The Foundations of Social Research: Meaning and Perspective in the Research Process by Crotty Michael J

Author:Crotty, Michael J
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781446225745
Publisher: Sage Publications, Ltd.
Published: 1998-08-25T16:00:00+00:00

Up till now Marxism, as an economic and sociological system, has been to a great extent neglected at German universities, in considerable contrast with those of other countries—indeed, in practice, it has been reluctantly tolerated at best. In the new research institute, Marxism will from now on have a home. (In Wiggershaus 1994, p. 27)

Even at the start the Marxism envisaged for the Institute was by no means orthodox and, as the Institute got underway, it brought together thinkers who diverged from one another in significant ways. The Institute for Social Research has manifested very markedly the eclecticism already referred to. This is even more true of the broader, vaguer entity which goes by the name of the Frankfurt School and for which the Institute served as the ‘organizational seedbed’ (Wolin 1992, p. 46). So much so that some commentators question whether the Institute or the School should be regarded as Marxist in any true sense of the word. Zoltán Tar writes of a ‘certain cloud of myth, ambiguity and confusion surrounding the Frankfurt School’ and argues that the ‘notion that the school represents a Marxist orientation in sociology rests only on a superficial acquaintance with the work of Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, and other thinkers of the Frankfurt School’ (1977, p. 2). Tar describes Horkheimer’s views in particular as ‘Marx turned upside down’ and ‘obviously based on a distortion of the Marxian vision’ (1977, p. 180). In the end, according to Martin Jay (1973, p. 296), the Institute ‘presented a revision of Marxism so substantial that it forfeited the right to be included among its many offshoots’. Mészáros, in fact, regards the School as Weberian rather than Marxist:

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