Vaclav Havel and the Power of the Powerless

There are at least two types of tyrannical political order. The first is one that is implemented by brute force with soldiers or police patrolling everywhere looking to enforce the ruler’s will on a frightened population. The second type of tyranny is one enforces by the people on the people. There is always a coercive force, but it does not require constant patrols by soldiers, because people (whether they believe in the tyrannical policies or not) enforce them or call in the authorities to do so.

Of the two types of tyranny, the second is the more awful. There will always be some toadies in an oppressed culture that will jump over to the other side and work with the oppressors in the first type of tyranny, but the vast majority of people will outwardly comply, but inwardly hope for and be prepared to assist a rebellion. Resistance is cheered, even in small things. This is a totalitarian system of government.

In the second form of tyranny, internal cultural forces demand absolute compliance and offer little hope of freedom. It requires the deletion of civil society—those groups that exist for non-political purposes and which hold societies together—and their replacement with government authorized programs. The second form of tyranny induces citizens, even those who do not explicitly favor the government’s policies, to enforce them through social pressure and, sometimes, by calling in the government’s enforcers. There is little room for people to live in dissent. Vaclav Havel calls this second form a post-totalitarian system.

In Vaclav Havel’s essay, “The Power of the Powerless” he describes what it means to live in a society in which dissent is impossible. He is speaking of his experience in Czechoslovakia, where he was a significant member of the resistance that eventually contributed to that nation being freed from communism.

Havel describes a simple act by a greengrocer, who one day refuses to put the approved Party sign in his windows. He does not believe that “Workers Unite” has any particular significance in a political system designed to entrap everyone in a miasma of misery. He may have already declared his allegiance in various public and semi-public ways through participation in Party activities, without ever believing the concepts. But one must go along to get along.

And yet, though many of the customers will not particularly care about the sentiment “Workers Unite,” because it has no real meaning, the minor resistance of the greengrocer in no affirming the approved common sentiment will be deemed a rebellion. In a post-totalitarian society, social auto-totality will lead to conformity, as word will spread and reach the authorities who will by force ensure compliance, often by removing the right to work. It may not be physical force that is brought to bear, but commercial and social pressure.

The crime of the greengrocer was simply to stop living the lie. He had never truly believed the slogans, like most of the population, but had simply done what was needed to get by. In that moment when he chose to stop putting up slogans, stop voting in farcical elections, and, perhaps, even positively voice an opinion at a political meeting, the greengrocer will have begun to live in the truth, but society will not allow it.

Havel writes as one who has experienced a post-totalitarian system under Communist rule. He worked against the system, though the system did not acknowledge him, and eventually became the prime minister of Czechoslovakia after the end of the Communist oppression ended.

We, however, are seeing the beginning of a very different regime of oppression that is being brought to bear on society more gradually and yet no less insidiously. At present, there is still room to live in the truth, but there are an increasing number of voices looking to make the lie the only possible way of life.

Consider, for example, the rush to ignore differences in sexual expression and the demand to support various forms of LGBTQ lifestyles. One may think those good or not, but participation in much of society is now becoming dependent on active, public affirmation of those lifestyles. There is no room for neutrality or even quietly thinking, along with many of the voices in human history, that this is an unhealthy lifestyle. Instead, employers require affirmation of “diversity” along arbitrarily invented lines, which necessarily exclude diversity of thought, or, really, any thought at all. To refuse to wear a rainbow ribbon on the culturally approved day or affirm the latest evolution in sexual ethics is a form of open rebellion, much as the green grocer’s refusal to post the sign, “Workers Unite.”

At times there is force of law behind these edicts, as with the states that are attacking bakers and florists that decline to participate in same-sex wedding celebrations, but much of the punishment for violating societal norms is meted out by regular people. This is an auto-totality. In Western culture, it is likely to get worse before it gets better.

Havel’s concerns are certainly different than those we face in the auto-totality, but the methods used by the contemporary culture to gain and maintain control are similar to those used by the Soviets in oppressing the people of Eastern Europe. Havel’s essay, “Power to the Powerless,” is informative because it provides a roadmap for those who disagree with the consensus that is being hammered over society to maintain their integrity and not live the lie.

The hope of the resistance should be to create an existential revolution, so that people see and pursue a radically different way of thinking and knowing. That is, the resistance needs to demonstrate that an alternate, moral reality exists and live in a way that points people toward it.

As Havel writes,

“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 new-found inner relationship to other people and to the human community – these factor clearly indicate the direction in which we go.”

Havel wrote his ideas on living in truth to fuel an existential revolution leading to moral reconstitution when the fall of communism still seemed unlikely. As the storm clouds of our present auto-totality continue to deepen, we may find it necessary to tighten the boundaries of our contrast communities, rebuild the moral structures within them, and live with greater integrity to demonstrate the plausibility of our moral vision for the world.

The Power of the Powerless: Citizens Against the State in Central Eastern Europe: Citizens Against the State in Central Eastern Europe

By Havel, Vaclav

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