The Institute tolerated Communist assistants but never admitted Karl Korsch to full membership

Evidence

Other assistants at the Institut, however, were openly involved with leftist politics, despite the official intention of the founding members to keep it free of any party affiliation. Karl August Wittfogel, Franz Borkenau, and Julian Gumperz were all members of the Communist Party. Political activism as such was thus not in itself a reason for rejection by the group. It could, however, prove a hindrance, as in the case of Karl Korsch, who had been justice minister in the Thuringian SPD-KPD Coalition government in 1923, and continued as a prominent left opposition figure in the KPD until 1926. Wittfogel remembers Korsch’s role in the Institut as central during its first years, but the other surviving members have all disagreed with his version of the facts. Korsch did participate in some of the Institut’s seminars and wrote occasional reviews for its publications before and after the emigration, but was never offered a full membership.H The reasons were no doubt complex, but Korsch’s stress on praxis, which was to lead him increasingly away from philo sophical speculation in later years, certainly played a role. So too did the instability that the others saw in his character. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 116

Categorization

• XREF: Korsch’s rejection over his stress on praxis prefigures the Institute’s persistent preference for philosophical theory over practical political engagement, a theme running through Jay’s whole account.