This small book was published in 1978.
Havel was a dissident in Czechoslovakia and became president of it in 1989 until 1993 and then president of the Czech republic. This book review is not about him as a person or what he later did, like helping the eastward expansion of NATO, but about his thoughts at the times when the Soviet bloc existed and how resistance was possible. It has many ideas which can be applicable in todays settings under a worldwide tyrannical system. In the current Corona debate there are those who are want to revolt and use violence against the regime etc. and in that context this book offers alternatives. In contrast to the book which is short, this review is long but I wanted to give those currently struggling under corona restrictions an analogy and some ways forward. The echo is very loud and what he quotes could easily have been written today given what we have experienced in the last 20 months.
Václav Havel – The power of the Powerless
He qualifies what he means by dictatorship or rather why the Soviet bloc was not a dictatorship in the classical way of a small ruthless elite who ruled for a few years before being discarded . He therefore comes up with the term post-totalitarian system, not because totalitarian rule has stopped, but because it is all pervasive. Lobaszewski described the same but called it a ponerological system where every power position down to the village police chief was occupied with a pathological deviant.
So keep in mind in the quotes below that post-totalitarian system refers to an all-pervasive dictatorship or pathocracy.
Here are some snippets from the book available on
pdf online (Page numbers are from there).
Not only is the
dictatorship everywhere based on the same principles and structured
in the same way (that is, in the way evolved by the ruling
super power), but each country has been completely penetrated by
a network of manipulatory instruments controlled by the superpower
center and totally subordinated to its interests. (p.2)
Below some observations which seem very similar to the ones we have identified from our own time; the loss of meaning, loss of roots and identity, the good times mired in a materialistic addictions etc.
In an era
when metaphysical and existential certainties are in a state of crisis,
when people are being uprooted and alienated and are losing
their sense of what this world means, this ideology inevitably has
a certain hypnotic charm. To wandering humankind it offers an
immediately available home: all one has to do is accept it, and suddenly
everything becomes clear once more, life takes on new meaning,
and all mysteries, unanswered questions, anxiety, and loneliness
vanish. Of course, one pays dearly for this low-rent home: the
price is abdication of one s own reason, conscience, and responsibility,
for an essential aspect of this ideology is the consignment of
reason and conscience to a higher authority. The principle involved
here is that the center of power is identical with the center of truth.(p.3)
He mentions the example of the green grocer who hangs out a party slogan in the window, similar to what we are seeing today with mask and disinfections signs etc. Haclav explains:
He does it because these things
must be done if one is to get along in life. It is one of the thousands
of details that guarantee him a relatively tranquil life “in harmony
with society,” as they say.
[...]This panorama, of
course, has a subliminal meaning as well: it reminds people where
they are living and what is expected of them. It tells them what
everyone else is doing, and indicates to them what they must do as
well, if they dont want to be excluded, to fall into isolation, alienate
themselves from society, break the rules of the game, and risk the
loss of their peace and tranquility and security.(p.14)
We know how well it worked with the current slogans, like “just 2 weeks to flatten the curve”, “It is just a mask” etc.
The slogan is really a sign, and as such it contains
a subliminal but very definite message. Verbally, it might be
expressed this way: “I, the greengrocer XY, live here and I know
what I must do. I behave in the manner expected of me. I can
be depended upon and am beyond reproach. I am obedient and
therefore I have the right to be left in peace.” This message, of
course, has an addressee: it is directed above, to the greengrocers
superior, and at the same time it is a shield that protects the
greengrocer from potential informers.
Here is what he says about ideology, which is employed by those in power.
Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human
beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality
while making it easier for them to part with them. As the repository
of something suprapersonal and objective, it enables people to deceive
their conscience and conceal their true position and their inglorious
modus vivendi, both from the world and from themselves.
It is a very pragmatic but, at the same time, an apparently dignified
way of legitimizing what is above, below, and on either side. It is directed
toward people and toward God. It is a veil behind which human
beings can hide their own fallen existence, their trivialization,
and their adaptation to the status quo. It is an excuse that everyone
can use, from the greengrocer, who conceals his fear of losing
his job behind an alleged interest in the unification of the workers
of the world, to the highest functionary, whose interest in staying
in power can be cloaked in phrases about service to the working
class. The primary excusatory function of ideology, therefore, is to
provide people, both as victims and pillars of the post-totalitarian
system, with the illusion that the system is in harmony with the
human order and the order of the universe.(p.7)
One is inclined to think of the many scientists, doctors and bureaucrats etc. who likewise hide under the cloak of the pervasive ideology of the new reset, saving the planet etc. Since it is a system which is ponerized right through, then even those individuals who wield some power are made aware that even they are just numbers who can easily be replaced. Thus many will justify adherence to the ideology by saying “It wouldn’t matter if I didn’t do it as someone else would just do it, so I might as well profit from having a good job”. A rationalization which concentrations camp guards might have made too.
He then says in connection with ideology and lies which resonates with the current clown show:
The post-totalitarian system touches people at every step, but it
does so with its ideological gloves on. This is why life in the system
is so thoroughly permeated with hypocrisy and lies: government by
bureaucracy is called popular government; the working class is enslaved
in the name of the work ing class; the complete degradation
of the individual is presented as his ultimate liberation; depriving
people of information is called making it available; the use of power
to manipulate is called the public control of power, and the arbitrary
abuse of power is called observing the legal code; the repression
of culture is called its development; the expansion of imperial
influence is presented as support for the oppressed; the lack of
free expression becomes the highest form of freedom; farcical elections
become the highest form of democracy; banning independent
thought becomes the most scientific of world views; military occupation
becomes fraternal assistance. Because the regime is captive
to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It
falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics.
It pretends not to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police
apparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to persecute
no one. It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend
nothing.
Individuals need not believe all these mystifications, but they
must behave as though they did, or they must at least tolerate
them in silence, or get along well with those who work with them.
For this reason, however, they must live within a lie. They need not
accept the lie. It is enough for them to have accepted their life with
it and in it. For by this very fact, individuals confirm the system,
fulfill the system, make the system, are the system.
And:
…if ideology
originally facilitated (by acting outwardly) the constitution of
power by serving as a psychological excuse, then from the moment
that excuse is accepted, it constitutes power inwardly, becoming
an active component of that power. It begins to function as the
principal instrument of ritual communication within the system of
power.
In other words it takes the place of religion and becomes the glue which binds the system together.
Haclav then shows how things can change and that involves in living within the truth. I think we can recognise that too:
Let us now imagine that one day something in our greengrocer
snaps and he stops putting up the slogans merely to ingratiate
himself. He stops voting in elections he knows are a farce. He
begins to say what he really thinks at political meetings. And he
even finds the strength in himself to express solidarity with those
whom his conscience commands him to support. In this revolt the
greengrocer steps out of living within the lie. He rejects the ritual
and breaks the rules of the game. He discovers once more his
suppressed identity and dignity. He gives his freedom a concrete
significance. His revolt is an attempt to live within the truth.
The bill is not long in coming. He will be relieved of his post as
manager of the shop and transferred to the warehouse. His pay
will be reduced. His hopes for a holiday in Bulgaria will evaporate.
His childrens access to higher education will be threatened. His
superiors will harass him and his fellow workers will wonder about
him. Most of those who apply these sanctions, however, will not
do so from any authentic inner conviction but simply under pressure
from conditions, the same conditions that once pressured the
greengrocer to display the official slogans. They will persecute the
greengrocer either because it is expected of them, or to demonstrate
their loyalty, or simply as part of the general panorama, to
which belongs an awareness that this is how situations of this sort
are dealt with, that this, in fact, is how things are always done,
particularly if one is not to become suspect oneself. The executors,
therefore, behave essentially like everyone else, to a greater
or lesser degree: as components of the post-totalitarian system, as
agents of its automatism, as petty instruments of the social autototality.
Thus the power structure, through the agency of those who
carry out the sanctions, those anonymous components of the system,
will spew the greengrocer from its mouth.
The system, through
its alienating presence n people, will punish him for his rebellion.
It must do so because the logic of its automatism and self-defense
dictate it. The greengrocer has not committed a simple, individual
offense, isolated in its own uniqueness, but something incomparably
more serious. By breaking the rules of the game, he has
disrupted the game as such. He has exposed it as a mere game.
He has shattered the world of appearances, the fundamental pillar
of the system. He has upset the power structure by tearing apart
what holds it together. He has demonstrated that living a lie is living
a lie. He has broken through the exalted facade of the system
and exposed the real, base foundations of power. He has said that
the emperor is naked. And because the emperor is in fact naked,
something extremely dangerous has happened: by his action, the
greengrocer has addressed the world. He has enabled everyone to
peer behind the curtain.
If the main pillar of the system
is living a lie, then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat
to it is living the truth. This is why it must be suppressed more
severely than anything else.
In the post-totalitarian system, truth in the widest sense of the
word has a very special import, one unknown in other contexts. In
this system, truth plays a far greater (and, above all, a far different)
role as a factor of power, or as an outright political force.
He says that change will not come through political opposition or soldiers or the ballot box, but that at the existential level which he says is human consciousness and conscience, that is where change can come from. The alignment with truth will expose the lies and the inhumanity of the system. It is not done to gain power, money or position and does not have a time frame, but simply done to regain one’s own self-respect of living within the truth. I think this is connected to realigning once again with something higher of a spiritual nature. A meaning beyond the material. Or like Paul would say, to stop sinning of the flesh.
As we know in the current climate, there is a game of bluff being played and it works as long as the bluff is believed. But
The hidden movements
it gives rise to there, however, can issue forth (when, where, under
what circumstances, and to what extent are difficult to predict)
in something visible: a real political act or event, a social movement,
a sudden explosion of civil unrest, a sharp conflict inside an
apparently monolithic power structure, or simply an irrepressible
transformation in the social and intellectual climate. And since
all genuine problems and matters of critical importance are hidden beneath a thick crust of lies, it is never quite clear when the proverbial last straw will fall, or what that straw will be. This, too, is why the regime prosecutes, almost as a reflex action preventively, eventhe most modest attempts to live within the truth.(p.20)
Individuals can be alienated from themselves only because there is
something in them to alienate. The terrain of this violation is their
authentic existence. Living the truth is thus woven directly into the
texture of living a lie. It is the repressed alternative, the authentic
aim to which living a lie is an inauthentic response.
One of the reasons he explains is that living within the truth holds a special power and can at any moment turn one of the people who live within the lie towards the truth. One can use the analogy of the torch which has the potential to get the flame going in all the dormant torches and living within the lie can thus be seen as a dormant torch which at any moment can be lit too.
Therefore this power does
not.rely on soldiers of its own, but on the soldiers of the enemy
as it were—that is to say, on everyone who is living within the lie
and who may be struck at any moment (in theory, at least) by the
force of truth (or who, out of an instinctive desire to protect their
position, may at least adapt to that force). It is a bacteriological
weapon, so to speak, utilized when conditions are ripe by a single
civilian to disarm an entire division.
Parallel structures, something which
@iamthatis has mentioned in another thread in connection to Havel.
At the same time, all of these trends above may also contribute to the creation of what Vaclav Havel called 'parallel structures' (as mentioned in
this awesome video about totalitarianism). There's obviously a reality split. From what Havel was saying, parallel structures are a recognition of the reality split, and making a choice to opt-out, rather than ramp up to a tactical engagement. Seems like a strategy of keeping a low profile, being ready and aware, and not falling for activism or hoping for war with the lefties. Sort of like Rod Drehr's discussion of the survival of Christian churches under Communism, who wore a public mask of obedience, but kept their values alive in their hearts, and met to worship in secret.
Havel again:
The more thoroughly the post-totalitarian system frustrates any
rival alternative on the level of real power, as well as any form of
politics independent of the laws of its own automatism, the more
definitively the center of gravity of any potential political threat
shifts to the area of the existential and the pre-political: usually
without any conscious effort, living within the truth becomes the
one natural point of departure for all activities that work against
the automatism of the system. And even if such activities ultimately
grow beyond the area of living within the truth (which
means they are transformed into various parallel structures, movements,
institutions, they begin to be regarded as political activity,
they bring real pressure to bear on the official structures and begin
in fact to have a certain influence on the level of real power),
they always carry with them the specific hallmark of their origins.
The profound crisis of human identity brought on by living within a
lie, a crisis which in turn makes such a life possible, certainly possesses
a moral dimension as well; it appears, among other things,
as a deep moral crisis in society. A person who has been seduced
by the consumer value system, whose identity is dissolved in an
amalgam of the accouterments of mass civilization, and who has
no roots in the order of being, no sense of responsibility for anything
higher than his own personal survival, is a demoralized person.
The system depends on this demoralization, deepens it, is in
fact a projection of it into society. (Something psychologist Mattias Desmet talks about in his videos on youtube about totalitarianism)
Living within the truth, as humanity's revolt against an enforced
position, is, on the contrary, an attempt to regain control over ones
own sense of responsibility. In other words, it is clearly a moral
act, not only because one must pay so dearly for it, but principally
because it is not self-serving: the risk may bring rewards in the
form of a general amelioration in the situation, or it may not. In this
regard, as I stated previously, it is an all-or-nothing gamble, and
it is difficult to imagine a reasonable person embarking on such
a course merely because he reckons that sacrifice today will bring
rewards tomorrow, be it only in the form of general gratitude. (By
the way, the representatives of power invariably come to terms with
those who live within the truth by persistently ascribing utilitarian
motivations to them—a lust for power or fame or wealth—and thus
they try, at least, to implicate them in their own world, the world
of general demoralization.(p.25)
He gives an example of living within the truth, of a Band, called “
The Plastic People of the Universe”, who had a strong effect on the spiritual and intellectual environment around the appearance of Charter 77. It was an example of non-linear dynamics:
[The band] …unknown
young people who wanted no more than to be able to live within
the truth, to play the music they enjoyed, to sing songs that were
relevant to their lives, and to live freely in dignity and partnership.
These people had no past history of political activity. They were
not highly motivated members of the opposition with political ambitions,
nor were they former politicians expelled from the power
structures. They had been given every opportunity to adapt to the
status quo, to accept the principles of living within a lie and thus
to enjoy life undisturbed by the authorities. Yet they decided on a
different course. Despite this, or perhaps precisely because of it,
their case had a very special impact on everyone who had not yet
given up hope.
That should also give hope to our reality today which can look hopeless at times, which is what the rulers count on, but small acts can have big effects.
The Band got put on trial by the rulers, but then something happened and it united people:
People were “tired
of being tired”; they were fed up with the stagnation, the inactivity,
barely hanging on in the hope that things might improve after all.
In some ways the trial was the final straw. Many groups of differing
tendencies which until then had remained isolated from each
other, reluctant to cooperate, or which were committed to forms of
action that made cooperation difficult, were suddenly struck with
the powerful realization that freedom is indivisible. Everyone understood
that an attack on the Czech musical underground was an
attack on a most elementary and important thing, something that
in fact bound everyone together: it was an attack on the very notion
of living within the truth, on the real aims of life.(p.26)
The following sounds like déjà vu:
In societies under the post-totalitarian system, all political life in
the traditional sense has been eliminated. People have no opportunity
to express themselves politically in public, let alone to organize
politically.
He mentions how most of the political impulses came from non-politicians and explains:
It is because those who are not politicians are also not so bound
by traditional political thinking and political habits and therefore,
paradoxically, they are more aware of genuine political reality and
more sensitive to what can and should be done under the circumstances.(31)
So rather than traditional politicians and their parties,
The real sphere of potential politics in the post-totalitarian system
is elsewhere: in the continuing and cruel tension between the complex
demands of that system and the aims of life, that is, the elementary
need of human beings to live, to a certain extent at least,
in harmony with themselves, that is, to live in a bearable way, not
to be humiliated by their superiors and officials, not to be continually
watched by the police, to be able to express themselves freely,
to find an outlet for their creativity, to enjoy legal security, and
so on. Anything that touches this field concretely, anything that
relates to this fundamental, omnipresent, and living tension, will
inevitably speak to people.
Haclav mentions dissidents and that the dissidents don’t see themselves as such and do not which for fame or power. The following is very similar to how sceptics are smeared in the papers and media today:
A “dissident,” we are told in our press, means
something like “renegade” or “backslider.” But dissidents do not
consider themselves renegades for the simple reason that they are
not primarily denying or rejecting anything. On the contrary, they
have tried to affirm their own human identity, and if they reject
anything at all, then it is merely what was false and alienating in
their lives, that aspect of living within a lie.
What does dissidence look like as it is not a profession:
Our greengrocers attempt to live within the truth may be confined
to not doing certain things. He decides not to put flags in his window
when his only motive for putting them there in the first place
would have been to avoid being reported by the house warden;
he does not vote in elections that he considers false; he does not
hide his opinions from his superiors. In other words, he may go
no further than “merely” refusing to comply with certain demands
made on him by the system (which of course is not an insignificant
step to take). This may, however, grow into something more.
[…]
If what I have called living within the truth is a basic existential
(and of course potentially political) starting point for all those “independent
citizens initiatives” and “dissident” or “opposition” movements
this does not mean that every attempt to live within the
truth automatically belongs in this category. On the contrary, in
its most original and broadest sense, living within the truth covers
a vast territory whose outer limits are vague and difficult to map,
a territory full of modest expressions of human volition..
The first conclusion to be drawn, then, is that the original and
most important sphere of activity, one that predetermines all the
others, is simply an attempt to create and support the independent
life of society as an articulated expression of living within the truth.
In other words, serving truth consistently, purposefully, and articulately,
and organizing this service. This is only natural, after all:
if living within the truth is an elementary starting point for every
attempt made by people to oppose the alienating pressure of the
system, if it is the only meaningful basis of any independent act
of political import, and if, ultimately, it is also the most intrinsic
existential source of the “dissident” attitude, then it is difficult to
imagine that even manifest “dissent” could have any other basis
than the service of truth, the truthful life, and the attempt to make
room for the genuine aims of life.(p.48)
Thus, defending the aims of life, defending humanity, is not
only a more realistic approach, since it can begin right now and
is potentially more popular because it concerns peoples everyday
lives; at the same time (and perhaps precisely because of this) it is
also an incomparably more consistent approach because it aims at
the very essence of things.
Haclav mentions how appearance is crucial for the system and why therefore the pursuit through the courts and appeals is an important tool for ‘dissidents’.
About responsibility and the wish to escape where one is:
Patočka used to say that the most interesting thing about responsibility is
that we carry it with us everywhere
. That means that responsibility
is ours, that we must accept it and grasp it here, now, in this
place in time and space where the Lord has set us down, and that
we cannot lie our way out of it by moving somewhere else, whether
it be to an Indian ashram or to a parallel podis. If Western young
people so often discover that retreat to an Indian monastery fails
them as an individual or group solution, then this is obviously because,
and only because, it lacks that element of universality, since
not everyone can retire to an ashram. Christianity is an example
of an opposite way out: it is a point of departure for me here and
now—but only because anyone, anywhere, at any time, may avail
themselves of it.
In other words, the parallel polis points beyond itself and makes
sense only as an act of deepening ones responsibility to and for the
whole, as a way of discovering the most appropriate locus for this
responsibility, not as an escape from it.
The parallel societies does have an effect though the idea is not to deliberately create a target of oneself, which the rulers can easily squash.
These movements, therefore, always affect the power structure
as such indirectly, as a part of society as a whole, for they are
primarily addressing the hidden spheres of society, since it is not
a matter of confronting the regime on the level of actual power.
I have already indicated one of the ways this can work: an
awareness of the laws and the responsibility for seeing that they
are upheld is indirectly strengthened. That, of course, is only a specific
instance of a far broader influence, the indirect pressure felt
from living within the truth: the pressure created by free thought,
alternative values and alternative behavior, and by independent
social self-realization. The power structure, whether it wants to or
not, must always react to this pressure to a certain extent. Its response,
however, is always limited to two dimensions: repression
and adaptation. Sometimes one dominates, sometimes the other. (p.65)
The awakening can come also among those who were former believers:
The motive force behind this awakening
did not have to come exclusively from the independent life of
society, considered as a definable social milieu (although of course
it did come from there, a fact that has yet to be fully appreciated).
It could also simply have come from the fact that people in the
official structures who more or less identified with the official ideology
came up against reality as it really was and as it gradually
became clear to them through latent social crises and their own
bitter experiences with the true nature and operations of power. (p.68)
I have already emphasized several
times that these “dissident” movements do not have their point of
departure in the invention of systemic changes but in a real, everyday
struggle for a better life here and now. The political and
structural systems that life discovers for itself will clearly always
be—for some time to come, at least—limited, halfway, unsatisfying,
and polluted by debilitating tactics. It cannot be otherwise, and we
must expect this and not be demoralized by it. It is of great importance
that the main thing—the everyday, thankless, and never
ending struggle of human beings to live more freely, truthfully, and
in quiet dignity—never impose any limits on itself, never be halfhearted,
inconsistent, never trap itself in political tactics, speculating
on the outcome of its actions or entertaining fantasies about
the future. The purity of this struggle is the best guarantee of
optimum results when it comes to actual interaction with the post-totalitarian
structures.(p.72)
He mentions that the West has nothing to offer and where the crisis is just better hidden. He said it 43 years ago and it rings true. The programming is complete comes to mind.
There is no real evidence
that Western democracy, that is, democracy of the traditional parliamentary
type, can offer solutions that are any more profound.
It may even be said that the more room there is in the Western
democracies (compared to our world) for the genuine aims of life,
the better the crisis is hidden from people and the more deeply do
they become immersed in it.
It would appear that the traditional parliamentary democracies
can offer no fundamental opposition to the automatism of technological
civilization and the industrial-cousumer society, for they,
too, are being dragged helplessly along by it. People are manipulated
in ways that are infinitely more subtle and refined than
the brutal methods used in the posttotalitarian societies. But this
static complex of rigid, conceptually sloppy, and politically pragmatic
mass political parties run by professional apparatuses and
releasing the citizen from all forms of concrete and personal responsibility;
and those complex focuses of capital accumulation
engaged in secret manipulations and expansion; the omnipresent
dictatorship of consumption, production, advertising, commerce,
consumer culture, and all that flood of information: all of it, so often
analyzed and described, can only with great difficulty be imagined
as the source of humanity's rediscovery of itself.
It would appear as if Havel later once he got to power, fell victim of these "
infinitely more subtle and refined" methods, which he above mentions is employed in the West.
In his June
1978 Harvard lecture, Solzhenitsyn describes the illusory nature
of freedoms not based on personal responsibility and the chronic
inability of the traditional democracies, as a result, to oppose violence
and totalitarianism. In a democracy, human beings may
enjoy many .personal freedoms and securities that are unknown
to us, but in the end they do them no good, for they too are ultimately
victims of the same automatism, and are incapable of defending
their concerns about their own identity or preventing their
superficialization or transcending concerns about their own personal
survival to become proud and responsible members of the
polis, making a genuine contribution to the creation of its destiny.(p.74)
Yes, and globalization helped this steamrolling of people and their loss of identity. That there even is a term called gender-identity in the current discourse is a testimony to that.
His general closing remarks
Above all, any existential revolution should provide hope of a
moral reconstitution of society, which means a radical renewal of
the relationship of human beings to what I have called the “human
order,” which no political order can replace. A new experience
of being, a renewed rootedness in the universe, a newly grasped
sense of higher responsibility, a newfound inner relationship to
other people and to the human community—these factors clearly
indicate the direction in which we must go.
So an insightful little book which could be read in conjunction with Political Ponerology.
