Western Marxism diverged from orthodox Marxism over the status of natural science

Evidence

The fact that he also interpreted the `discoveries’ of natural scientists historically and socially made Borkenau’s work into a significant component of Western Marxism, which did not share the worship of the natural sciences apparent in orthodox Marxism of both the Social Democratic and Soviet varieties. Borkenau’s work was an early example of a critical history of science. However, when this pioneering work appeared in the Institute’s publications series, Horkheimer, made uneasy by Grossmann’s objections to Borkenau’s evaluation of the role of the manufacturing process, and perhaps also by Borkenau’s increasingly critical attitude to communism, added only an extremely cautious preface, which neither summed up the substantive issues the work was addressing nor took any position with regard to them. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 506

The fact that he also interpreted the `discoveries’ of natural scientists historically and socially made Borkenau’s work into a significant component of Western Marxism, which did not share the worship of the natural sciences apparent in orthodox Marxism of both the Social Democratic and Soviet varieties. Borkenau’s work was an early example of a critical history of science. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 506

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes a central distinction: Western Marxism’s critical history of science versus orthodox Marxism’s scientific worship.
• SEED: A critical history of science angle: how Marxist thought treated ‘discoveries’ as historically and socially constructed rather than value-neutral.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 506
• XREF: connects to: Pollock defended Marxism as a universal natural science against Sombart’s attack — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 235; British scientists in the 1930s embraced a Marxist view of science serving ruling-class interests — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 76