Tag: The Power of the Powerless

In 1978, Václav Havel (1936-2011) wrote an essay, The Power of the Powerless, from which I take the title for this and later posts.

Havel was born into a wealthy family, and that made him an outcast when the Communists took over 12 years later. He eventually became president of Czechoslovakia (her last), and, after the country’s dissolution, was elected president of the new Czech Republic (her first). But he is best known, not as a politician, but as an essayist and thinker who alerts his readers and hearers as to the dangers of totalitarianism, whether in its Fascist, Communist, Tin Pot, “Post-Totalitarian”, or democratic manifestations. And, most importantly, he eloquently demonstrates that the way for a people to defeat the brutal despotism of unjust domination by political and military elites — be they “soft” or “hard”, “democratically elected” or “installed by force” — is to “live by the truth.”

Truth is universal, and “historical experience teaches us that any meaningful point of departure in an individual’s life usually has an element of universality about it. In other words, it is not something partial, accessible only to a restricted community, and not transferable to any other. On the contrary, it must be potentially accessible to everyone.” By “everyone” he includes those doing the oppressing. His essay does not seek to proselytize religiously, but by “universality” he gives Christianity as an example. An example I wholly embrace.

The essay was written “hurriedly” (his word) but upon careful reading one marvels at his insights, clearly developed from a lifetime of social, economic, political, and religious oppression and upheaval. He is one of those rare intellectuals who not only earned the appellation but did not besmirch it with despicable, self-absorbed behavior and utter disregard for his neighbor. 

Paul Johnson’s great book, The Intellectuals, details the lives of intellectuals who have had outsized, deleterious influence on the course of history, especially the 20th and 21st centuries. Men like Karl Marx and Jean-Paul Sartre, Cyril Connolly and Kenneth Tynan, and many others are examined and when one puts the book down, one wonders how people fell for these sordid characters whose fruit in their own lives surely portended evil for the rest of us. I wish Mr. Johnson had written a companion book on intellectuals who did lead admirable lives. Men like Václav Havel. 

Open totalitarian regimes — Castro’s Cuba, Mao’s China, Khmer Rouge’s Cambodia, Hitler’s Germany, and many others — “post-totalitarian” regimes — Eastern Europe in 1978 — democratic regimes — Western Europe and the Americas — and points between all have a “hard” tendency to concentrate power and exercise it over their peoples. 

“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 working class; the complete degradation of the individual is presented as his ultimate liberation; depriving people of formation 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 posses 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 if 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.”

I invite you to re-read the foregoing three paragraphs and marvel with me that it was written in 1978 when Americans were offended at Alexander Solzhenitsyn for having pointed out similar thoughts at his Harvard address and was booed by the intellectuals there. The then First Lady sniffed, “He doesn’t understand Americans.” Even many “conservatives” were put off. 

I was not one of them, although, I confess, I saw the issues he addressed as portending future evils. It was years later, upon re-reading the speech that I realized he saw them — correctly — as present evils. And today, their manifestation is such that only the most obtuse can honestly deny them.