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We met a large group of workmen who were marching with flags and banners to a meeting.
Kafka said, "These people are so self-possessed, so self-confident and good humoured. They rule the streets, and therefore think they rule the world. In fact, they are mistaken. Behind them already are the secretaries, officials, professional pohticians, all the modern satraps for whom they are preparing the way to power."
"You do not beheve in the power of the masses?"
"It is before my eyes, this power of the masses, formless and apparently chaotic, which then seeks to be given a form and a discipline. At the end of every truly revolutionary development there appears a Napoleon Bonaparte."
"You don"t believe in a wider expansion of the Russian Revolution?"
Kafka was silent for a moment, then he said:
"As a flood spreads wider and wider, the water becomes shallower and dirtier. The Revolution evaporates, and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy. The chains of tormented mankind are made out of red tape. (en) |
