KAFKA AND MARXIST THEORY.

 

 KAFKA AND MARXIST THEORY.

          

Many commentators of Kafka – especially in the 1950ies and 60ies - started out from a Marxist perspective and have seen FK as illustrator of the idea of Entfremdung, displayed by Marx in the Paris manuscripts ( in ”Nationalökonomie und Philosophie” ).

This idea of KM – an ontological/sociological one – probably erupts from another term: alienation, which can be found by the early Hegel, the important inspiratory of Marx.  Hegel - a philosopher of purely metaphysical kind, a philosopher of Conscience - introduced the concept of "Entfremdung", estrange-ment, in connection with an analysis of the division of labor. Karl Marx defines alienated labor as: labor in order to own. The prerequisite for this definition is class analysis and a criticism of existing capitalist bourgeois economics.

To Hegel – who was a solid bourgeois character, much to bourgeois even to Goethe …. - alienation was an experience of the outer world as hostile and strange, an experience that could be overcome with an inner maturing process. With Marx alienation was seen as only existent within a capitalist economy and could only be overcome with a social revolution.

Most clearly reflected is this kind of experienced estrangement with respect to Kafka´s works in the animal stories by Kafka, as well as in the history The building of the Great Wall of China, Bense for instance claims. In aesthetics we have come to speak, linked to the original concept of alienation, about the effect of Estrangement (not least through the works of Brecht) and we can meet this effect with Kafka too, and we might see the effect of estrangement as a part of the concept of the Kafkaesque. It is thus part of the effect of the technical efforts of Kafka. This very effect is typical of the genre of literary expressionism (Trakl, Brecht, Morgenstern), and expressionism in turn has long been associated with the works of Kafka, and it was early hinted by the historian Kasimir Edschmid that Kafka´s works belonged to Expressionism. The effect of estrangement was, acquired by artistic VERFREMDUNG ( making something or someone unfamiliar, strange, foreign - a literary trick ) according to him, describing alienation, reification, linked to modernity, modern technique and the effects of modern economy. Expressionism was however an individualist movement, and as such, according to Marxist theorists, alienated.

Alienation was seen as a symptom as well as the modern artist himself was. Kafka appeared in the midst of this debate on alienation, and he came to illustrate the lonely artist in an alienated world: The big debate around Kafka and alienation had started. It took place primarily in Germany, France and in the newly shaped Czechoslovakia. Important contributors were among others Goldstücker, Garaudy, Riemann, Mittenzwei, Seghers and Kusak.

Marxist writers have found Kafka's The Metamorphosis, The Trial, etc. in special to be descriptions of the alienated man in the high capitalist society.   Kusak:

 

 ”Kafka seems to me as the paramount realist of the 20ieth century, and he saw it [alienation] better than anybody else.”   ”/…. / he [ Kafka ] saw the horror of his time .”   /…../”As Marxists we must not only see the influence of reality upon Kafka, but also how Kafka can help us solve the enigma of reality.””.

 

Ernst Schumacher, around the year of 1968,  in 'Kafka vor der neuen Welt':

 

  “Has not this rightly rejected vulgar sociological approach been replaced, namely with the philosophically idealistic view, and finally with an existentialist, which does Kafka as little right as the other views? They set out with the man's estrangement, that Kafka as few other contemporaries could conceive and portray literary. It follows, that this estrangement would simultaneously be the eternal category of the human being and that human failure is inevitable and must be borne stoically, like Kafka's characters do. I think this kind of "philosophizing" is improper for a true Marxist. ".

 

                Paul Riemann:

 

”We commonly see Kafka, not as a discoverer of new worlds, but as the shipwrecked. Personally I have to say, that I cannot see the shipwrecked...”

 

                Roger Garaudy:

 

”Marxists have claimed that this conflict ( the inner versus family, the Jew, social society ) ultimately has character of a conflict between classes. Due to his personal situation Kafka experienced the oppositions between classes and the alienation in a more intensified form.” 

 

 

Main themes are, according to Garaudy, the following three: a.)The animal The theme of awakening: Man is a being, doubting his life. ( Report to an academy, The Metamorphosis, The Burrow.)  b.) The search – Theme of searching for a new and a truer life. ( The Trial, The Castle.). c.) Theme of the unfulfilled.  ( In all of Kafka´s works.) 

 

 ”Literary creation is to him the technique of overcoming alienation. Poetry is the opposite of alienation.” 

 

In the early 20ieth century, in the aftermath of the war, discussion on culture often was centered on the concept of disaster like with Spengler. The German sociologist Max Weber also played a part with his ideas of organization theory and was interested in what organization creates, and what can make this run wild.   Organization is in itself a potential iron cage for modern Man, according to Weber. The existence of organization, as well as of institution, might thus lead to revolt and chaos. Weber himself had a personal background  very similar to that of Kafka.

Thus Kafka often also is seen as a dystopian writer, alongside Orwell, prophesizing about a society marked by very little freedom for the common man.