Adorno’s diagnosis of Kafka leads him to reject Pollock’s state capitalism

Evidence

In one letter, he writes the following: … I can best summarise my views on this essay by saying that it represents an inversion of Kafka. Kafka portrayed bureaucratic hierarchy as hell. Here, hell is transformed into a bureaucratic hierarchy. Additionally, the whole thing is so full of theses and so formulated ‘from above’ in a Husserlian sense that it fully dispenses with urgency. This is to say nothing of its undialectical assumption that in an antagonistic society, a non-antagonistic economy would be possible. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 584

Categorization

• XREF: The Kafka inversion — bureaucratic hierarchy as hell vs. hell as bureaucratized — resonates with the reader’s earlier work on narrative/worldbuilding and also connects to readings of ‘administered world’ in later Marcuse and Habermas. — connects to: Disagreement with Pollock forced Adorno to retain economic critique — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 586; Benjamin read Kafka’s messianism as a theologico-political remnant — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab: A History of the…, 756; Adorno read Pollock’s state capitalism paper as reversing Kafka’s hell imagery (+1 more)
• QUESTION: Adorno’s objection is that the ‘undialectical assumption’ of a non-antagonistic economy within an antagonistic society — worth tracing how this maps to contemporary debates about post-capitalist planning and market socialism.

Broader Connections

• Disagreement with Pollock forced Adorno to retain economic critique #expands (0.85) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 586
• Benjamin read Kafka’s messianism as a theologico-political remnant #expands (0.80) — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 756