Kafka on bureaucracy | Course Paper

doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9299.2011.01957.x

WEBER AND KAFKA: THE RATIONAL

AND THE ENIGMATIC BUREAUCRACY

TORBEN BECK JØRGENSEN

Max Weber’s and Franz Kafka’s respective understandings of bureaucracy are as different

as

night and day. Yet, Kafka’s novel The Castle is best read with Max Weber at hand. In fact,

Kafka

relates systematically to all the dimensions in Weber’s ideal type of bureaucracy and give

us a

much-contemplated parody, almost a counter-punctual ideal type, based on four key

observations:

bureaucratic excesses unfold in time and space; a ‘no error’ ideology generates inescapable

dilemmas; inscrutability is a life condition in bureaucracy; civil servants end up walking

on the

spot, just like the figures in Escher’s painting: Ascending and Descending. Nevertheless,

Weber and

Kafka can both be right. While Kafka looks at the bureaucratic phenomenon through

persons who

are marginalized, Weber’s perspective is historic-comparative and top-down. Are the

observations

of the one more correct than the other? The question is meaningless. As two opposite

poles, Weber

and Kafka ‘magnetize’ each other.

Of those who have written about bureaucracy, two writers will always stand out due to

their unique analysis of the bureaucratic phenomenon: German sociologist Max Weber

(1864–1920) and Czech author Franz Kafka (1883–1924). They are both great cultural

personalities and have inspired and provoked incalculable amounts of research and

social debate. While Weber is known for his scientific analysis of bureaucracy as a

form of rational organization, emphasizing the advantages compared to earlier forms of

public administration, Kafka is known for his description of the nightmarish, labyrinthine

inscrutability of bureaucracy to such a degree that Kafka has become an adjective –

Kafkaesque – associated with the alienating and incomprehensible system control over

powerless individuals.

The two understandings of bureaucracy are so divergent that we need to ask whether

they are examining the same phenomenon. Indeed, Kafka’s writings are often not

considered to be dealing with bureaucracy at all. The literary and philosophical readings

of Kafka are distinguished by a focus on exile, existence, guilt, punishment, alienation,

and father figures – one may say on everything but bureaucracy (Derlien 1991). Within

organizational research, however, we can find examples – although not many – of the

comparative analysis of Weber and Kafka. Derlien (1991) and Warner (2007) have

outlined Weber’s and Kafka’s respective backgrounds, writings and their significance for

the development of organizational theory and emphasize the considerable similarities in

their respective thoughts on societal matters.

Both men were sceptical observers of the breakthrough of modernity after the fin-desi`

ecle period; both were lawyers with practical work experience; and they possibly had

more than indirect relations with one another. Kafka met Max Weber’s younger brother,

Alfred Weber, through his friend Max Brod, who was a student of Alfred Weber (Radkau

2009, p. 323). It was Alfred Weber who was later responsible for awarding Kafka his

doctoral degree in law. It is also close to being an established fact that Kafka read the

works of Alfred Weber (Heinemann 1996; Harrington 2007). Given that interest, it is

hardly unlikely that Kafka might even have read the works of Max Weber (see Derlien

Torben Beck Jørgensen is in the Department of Political Science, University of

Copenhagen, Denmark

Public Administration Vol. 90, No. 1, 2012 (194–210)

Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ,

UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

WEBER, KAFKA AND BUREAUCRACY 195

1991, pp. 14–15). It is thus worthwhile pursuing how directly Kafka’s understanding of

bureaucracy can be related to Weber’s understanding.

Derlien and Warner built their analysis on extensive parts of Kafka’s rather heterogeneous

writings and were looking for similarities. Doing so entails a risk of wiping out the

distinct differences in Weber’s and Kafka’s respective understandings of bureaucracy and

how they are possibly related. I therefore delimit my analysis to two central texts: Weber’s

classic essay on bureaucracy and Kafka’s novel entitled The Castle. It ismy thesis that

while

Weber’s and Kafka’s respective understandings of bureaucracy are as different as night

and day, The Castle represents a very precise commentary on Weber’s understanding of

bureaucracy. In that way, The Castle is actually best read with Max Weber at hand. For

further, detailed, information on the two texts, see the appendix.

WEBER’S MODEL OF BUREAUCRACY

Bureaucracy represents a certain kind of exercise of power; or rather, a certain kind of

regulation of the exercise of power. In the modern constitutional state, the relationship

between citizen and administrative authority – for example, a tax authority – should be

regulated in the following manner (see also Ttionnies 1887; Parsons 1951):

1. My basic properties are less important. The tax authorities are not allowed to

emphasize whether I am red-haired, overweight or a smoker. What counts is my

performances or actions, for example, how much I earn and how I do so.

2. There are limits to how versatile the tax authority can be. For instance, not all of

my economic arrangements can be of interest to the tax authority. It is unimportant

whether I am an economic spendthrift. The tax authority must emphasize specific

matters, for example, my income and deductions.

3. A tax inspector with a thoroughly suspicious disposition cannot reduce my

deductionsmerely

on the grounds that he suspects that I have been cheating. Case decisions

must be made on the basis of objective – not subjective – criteria.

4. Nor can the tax authority staff treat me highly emotionally. The relationship must

be neutral. They cannot write: ‘We are really tired of all your fake expenditures etc’.

Instead, they must write something to the effect of: ‘Based on our meeting last week

and our further investigations. . .’

5. Everybody must receive the same treatment following universal criteria. It would be

a particular treatment if I were the only one to receive a specific treatment – kind as

well as unkind.

These five principles – action-orientation, specificity, objectivity, neutrality and

universality

– can be understood as the essence of modernity and the rule of law. But this specific

relationship between citizens and public authorities does not develop spontaneously. The

civil servant will often feel great temptation to be subjective, particular, emotional, and so

on. Consequently, the exercise of power must be regulated. To ensure this regulation, the

bureaucratic form of organization is a meaningful choice.

Following Weber, the bureaucratic organization – in short – is characterized by:

1. The authorization to make decisions is established in rules.

2. The civil servant is placed in a hierarchical system, which – at the same time –

features a high degree of specialization.

Public Administration Vol. 90, No. 1, 2012 (194–210)

196 TORBEN BECK JRGENSEN

3. The work is based on documents.

4. There is a strict separation between the public and private lives of the civil servant.

5. The civil servant has professional/academic training.

6. Holding the office is a full-time job, and the salary is the only or most important

source of income.

It is easy to see how the bureaucratic form of organization is well suited to creating and

maintaining a relationship between citizen and administration that is characterized by the

five principles. For example, specialization promotes specificity; rules, separation and the

academic training promote objectivity and neutrality; and written documents combined

with the hierarchical principle may ensure action-orientation and universalism.

Weber recognized a number of positive features of bureaucracy compared to previous

forms of administration (Weber 1957, p. 214):

Precision, speed, unambiguity, knowledge of the files, continuity, discretion, unity,

strict subordination, reduction of friction and of material and personal costs – these are

raised to the optimum point in the strictly bureaucratic administration, and especially

in its monocratic form. As compared with all collegiate, honorific, and avocational

forms of administration, trained bureaucracy is superior on all these points.

However, Weberwas no na¨ıve admirer of the bureaucratic form of organization in

concreto

or of the bureaucratization of society in general. The following citation – highly central to

the understanding of The Castle – expresses Weber’s hesitant preference for bureaucracy

(Weber 1957, p. 216):

Its specific nature . . . develops the more perfectly the more the bureaucracy is

‘dehumanized’,

the more completely it succeeds in eliminating from official business love,

hatred, and all purely personal, irrational, and emotional elements which escape

calculation.

Weber’s model of bureaucracy is a so-called ideal type that represents the cultivation of

certain features of reality, which never can be found fully realized. The ideal type is an

analytical

tool.We can compare the realitywith the ideal type and assess the distance between

the ideal type and reality. The main questions in our reading of The Castle are therefore:

1. In The Castle, does Kafka relate to the elements in Weber’s ideal type?

2. If so, what is the distance between the ideal type and The Castle?

3. In The Castle, what are Kafka’s views on Weberian bureaucracy?

THE CASTLE: READ THROUGH WEBERIAN SPECTACLES

The very first lines of The Castle present the basic atmosphere – the pedal point of the

entire novel:

It was late evening when K. arrived. The village lay under deep snow. There was no

sign of the Castle hill, fog and darkness surrounded it, not even the faintest gleam of

light suggested the large Castle. K. stood a long time on the wooden bridge that leads

from the main road to the village, gazing upward into the seeming emptiness. (p. 9)

K. believes he has been sent for to perform a task as a land surveyor. Some of the locals do

not believe this to be the case and insist that K. leaves the village. As the book proceeds,

K. fumbles through the little village and tries to find his way and to make sense of the

Public Administration Vol. 90, No. 1, 2012 (194–210)