V谩clav Havel was a Czech playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and politician. He was the tenth and last President of Czechoslovakia (1989鈥�92) and the first President of the Czech Republic (1993鈥�2003). He wrote over twenty plays and numerous non-fiction works, translated internationally. He received the US Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Philadelphia Liberty Medal, the Order of Canada, the freedom medal of the Four Freedoms Award, and the Ambassador of Conscience Award. He was also voted 4th in Prospect Magazine's 2005 global poll of the world's top 100 intellectuals. He was a founding signatory of the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism.
Beginning in the 1960s, his work turned to focus on the politics of Czechoslovakia. After the Prague Spring, he became increasingly active. In 1977, his involvement with the human rights manifesto 'Charter 77' brought him international fame as the leader of the opposition in Czechoslovakia; it also led to his imprisonment. The 1989 "Velvet Revolution" launched Havel into the presidency. In this role he led Czechoslovakia and later the Czech Republic to multi-party democracy. His thirteen years in office saw radical change in his nation, including its split with Slovakia, which Havel opposed, its accession into NATO and start of the negotiations for membership in the European Union, which was attained in 2004.
This book was once famous, but was mostly forgotten when Communism died and so-called liberal democracy seemed ascendant. It is increasingly famous again, and relevant, in these days of a new creeping totalitarianism, this time in the West itself. Such timelessness is the signature of a classic work, so my goal today is to explicate V谩clav Havel鈥檚 thought, and to show why its time has come round again.
Havel, for a time one of the most famous men in the world, was a Czech playwright, and an opponent of its Soviet-installed Communist system. He shot to prominence in the mid-1970s, although he had been involved in opposition to Communism since the late 1960s. As viewed from the West, he became one of the key voices of dissent, and he had a political career after the fall of Communism. But when he wrote this long essay (this is actually a book with several essays, but I am only discussing Havel鈥檚), he was relatively obscure outside Czechoslovakia, and this essay, "The Power of the Powerless," was the catalyst and skeleton for much of the subsequent internal opposition to Communism in Central Europe.
The frame for Havel鈥檚 entire essay is that of a greengrocer who puts in his shop window a sign, 鈥淲orkers of the World, Unite!鈥� Havel鈥檚 purpose is to analyze why the grocer does this in a totalitarian society (here Communist, but in no way limited to Communism philosophically), and what that means for the society of which the greengrocer is a part. Havel assumes, of course, that the grocer does not install the sign to show actual support for Communism or for the government, but because of some set of implicit or explicit pressures.
The overarching pressure is to ensure peace and stability for his life鈥攖o not rock the boat, to not become a target. It is necessary, in the eyes of the powerful, that he do so, not because one sign in one shop matters, but because it is part of a web of such signs and other signals of compliance, the whole 鈥減anorama that everyone is very much aware of. 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 don鈥檛 want to be excluded, to fall into isolation, alienate themselves from society, break the rules of the game, and risk the loss of peace and tranquility and security.鈥� It is critical to note that the greengrocer and everyone in his position have all 鈥渁dapted to the conditions in which they live, but in doing so, they help to create those conditions.鈥� The self-perpetuating nature of the system, and that everyone is a part of it, is key. Unlike classic dictatorships, 鈥淏y pulling everyone into its power structure, the post-totalitarian system makes everyone instruments of a mutual totality.鈥�
In placing the sign given to him, the greengrocer effectively strengthens the totality of the ruling ideology, and humiliates himself. Although it might appear to be, it is not the same in effect as if he had a sign saying 鈥淚 am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient,鈥� even though the substantive content of the sign is the same. The ideological nature of the slogan instead forms 鈥渁 bridge of excuses between the system and the individual,鈥� which makes it possible to 鈥減retend that the requirements of the system derive from the requirements of life.鈥� But make no mistake, the greengrocer, and all others in his position, in the 鈥減anorama,鈥� must 鈥渓ive 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, fulfil the system, make the system, are the system.鈥� Reality has nothing to do with it; in fact, such an ideology is so strong, Havel says, that 鈥渢here is nothing to prevent ideology from becoming more and more removed from reality.鈥�
So far, this is fascinating and insightful (and, as I will discuss later, increasingly characteristic of Western society). But what happens when the greengrocer rebels? What if he refuses to place the sign, instead choosing to 鈥渓ive within the truth鈥�? He reclaims his identity and dignity, but 鈥渢he bill is not long in coming.鈥� He will not go to jail (probably), but he will become isolated within the system and within society, and be punished with loss of employment, vacations, and other necessities and desirable tokens of life. The punishment must, from the ruling state鈥檚 perspective, greatly exceed a proportionate response to the actual immediate impact of the greengrocer鈥檚 little revolt, because his impact is potentially immense. He has struck at the feet of clay of the entire system, and 鈥淟iving within the lie can constitute the system only if it is universal. The principle must embrace and permeate everything. . . . [T]herefore anyone who steps out of line denies it in principle and threatens it in its entirety.鈥� Hence the ritual of suppression and humiliation, the scapegoating, of anyone who steps out of line (there is probably something of Ren茅 Girard in this, but I am turning to Girard soon, so I cannot precisely tell, yet).
Thus the key counterposition of Havel鈥檚 thought is truth vs. lie, and living within the truth vs. living within the lie. Each person must do one or the other, but if enough people choose truth, totalitarianism cannot survive. (This is why Solzhenitsyn was expelled by the U.S.S.R., which was constrained from killing him, the traditional Communist solution. He was a witness to living within the truth, not a man with some unique talent or insight.) Crucially, this is only indirectly a struggle for power鈥擧avel has nothing in common with, say, Foucault or other postmodern thinkers who view the world through the lens of power. In fact, the totalitarian system will, in all likelihood, retain all power until its end (an end Havel could not foresee), thus any challenge means only that 鈥渢he center of gravity of any potential political threat shifts to the area of the existential and the prepolitical: usually without any conscious effort, living within the truth becomes the one natural point of departure for all activities that work against the automatism [that is, the ideological power] of the system.鈥�
Havel is hopeful that living within the truth has a future, for the simple reason that living within a lie necessarily creates 鈥渁 deep moral crisis in society.鈥� One result is the formation of such civic intermediary groups as Charter 77, Havel鈥檚 main specific touchstone of dissident thought in this essay. Charter 77 began as a surprise (a spontaneous response to suppression of a popular rock band) and 鈥減repolitical鈥�; its force came from its moral core and its participants鈥� willingness to live within the truth. Prompt and ongoing suppression of any prepolitical civic intermediary institutions is essential to the maintenance of a totalitarian state, because they deepen the fractures caused by living within a lie (one reason that the Left in the West has done its best to destroy all such institutions, very successfully, either directly or by mutating them into tools of ideological indoctrination, as has been done to the Boy Scouts). The state instead fills the gap with 鈥渋deological ritual,鈥� but that ritual still has a limited shelf life, Havel thinks, because it is based on living within a lie.
For the most part, living within the truth does not consist of dramatic actions. Immolation and martyrdom are not called for. 鈥淸L]iving within the truth covers a vast territory full of modest expressions of human volition, the vast majority of which will remain anonymous and whose political impact will probably never be felt or described any more concretely than simply as a part of a social climate or mood. Most of these expressions remain elementary revolts against manipulation: you simply straighten your backbone and live in greater dignity as an individual.鈥� In this thought, and, in fact, in all of Havel鈥檚 essay, can be found strong echoes of the currently wildly popular Jordan Peterson, whose focus is not precisely on survival under totalitarianism, but survival in modernity. Given that two of Peterson鈥檚 specific focuses are speaking the truth and standing straight up, and that key to Peterson鈥檚 thought is that reality exists, my guess is that a fruitful blend of Peterson and Havel could be made, one that would speak directly to the problems of modernity. I will stick to my knitting for now, though.
Havel criticizes those opposed to the Czech state whose main focus of opposition was creating a new politics. They miss that politics follows the prepolitical, the 鈥渋ndependent spiritual and social life of society.鈥� If that is lacking, politics is meaningless in a totalitarian state. Offering alternative political programs is a fatal mistake; instead, one should 鈥渙pen oneself up fully to the world of human existence and then [ ] draw political conclusions only after having analyzed it.鈥� That is, living within the truth will point the way to a new politics, when and if that new politics becomes both viable and necessary. Thus, those living within the truth are not, objectively, an 鈥渙pposition.鈥� They are instead normal people showing the way to other normal people. For that reason, Havel spends a lot of time pointing out that the common view of the 鈥渄issident鈥� as a minority is the exact opposite of the truth. In fact, such a person speaks aloud what everyone else is thinking鈥攅ven what the government is thinking. The key question is how to make connections to the silent and then build upon those connections (and the answer is to visibly live within the truth). Similarly, dissidents don鈥檛 like to be called dissidents, a label applied to them by the Communist authorities. 鈥淭hey have not consciously decided to be professional malcontents, rather as one decides to be a tailor or blacksmith.鈥� They never decide to be dissidents at all. 鈥淒issidents鈥� are merely those who are willing and able to take the first steps publicly to live within the truth; it does not (necessarily) mean they have the most courage, just that they are able to do so in their circumstances. And the government fears them not because they are a 鈥減ower clique,鈥� or for the alternative politics they offer, but precisely for the opposite reason: they are 鈥渙rdinary people with ordinary cares, differing from the rest only in that they say aloud what the rest cannot say or are afraid to say.鈥�
For Havel, therefore, revolt is not the answer (and would not even work, not just because of the power of the state, but because to most people, who are 鈥渟oporific,鈥� revolt would be unacceptable). One of his few concrete suggestions is holding the Communists to their own legal code, which was, in fact, a popular and successful tactic through the 1980s. Havel is quite aware that 鈥渢he [Communist] laws are no more than a fa莽ade, an aspect of the world of appearances, a mere game behind which lies total manipulation.鈥� Nonetheless, the unobserved laws still serve the purpose of ritual, binding the totalitarian state together, and since 鈥渢he system cannot do without the law, because it is hopelessly tied down to the necessity of pretending the laws are observed, it is compelled to react in some way to such appeals [to the letter of the law by those living within the truth].鈥� I am less convinced of this, and tend to think that this tactic was successful mostly because Communist systems had invisibly started to lose the will to continue, and a minority in the West used the false nature of the legal code to attack Communist regimes by highlighting their lies.
Havel makes no predictions of how matters will go in practice and rejects any value in speculation. By definition, 鈥渓iving within the truth鈥� is an organic (and far from perfect) function, about which it is impossible to state what the future holds, other than inability for both truth and lies to peacefully coexist, meaning there will always be 鈥渓atent or open conflict鈥� if even a single person chooses to live within the truth. If and when this movement succeeds, Havel did not envision, or endorse, what is held up to us today as the ideal, so-called liberal democracy. This is generally known, but usually, it is suggested Havel and his compatriots in resistance to Communism (real, risky, resistance, not today鈥檚 sour and stupid #Resistance) instead wanted a 鈥渢hird way,鈥� or democratic socialism, or something like that. But this is incorrect, totally, and only said, then and now, so that preening Western leftists can pretend that those who lived under actual socialism had any use for it, and merely wanted a slightly different form of socialism. On the contrary, Havel (not religious himself) wanted a spiritual, national, renewal in which democracy in the modern Western sense of 鈥渓iberal democracy鈥� would play a modest, limited part, economics was not at the forefront, and traditional values rejected by the rulers of the modern West would play a very large part. That is to say, he saw the flaws in liberal democracy early, and he was not interested in socialism, or any system of government economic control, though he did see the spiritual dangers of consumerism. He called for society to 鈥減rovide hope of a moral reconstitution of society, which means a radical renewal of the relationship of human beings to what I have called the 鈥榟uman order,鈥� 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.鈥� Ethics first, then politics. Havel explicitly hopes to avoid the problems earlier identified by Jos茅 Ortega y Gasset, the 鈥渞evolt of the masses,鈥� where a combination of mediocre men and false guidance by putative experts was running Western Europe into the ground, through encouraging mediocrity and spiritual anomie, and by worshipping the false gods of technology, emancipation, and consumerism (totally aside from the struggle with Communism).
What this meant for Havel as far as a future political system is not precisely laid out, but what he does say suggests he believed in what today would be considered a profoundly traditionally conservative vision of the new political system. 鈥淭here can and must be structures that are open, dynamic and small; beyond a certain point, human ties like personal trust and personal responsibility cannot work. There must be structures that in principle place no limits on the genesis of different structures. Any accumulation of power (one of the characteristics of automatism) should be profoundly alien to it.鈥� These should not be permanent structures, but explicitly ad hoc, transient ones. And, critically, Havel wants real subsidiarity (not the EU鈥檚 fake subsidiarity), 鈥淚t is only with the full existential backing of every member of the community that a permanent bulwark against 鈥榗reeping totalitarianism鈥� can be established. These structures should naturally arise from below as a consequence of authentic social 鈥榮elf-organization.鈥欌€� None of this would be guided by any ideology; 鈥渢he essence of such a 鈥榩ost-democracy鈥� is also that it can only develop via facti, as a process deriving directly from life . . . .鈥�
Havel ultimately had one of the chief voices in the post-Communist Czech political system, in which echoes of these thoughts can be found, along with many compromises, problems, and variations. It is always easier to write essays than to govern, even if writing was more dangerous to Havel personally. It is important to remember that the Left has constructed a false history over the past thirty years; liberals and progressives in the West claim that they opposed totalitarian Communism until its collapse in 1989. Nothing could be farther from the truth, and as Ryszard Legutko has documented, both before and after the collapse of Communism, Western liberals felt more kinship with Communism than with people like Havel. A read of "The Power of the Powerless" makes that very clear; Havel鈥檚 thought has little or nothing in common with the calls for meeting Communism in the middle that were the real bread-and-butter of all but a few people in the West, until 1989.
A second falsehood accompanies this first one鈥攖hat the peoples of Central Europe sought to escape Communism so they could join the liberal democracies of the West. In its crudest form, this falsehood focuses on consumer goods as the touchstone鈥攕upposedly, people got tired of living with only being able to buy a narrow range of shoddy goods. Which is true, up to a point. I travelled in Hungary in the 1980s, as a teenager, and again immediately after the fall of Communism, throughout Central Europe, and there was certainly a dearth of decent consumer goods. But that was an ancillary problem to most people who lived there. In a less crude form, the falsehood held that oppressed peoples supposedly sought 鈥渄emocracy,鈥� meaning 鈥渓iberal democracy.鈥� That is, they sought to receive a dubious package that included some increased freedoms, but mostly meant destruction of national cultures and traditions, sexual emancipation, erosion of religious belief, weakening of the rule of law, the strengthening of the state at the expense of private action, and the unfettered ability to vote for whatever was approved by the ruling classes, but nothing else. Havel鈥檚 essay gives the lie to all this, both directly and in the philosophy he conveys, which does not call for unfettered autonomy or personal emancipation, but the reconstruction of civil society along traditional lines.