Horkheimer treated concrete empirical research as indispensable yet never institutionalized it.

Evidence

Kirchheimer’s article was only included because, according to Horkheimer, its material enriched' the issue and would not have fitted in with the following issuenot because Horkheimer saw it as fundamental’ to the issue on `state capitalism’, or as a study representing the Institute’s position. … Without research like Kirchheimer’s, containing a wealth of material and centred on common ideas and concepts, the further development of social theory was not possible. Even Horkheimer could not imagine it without such research. Yet at the same time Horkheimer’s desire and ability to co-operate with other qualified specialists in social theory, and to engage in a far-reaching integration of empirical and specialist research, were not sufficient. He was unable to resist the temptation to escape from this challenge through his contempt for systematic, as opposed to merely exemplary, analyses of concrete materials. Ultimately, it was his contempt which gained the upper hand. His relationship with Kirchheimer remained a provisional arrangement, courteous and aloof. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 258

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the earlier chapters’ account of Horkheimer’s suppression of Fromm’s Weimar worker study and the abandoned labor anti-Semitism volume.
• DEEPTHINKING: Frames the whole Institute’s fate: the refusal of systematic empirical integration as the original productive limit of Critical Theory, not merely a personality flaw.