As early as 1938, when Wittfogel’s Theory of Oriental Society' was published in the ZfS, the text of a lecture by Horkheimer on the Institute and its work had stated that its research on non-bourgeois forms of society had given particular attention to China. China has for many centuries had a bureaucratic social hierarchy which, in view of the general development of Europe and above all of Germany and Russia, is constantly increasing in theoretical importance. It appears that the simple historical division into ancient slave economy, feudalism and capitalism, which has previously been made in the philosophy of history’this was a euphemism for Marxist theory`must be fundamentally elaborated on, through theoretically based research on China.’ — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1070

Categorization

• XREF: Directly anticipates Wittfogel’s later Oriental Despotism and its theory of bureaucratic/Asiatic modes of production; relates to the Institute’s challenge to Eurocentric historical materialism. — connects to: The Institute rejected both Second and Third International Marx orthodoxy as coagulated dogma — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 499
• SEED: Angle: how marginal ‘non-Western’ research threads inside a European critical-theory institute destabilized its own orthodox foundations — the periphery transforming the center’s theory.

Broader Connections

• The Institute rejected both Second and Third International Marx orthodoxy as coagulated dogma #expands (0.90) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 499