Franz Kafka
 

"The Revolution evaporates, & leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.
The  chains of tormented mankind are made out of red tape."
 
 

This is an excerpt from Kafka as a populist: Re-reading 'In the Penal Colony' by David Pan

Kafka's Anarchism

 Kafka's interest in the issue of community began with his friendship with the Czech anarchist, Michal Mares, who invited Kafka to several anarchist meetings and demonstrations.1 Mares recounts Kafka's attendance at these gatherings and his interest in books by anarchists such as Peter Kropotkin and Michael Bakunin,2 in which a critique of modern capitalism is presented as a rejection of institutionalized politics in favor of a society organized on a community level without any intervening administrative structures. As Michael Lowy points out, Kafka's anarchism manifests itself as an anti-socialist critique of bureaucracy based on his own experiences with the Workers' Accident Insurance Institute where he worked as a lawyer.3 This institute provided the first form of workers' compensation for accidents in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and was set up according to new social laws achieved by the workers movement. Yet, as Kafka notes in reference to a workers' demonstration: "The Revolution evaporates, and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy. The chains of tormented mankind are made out of red tape."4

 This critique of bureaucracy links Kafka's intellectual perspective with that of anarchists such as Gustav Landauer, who developed a similar critique of socialism.5 But in contrast to Landauer and other anarchists, Kafka did not pursue an intellectual or political development of anarchist ideas but rather an aesthetic embodiment. According to Mares, though Kafka was familiar with the anarchist theoreticians already mentioned, he was especially fond of Malwida von Meysenbug's anarchist ideas manifest in a narration of her life story.6

  1. These groups included Klub Mladych, Vilem Korber and the Czech Anarchist Movement. See Michal Mares, "Wie ich Franz Kafka kennenlemte, " published in Klaus Wagenbaeh, Franz Kafca: eine Biographie seiner Jugend 1883-1912 (Bern: Franke Verlag, 1958), pp. 270-271. As Wagenbach notes, Kafka's relation with Mares is documented not only by Mares' manuscript, but also by Gustav Janouch and in a postcard written by Kafka to Mares in December, 1910. (Wagenbach, op. cit., p. 230. ) For a further discussion of Kafka's interest in anarchism, see also Michael Lowy, "'Theologia Negativa' and 'Utopia negativa': Franz Kafka, " chap. in Redemption and Utopia: Jewish Libertarian Thought in Central Europe: A Study in Elective Affinity (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1992), p. 72, and pp. 82-83.
  2. Mares, op, cit., p. 275. Mares' account is confirmed by diary entries in which Kafka mentions Kropotkin and Bakunin. In his entry for October 15, 1913, he writes "Don't forget Kropotkin!" Franz Kafka, The Diaries 1910-1923, ed. Max Brod (New York: Schocken Books, 1988), p. 233. Kafka mentions Bakunin in his diary entry of March 13, 1915. Kafka, Diaries, p. 333. In addition, Gustav Landauer's Briefe aus der franzosischen Revolution appears on two of the book lists put together by Kafka between 1922 and 1924. Jurgen Born, Kafkas Bibliothek: Ein beschreibendes Verzeichnis, (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1990), 178, 183.
  3. Lowy, op, cit., pp. 123-124.
  4. Gustav Janouch, Conversations with Kafka, 2nd ed. and tr. Goronwy Rees (New York: New Directions Books, 1971), p. 120.
  5. See Gustav Landauer, For Socialism, tr. David J. Parent (St. Louis: Telos Press, 1978).
  6. Mares, op. cit., p. 275. Cf. Malwida von Meysenbug, Memoiren einer Idealisten, ed. by Renate Wiggershaus (Frankfurt a\M: Insel, 1985).