Franz Kafka and libertarian socialism
Michael Löwy explores the links between the seminal writer and the anarchist/libertarian socialist movement.
Clearly, the work of Franz Kafka cannot be reduced to a political doctrine of any kind. Kafka did not give speeches but fashioned individuals and situations. In his work, he expressed a Stimmung or sense of feelings and attitudes. The symbolic world of literature cannot be reduced to the discursive world of ideologies.
The Trial - Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka's seminal novel, telling the tale of Joseph K, a respectable functionary in a bank, who is suddenly arrested and must defend his innocence against a charge about which he can get no information.
Text originally from Project Gutenberg. Available as a pdf file below.
Kafka, Franz, 1883-1924
A short biography of the anarchist-influenced writer whose name spawned an adjective for the absurdities of bureaucratic power.
“Our laws are not generally known; they are kept secret by the small group of nobles who rule us … for the laws were made to the advantage of the nobles from the very beginning, they themselves stand above the laws” (Kafka, The Problem of Our Laws)







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