Horkheimer publicly advertised social research as a tool for industrial productivity

Evidence

In the summer of 1950, the Frankfurter Neue Zeitung published an article, written with Horkheimer’s collaboration, on Sociology in the Struggle Against Prejudice: HICOG supports Frankfurt University Institute of Social Research'. The article claimed that the tasks of social research were not restricted to the field of education and information, like the Institute's studies on prejudice, but rather made it possible, for example, to decide where and how a factory should be correctly set up for its workers to achieve the highest productivity’. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1855

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the Institute’s post-war self-presentation as a HICOG-funded corrective rather than a critical body. — connects to: Horkheimer argued factory research serves workers regardless of employer motives; Horkheimer marketed the Institute to sponsors as useful for the state — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1850; German industrial management commissioned social research to uncover workers’ underlying opinion formation — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2059 (+4 more)
• QUESTION: Was this 1950 article an authentic gesture or a calculated pitch to American sponsors? The next paragraph poses this exact question.

Broader Connections

• German industrial management commissioned social research to uncover workers’ underlying opinion formation #corroborates (0.90) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2059
• Science is subordinated to industry within the social division of labor #corroborates (0.85)
• Rational productivity and social control are welded together in new forms of manipulation #contradicts (0.75) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 551