Free-Market Socialists: European Émigrés Who Made Capitalist Culture in America, 1918–1968

408 Pages·2022·6.678 MB·English

by  Joseph Malherek

he Hungarian artist-designer László Moholy-Nagy, the Austrian sociologist Paul
Lazarsfeld, and his fellow Viennese Victor Gruen—an architect and urban planner—
made careers in different fields. Yet they shared common socialist politics, Jewish
backgrounds, and experience as refugees from the Nazis. This book tells the story
of their intellectual migration from Central Europe to the United States, beginning with the
collapse of the Habsburg Empire, and moving through the heady years of newly independent
social-democratic republics before the descent into fascism.
Based on a vast array of original sources, Malherek interweaves the biographies of these
three remarkable personalities and those of their wives, colleagues, and friends with whom
they collaborated on innovative projects that would shape the material environment and con-
sumer culture of their adopted home. The result is a narrative of immigration and adapta-
tion that challenges the crude binary of capitalism and socialism with a story of creative eco-
nomic hybridization.
“ Joseph Malherek has written a marvelous intellectual and cultural history that traces the
seemingly improbable linkages between the socialist ideals that flourished in Red Vienna
and the consumer culture that reached its 20th-century apogee in post-World War II Amer-
ica. Among the many connections he illuminates, Malherek shows that without the remark-
able influence of emigré socialists like Paul Lazarsfeld and Victor Gruen neither the shop-
ping center, a planned, collaborative, commercial community, nor the marketing survey,
which had its origins in socialist studies of class stratification, would have achieved their
characteristic American form and pervasiveness.”
Nelson Lichtenstein, Distinguished Professor in the Department of History at Uni-
versity of California, Santa Barbara, author of State of the Union: A Century of American
Labor and The Retail Revolution: How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business FREE-MARKET SOCIALISTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
J
Joseph Malherek holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from George Washington University in O
Washington, D.C. He was recently the Junior Botstiber Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study
S
at Central European University, and he has been a Fulbright Visiting Professor of Austrian-Ameri-
E
can Studies at the University of Vienna. He has received fellowship awards from the Studienstiftung
P
des deutschen Volkes, the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Histor-
H E U R O P E A N É M I G R É S W H O M A D E
ical Association. His writing on transatlantic migration, twentieth-century intellectual history, and

the history of capitalism and consumer culture has been published in many venues, including the Bul- M
letin of the German Historical Institute, the Journal of Austrian-American History, and the Leo Baeck
A
Institute Year Book.
L C A P I T A L I S T C U L T U R E I N A M E R I C A
FREE-MARKET SOCIALISTS H
E
R
1918–1968
E
K
J O S E P H M A L H E R E K
CENTRAL EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY PRESS ISBN 978-963-386-447-0 90000 >
BUDAPEST – VIENNA – NEW YORK
Sales and information: [email protected]
Website: http://www.ceupress.com
COVER DESIGN BY SEBASTIAN STACHOWSKI
mmaallhheerreekk__mmaappllee__0011..iinndddd 11 22002222.. 0077.. 1155.. 1144::5599::3355
FREE-MARKET SOCIALISTS

FREE-MARKET SOCIALISTS
E U R O P E A N É M I G R É S W H O M A D E
C A P I T A L I S T C U L T U R E I N A M E R I C A
1918–1968
J O S E P H M A L H E R E K
Central European University Press
Budapest–Vienna–New York
©2022 Joseph Malherek
Published in 2022 by
Central European University Press
Nádor utca 9, H-1051 Budapest, Hungary
Tel: [phone] or 327-3000
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.ceupress.com
An electronic version of this book is freely available thanks to the libraries
supporting CEU Press’s Opening the Future initiative. More information and
links to the Open Access version can be found at ceup.openingthefuture.net.
This work is licensed under
a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0
International License.
Cover design and layout by Sebastian Stachowski
on the cover:
Victor Gruen’s plan for downtown Fort Worth, Texas. Source: Victor Gruen Papers,
Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
ISBN 978-963-386-447-0 (hardback)
ISBN 978-963-386-448-7 (ebook)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Malherek, Joseph, author.
Title: Free-market socialists : European émigrés who made capitalist
culture in America, 1918-1968 / Joseph Malherek.
Description: Budapest ; Vienna ; New York : Central European University
Press, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022022570 (print) | LCCN 2022022571 (ebook) | ISBN
9789633864470 (hardcover) | ISBN 9789633864487 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: United States--Intellectual life--20th century. | United
States--Social conditions. | Socialism--United States. |
Capitalism--United States. | Moholy-Nagy, László, 1895-1946. |
Lazarsfeld, Paul F., 1901-1976. | Gruen, Victor, 1903-1980. | BISAC:
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / General | SOCIAL SCIENCE / Emigration &
Immigration
Classification: LCC E169.12 .M22 2022 (print) | LCC E169.12 (ebook) | DDC
306.0973/0904--dc23/eng/20220616
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022022570
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022022571
T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S
Acknowledgments  vii
INTRODUCTION. What’s Socialist about Capitalism?  1
I. New Republics and New Ideas
CHAPTER 1. New Republics and New Ideas: Paul Lazarsfeld in Vienna  19
CHAPTER 2. Building Socialism’s Future: Victor Gruen in Vienna  59
CHAPTER 3. Bauhaus for the Masses: Moholy-Nagy, from Budapest to Berlin  81
II. Exile and Underground
CHAPTER 4. The Art of Asking “Why?”: Lazarsfeld in America  113
CHAPTER 5. Little Dictators, Little Theaters, Little Shops: Street Commerce
and Underground Socialism in Vienna before the Anschluss  133
CHAPTER 6. Design for the Future: From London to Chicago  143
III. New Deal in a New Country
CHAPTER 7. Rockefeller’s Radio: Lazarsfeld and Mass Communications Research  167
CHAPTER 8. Planning for Postwar: Gruen and Krummeck in New York and Los Angeles  199
CHAPTER 9. The Industrialist and the Artist: Walter Paepcke Rescues the Bauhaus  217
IV. Making Postwar America
CHAPTER 10. The Focused Interview becomes the “Focus Group”:
Lazarsfeld and Market Research  247
CHAPTER 11. A Downtown for the Suburbs: Gruen and the Shopping Center  271
CHAPTER 12. Moholy’s Death and the Afterlife of the Bauhaus  319
CONCLUSION. Synthesizing Socialism and Capitalism  349
Bibliography  357
Archives and Manuscript Collections  371
Index  373

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S
Although it has taken on an entirely new form these many years later, the germ
of this book was my PhD dissertation at George Washington University, so I
must first thank the faculty members of the Department of American Studies
for teaching me how to be a rigorous scholar, providing me with summer re-
search grants, and generally creating the conditions under which I could carry
out the necessary research to get this project going. I would especially like to
thank my dissertation adviser, Joseph Kip Kosek, and the members of my dis-
sertation committee, Elisabeth Anker and Chad Heap, for reading chapter
drafts, taking time to help me work out ideas in meetings, and for supporting me
over the years with so many letters of recommendation. I could not have con-
ceived of the project or completed the thesis without them. I would also like to
thank Dara Orenstein and Angela Zimmerman for reading my dissertation and
offering trenchant comments and excellent suggestions for revisions at my de-
fense. Jamie Cohen-Cole arrived in the department just as I was departing, but
he was kind enough to invite me back for a seminar presentation, and his work
on the history of social science has been an inspiration. Finally, I would like to
thank my fellow graduate students in American Studies at GW for being such
friendly, smart people who were always full of stimulating ideas and available
for interesting conversations. Among these great minds I confess a particular af-
finity for the “meats” cohort of Emily Dufton, Meghan Drury, Katie Marages,
and Bess Matassa, who always charmed me even in the depths of my despair.
I received a number of generous research travel grants both before and after
the completion of the dissertation, which were essential for research that served
as the foundation for this book. I am grateful for the grants for research at the
following institutions: the Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing
History at Duke University; the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington,
Delaware; the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University; the
American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming; the Richard J. Daley
Library Special Collections and University Archives at the University of Illi-
vii
acknowledgements
nois, Chicago; the Special Collections Research Center at the University of
Chicago Library; and the Rockefeller Archive Center in Sleepy Hollow, New
York. Without exception, the librarians, archivists, and officers at these institu-
tions were tremendously supportive in helping me to find what I was looking for
and in pointing out the things that I didn’t know to look for but should have. Lee
Hiltzik at the Rockefeller Archive Center was particularly helpful in guiding me
to explore new avenues for my research through our conversations and collabo-
ration on a research report.
I was the beneficiary of several dissertation fellowships that have afforded
me the necessary time to complete research that would ultimately make its way
into the book. These fellowships also introduced me to other established and
emerging scholars who have stimulated my thinking in various ways. At the
Hagley Museum and Library, where I was the recipient of the Henry Belin du
Pont Dissertation Fellowship in Business, Technology, and Society, I am grate-
ful to Roger Horowitz and Carol Lockman, who provided a pleasant environ-
ment for research and writing at the Library and at the “Blacksmith Shop,” the
charming if slightly scary house for visiting scholars that I shared with another
fellow, Mike McCarthy, who demonstrated the stimulative effect of political
commitment on productive scholarship. I am extremely grateful to the Bot-
stiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies, which provided essential sup-
port for nearly a year of research and writing, including trips to archives in
Washington, D.C. and Vienna from my base in Montreal. The Studienstiftung
des deutschen Volkes quite generously granted me a Leo Baeck Fellowship that
was essential to completing the dissertation. At the fellowship workshops in
Brighton and Oberwesel, I had the pleasure of meeting the other fellows, being
introduced to their work, and receiving the very helpful comments on my proj-
ect from Matthias Frenz of the Studienstiftung and Daniel Wildmann and Ra-
phael Gross of the Leo Baeck Institute in London. The other fellows all had fas-
cinating projects, but I found overlapping interest in the particularity of
biography with the work of Amir Theilhaber.
Several postdoctoral fellowships allowed me to take the project in new di-
rections that finally resulted in this book. At the Consortium for History of
Science, Technology & Medicine in Philadelphia, where I was the recipient of
a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship, I am grateful to Babak
Ashrafi, Sheila O’Shaughnessy, and Phillip Honenberger for overseeing a great
organization and creating the conditions for a solid year of productive scholar-
ship. Through the J. Franklin Jameson Fellowship, the American Historical
Association supported my time at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of
Congress, where I had the pleasure of meeting many bright scholars and fasci-
viii
acknowledgements
nating people. Dana Schaffer at the AHA made sure that my fellowship time
went smoothly, and I am particularly grateful to Kluge fellows Lanie Millar
and Samira Mehta, who lent me reassurance during a rather ominous period.
I had a wonderful experience as the Fulbright-Botstiber Visiting Professor of
Austrian-American Studies at the University of Vienna, where Alexandra Gan-
ser and Monika Wittmann of the Department of English and American Stud-
ies nicely integrated me into the department as I went about my teaching and
research, and Waldemar Zacharasiewicz kindly invited me to give a talk at the
Austrian Academy of Sciences. Susanne Hamscha and Lonnie Johnson of Ful-
bright Austria did wonderful work guiding and motivating the visiting Ameri-
can scholars, and I remember fondly many dinner parties and outings with fel-
low Fulbrighters Lisa Feurzeig, Jesse Feiman, Tom Tierney, Thom Prendergast,
and Melissa Danas.
I am once again grateful to the Botstiber Foundation for sponsoring my fel-
lowship at the Institute for Advanced Study at Central European University in
Budapest, where I was able to complete the last major portion of the writing of
this book. Nadia Al-Bagdadi was an inspiring leader of the IAS, and I was
greatly assisted by the officers Krisztina Domján, Andrey Demidov, and Ágnes
Bendik. Ágnes Forgó made sure that my stay at the Raoul Wallenberg Guest-
house was thoroughly pleasant. Our weekly seminars and long lunches were a
delight, and I had the pleasure of learning from and getting to know many of
the other fellows, including Audrey Anton, Zoltán Kékesi, Stephen Kershner,
Suzy Kim, László Munteán, Dalia Neis, Max Rosochinsky, and Mor Segev. My
fellow Botstiber fellow Christiane Tewinkel provided much advice and en-
couragement, and Gabriel Cepaluni was an inspiration as an enthusiastic ad-
venturer in the city. Dieter Reinisch made me espressos for late nights at the of-
fice, and Ibukun Filani dropped by my apartment almost daily after the
Covid-19 pandemic had arrived, just to chat and check my sanity. Fardin
Alikhah, Oksana Maksymchuk, and Melanie Sindelar were also important
presences in the Guesthouse. It was quite a pity when the virus struck and
ended our regular meetings, but at least it allowed me another six weeks to
write before flights out of Budapest finally resumed.
Over the years I have presented various aspects of this project at many con-
ferences and workshops, and I am grateful for the many comments, suggestions,
and critiques that have helped me to improve this book. Early on, at a panel at
the US Intellectual History Conference organized by Andrew Hartman, David
Steigerwald encouraged me to investigate the career of Paul Lazarsfeld, which
ended up giving shape and direction to the book. At the Business History Con-
ference and at subsequent workshops, and in a contribution to an edited vol-
ix