There are a few of his works of fiction that come to mind. I’ll touch on just three of these with brief interpretations that, I think, will attend to his criticisms of capitalism.

“A Hunger Artist” - one’s artisanal work becomes something merely admired, but no longer valued as a capital good (in this case, allegorized by an artist whose skill is to starve themselves for intervals of time in a locked cage at a circus, eventually dying when the viewers stop caring and the supervisor no longer supports them). The hunger artist’s self-loathing and ironic sense of self-preservation through hunger (because they say that they could never find a food they liked) is funny, but might also speak to the sad reality of the determinism in system where money and capital are concentrated in the hands of owners and not the producers of the capital. Case in point, when the hunger artist finally expires, the supervisor—the owner of the circus—basically discards of his body immediately and moves on without a second thought. Very Marxist in its conception, imo. From Marx:

> In tearing away from man the object of his production, therefore, estranged labor tears from him his species-life, his real objectivity as a member of the species and transforms his advantage over animals into the disadvantage that his inorganic body, nature, is taken from him... Man’s species-being, both nature and his spiritual species-property, into a being alien to him, into a means of his individual existence. It estranges from man his own body, as well as external nature and his spiritual aspect, his human aspect.

The Metamorphosis - how do you call in sick to work when your boss shows up to your house and bangs on your bedroom door ‘cause you’re a few hours late (lol)? But seriously, the story takes the idea of surveillance of employees, family debt, and the dispassion one feels for work that feels purposeless (in this case, it’s “insurance”) and asks how this system would respond if the worker entrenched in that system somehow became inutile. Gregor Samsa is economically exploited on so many fronts. First, his employer enters his home and demands he return to work, making spurious claims that he’s defrauded the company, but then threatening him with dismissal if he doesn’t show up. Second, his family doesn’t work because Gregor makes enough money to keep them satisfied to sit around and live a very modest existence without having to strain themselves while he pays their existing debts. Third, the family, needing to make money after Gregor’s metamorphosis, rents their rooms to three boarders who flee in disgust upon finding Gregor in his insect-form. In short: Gregor’s utility begins and ends with his ability, actively or passively, to produce wealth for someone else. In the end, having lived his whole life in complete service to the financial needs of others, he dies in the misguided belief that his life will no longer hold his family back from financial uncertainty as he’s become too much of a burden.

Selection from “The Rescue Will Begin In Its Own Time” - a hilarious story about a farmer who begins by asking for help, but ends up engaging in an obtuse business agreement with a man on a highway for help in fixing problems within the farmer’s family (he’s been quarrelling with his wife and his kids are lazy). The man on the highway (the narrator) who’s being asked to help slowly begins making demands that would qualify as payment for the consultation and counselling that he’s being asked to give. At first the demands are small, but the back and forth between the two men yields greater and more elaborate, mostly unwieldy, requirements. For example, the man asks for all of the same food and drink that the farmer consumes in the day—basically suggesting he become another mouth for the family to feed. He asks for a barrel of ale a week, and a whole bunch of other random shit. Finally, the he says:

> “[It’s] not so much,” I said, “and I’ve almost got to the end. I want oil for a lamp that is to be kept burning at my side all night. I have the lamp here, just a very little one that runs on next to nothing. It’s really hardly worth mentioning, and I just mentioned it for the sake of completeness, lest there be some subsequent dispute between us; I dislike such things when it comes to being paid. At all other times I am the mildest of men, but if terms once agreed upon are violated I cut up rough, remember that. If I am not given everything I have earned, down to the last detail, I am capable of setting fire to your house while you’re asleep. But you have no need to deny what we have clearly agreed upon, and then, especially if you make me the occasional present out of affection—it doesn’t have to be worth much, just the odd little trifle—I will be loyal and hardy and very useful to you in all manner of ways. And I shall want nothing beyond what I have told you just now, except on August 24th, my name day, a little barrel of two gallons of rum.”

In the end, the farmer is so aggravated and annoyed by the ludicrous demands that he dismisses the man and says he’ll just figure it out for himself. The story ends with the man on the highway saying: “So why the long negotiations?”

The story challenges so many conceptions of negotiation and binding of contracts, especially when the goods on trade are intangible. This line of interpretation suggests that all “skills” are somewhat imprecise in their “value” for purchase. The cost isn’t tied to any immediate input costs (of material or time), only the output or result for the consumer. So the provider can be as conniving as they want in dreaming up a fee.

But the inverse reading is more interesting, imo. The man on the highway is so careful in his analysis of the challenges and pains he’ll have to take on by consulting for the farmer that his exorbitant demands represent the true cost of his craft, and represent a perfectly calculated receipt of the work he’ll have to do without forgoing his own life:

> Did he [the farmer] suppose I could fix in a couple of hours what two people had done wrong over the course of their entire lives, and did he expect me at the end of those two hours to take a sack of dried peas, kiss his hand in gratitude, bundle myself up in my rags, and carry on down the icy road?

Thus, it’s working to a fair contract. But when it’s all laid out on the table for the farmer, it’s suddenly better for him to move on down the road and fix the problem himself. An even more likely scenario is that the farmer can now “shop” for a new consultant, and while this option isn’t even hinted at in the story, it’s suggestion is at least plausible in the fact that the story places equal on the task being done by either of the two men: one can do it for his own benefit while the other can do it pay.

Seconded.