The labor anti-Semitism study was never published like the Weimar workers’ inquiry

Evidence

As a historical documentation of the situation and mentality of manual and white-collar workers on the eve of the Third Reich, and as a piece of pioneering empirical research in analytical social psychology, the study was certainly of great interest, and right into the 1940s the Institute repeatedly announced the projected publication of Erich Fromm (ed.), The German Worker under the Weimar Republic'. The failure to publish this particular study was astonishing, since (1) the analysis had to a large extent been completed; (2) none of the later questionnaires attempted to meet the demands Fromm set in the ZfS for an analytical social psychology to the same extent as this first one did; (3) qualified scholars such as Fromm and Lazarsfeld had worked on it intensively; and (4) concrete results from empirical research were important for the Institute's image. It is likely that the study, which was to be published in English, did really seem to Horkheimer to be too Marxist, as Fromm later declared to Wolfgang Bonss. For a Marxist study, on the other hand, it was not polished’ enough. In addition, the change in Horkheimer’s source of intellectual stimulation from Fromm to Adorno increased his reluctance to publish a work in which Fromm’s methodological achievements in the field of empirical social research were at their clearest and most impressive. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 716 (#expands, via linked claim)

Considerations such as these never extended beyond the hypothetical stage. Further work on the labour project later on consisted only of the Institute’s directors commissioning Lazarsfeld to produce a publishable version of the report, while Adorno tried to round the undertaking off with a series of detailed memoranda. Adorno, Marcuse and others at the Institute agreed, however, that the version produced under Lazarsfeld’s supervision did not meet the Institute’s standards, because it emphasized the quantitative sections while neglecting the qualitative ones, and because of its inadequate integration of quantitative and qualitative analysis. As in the case of the study of the working class in Weimar Germany, therefore, the research was not published. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1563 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The Frankfurt Institute suppressed its labor study over methodological disagreements with Lazarsfeld — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1563; The Institute suppressed Fromm’s Weimar worker study for ideological reasons — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 716

Broader Connections

• The Institute suppressed Fromm’s Weimar worker study for ideological reasons #expands (0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 716
• The Frankfurt Institute suppressed its labor study over methodological disagreements with Lazarsfeld #complicates (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1563