In this episode of Perspectives, we speak with Joseph Malherek, author of Free-Market Socialists: European Émigrés Who Made Capitalist Culture in America, 1918–1968.

 

What is the surprising connection between socialism and the corporate focus group? How did socialists come to develop, of all things, the suburban American shopping mall?

 

Listen in as Joseph Malherek explains the socialist roots of U.S. social research. He charts the lives and careers of Hungarian artist-designer László Moholy-Nagy, the Austrian sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld, and his fellow Viennese Victor Gruen—an architect and urban planner—to tell the story of an intellectual migration from Central Europe to the United States. These figures sought answers to the question: why do people do the things they do and make the economic decisions they make? Malherek demonstrates how U.S. businesses channeled socialist thought for creative solutions to the practical problems of industrial design, urban planning, and consumer behavior.

For more information and resources on this topic, and others, please see https://www.chstm.org/video/143.