Michael Löwy

Judaism and Anarchism in Mitteleuropa.
The Case of Franz Kafka

From the end of the 19th century Jewish culture in Mitteleuropa saw the emergence of a romantic current which rejected bourgeois rationalism, industrial progress and capitalist civilisation but was drawn towards libertarian utopias rather than social democracy.  In the particular context of central European Judaism, a complex network of relations – of chosen affinities, to adopt a concept used by Max Weber in his sociology of religions – was built up between romanticism, the Jewish religious renaissance, messianism, the revolt against bourgeois and statist culture, revolutionary utopianism, socialism and anarchism.

There were two poles in this nebulous messianic/romantic/libertarian current of Central European Judaism. The first was represented by the religious Jews with utopian leanings: Franz Rosenzweig, Rudolf Kayser, Martin Buber, Gershom Scholem, Hans Kohn, the young Leo Löwental. Their aspirations towards a national and religious Jewish revival did not lead them towards political nationalism and their conception of Judaism was coloured by German culture.  All of them had, to varying degrees, a universal utopian vision of a socialist libertarian nature, which they expressed, explicitly or implicitly, through their messianic religious faith.

The second pole was that of the assimilated Jews, religious atheists and libertarians: Gustav Landauer, Ernst Bloch, Erich Fromm, the young Gyorgy Lukacs, Manes Sperber, Walter Benjamin. Unlike those of their contemporaries mentioned above, they moved away from Judaism, without however breaking their ties completely. The term religious atheism – used by Lukacs in speaking of Dostoievsky – offers an insight into theses paradoxical spiritual figures who seem to be seeking, with all the energy of despair, the messianic point of convergence between the sacred and the profane.  While close to libertarian ideals in the period 1914-1923, most of them moved progressively closer to Marxism in the following years.

Kafka was slightly removed from both these configurations, with elements of both Jewish messianism and libertarian utopianism, both in a negative form.  The world of his novels is characterised by the simultaneous absence of God and of Freedom.  Here we could speak of negative theology  and negative utopia.

Three reports from contemporary Czech documents bear witness to Kafka’s sympathy for Czech libertarian socialists and his participation in some of their activities.  In the early 1930s, Max Brod heard from one of the founders of the Czech anarchist movement, Michal Kacha, about Kafka’s presence at the Klub mladych (Young People’s Club), a libertarian, anti-militarist and anti-clerical organisation which attracted a number of Czech writers.

The second contribution is from the anarchist writer Michal Mares, who met Kafka in the street (they were neighbours).  Mares claims that Kafka accepted his invitation to a demonstration against the execution of Francisco Ferrer, the Spanish libertarian educationalist, in October 1909. Between 1910 and 1912 he attended anarchist meetings on free love, on the Paris Commune, on Peace and against the execution of the Parisian activist Liabeuf.

The third document is Gustav Janouch’s Conversations with Kafka, which were first published in 1951 and again, considerably extended, in 1968. These conversations with the Prague writer were held in the last years of his life (from 1920 onwards) and show that Kafka had retained his sympathy for the libertarians.

This biographical episode casts new light on his work. There is a libertarian anti-authoritarianism running through all his novels, a depersonalisation and reification, from personal and paternal authority to its anonymous administrative counterpart. It is not a question of a political doctrine, but of state of mind and of a critical spirit, in which the principal weapon is irony, humour, that black humour which is a revolt of the spirit (André Breton).

The main characteristics of authoritarianism in Kafka’s literary works are 1)arbitrariness: decisions are imposed from above without any moral, rational or humane justification, often by making extreme and absurd requirements of the victim; 2)injustice: guilt is - wrongly - taken for granted, without any need of proof and punishment is totally out of proportion to the trivial or inexistent “crime”.

Libertarian inspiration lies at the heart of his novels, which tell us of the State, whether in the form of the “administration” or of “Justice”, as a  system of impersonal domination which crushes, suffocates or kills individuals. It is a world of anguish, obscure, incomprehensible, which is the realm of unfreedom.  It should be recalled that the states that Kafka described in his novels were not intended as exceptions.  One of his most important ideas suggested by his works, which clearly shows his closeness to anarchism, is the alienated and oppressive nature of the “normal”, legal, constitutional state. In the first lines of The Trial it is clearly stated that CK lived in a state of law (Rechtstaat), there was peace everywhere, all laws were enforced, so who could dare to attack him in his home? Like his friends, the anarchists of Prague, he seems to have seen all forms of the state, the state per se, as an authoritarian and freedom-killing hierarchy.