ABSTRACT
Marx and Max Weber, benefitting from Orientalist research, can be seen to have carried out their classifications in the context of questions concerned with development and the future of modern society. Marx gives up historical materialism based on determining economic factors and emphasized the determinative political factors in Oriental societies. Political divergence about the roots and future of modern society gave way to a convergence of ideas gleaned from the world-historical meaning of modernity. As Marx and Weber relied on Orientalist sources and explanations, they developed similar analyses of Oriental societies via similar conceptual frames. Their analyses were explanations of the theses of Oriental despotism which were based on geographic and climatic explanations and which were the most fundamental patterns of the Orientalist thought. Generally, the Orient was described as being stagnant in contrast to the progress of Western societies and this ensured the unique nature of modern social forms by ousting the Orient from historical progress.
