Power of the
Powerless
Václav Havel
1978
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I 1
II 2
III 7
IV 10
V 12
VI 17
VII 22
VIII 25
IX 30
X 32
XI 36
XII 42
XIII 46
XIV 51
XV 55
XVI 60
XVII 62
XVIII 73
XIX 77
XX 87
XXI 91
XXII 94
I
A specter is haunting Eastern Europe: the specter of what in the
West is called “dissent” This specter has not appeared out of thin air.
It is a natural and inevitable consequence of the present historical
phase of the system it is haunting. It was born at a time when this
system, for a thousand reasons, can no longer base itself on the
unadulterated, brutal, and arbitrary application of power, eliminating
all expressions of nonconformity. What is more, the system has
become so ossified politically that there is practically no way for
such nonconformity to be implemented within its official structures.
Who are these so-called dissidents? Where does their point of view
come from, and what. importance does it have? What is the
significance of the “independent initiatives in which “dissidents
collaborate, and what real chances do such initiatives have of
success? Is it appropriate to refer to “dissidents as an opposition? If
so, what exactly is such an opposition within the framework of this
system? What does it do? What role does it play in society? What are
its hopes and on what are they based? Is it within the power of the
“dissidents—as a category of subcitizen outside the power
establishment—to have any influence at all on society and the social
system? Can they actually change anything?
I think that an examination of these questions-an examination of the
potential of the “powerless-can only begin with an examination of
the nature of power in the circumstances in which these powerless
people operate.
1
II
Our system is most frequently characterized as a dictatorship or,
more precisely, as the dictatorship of a political bureaucracy over a
society which has undergone economic and social leveling. I am
afraid that the term “dictatorship, regardless of how intelligible it
may otherwise be, tends to obscure rather than clarify the real
nature of power in this system. We usually associate the term with
the notion of a small group of people who take over the government
of a given country by force; their power is wielded openly, using the
direct instruments of power at their disposal, and they are easily
distinguished socially from the majority over whom they rule. One of
the essential aspects of this traditional or classical notion of
dictatorship is the assumption that it is temporary, ephemeral,
lacking historical roots. Its existence seems to be bound up with the
lives of those who established it. It is usually local in extent and
significance, and regardless of the ideology it utilizes to grant itself
legitimacy, its power derives ultimately from the numbers and the
armed might of its soldiers and police. The principal threat to its
existence is felt to be the possibility that someone better equipped
in this sense might appear and overthrow it.
Even this very superficial overview should make it clear that the
system in which we live has very little in common with a classical
dictatorship. In the first place, our system is not limited in a local,
geographical sense; rather, it holds sway over a huge power bloc
controlled by one of the two superpowers. And although it quite
naturally exhibits a number of local and historical variations, the
range of these variations is fundamentally circumscribed by a single,
unifying framework throughout the power bloc. 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
2
center and totally subordinated to its interests. In the stalemated
world of nuclear parity, of course, that circumstance endows the
system with an unprecedented degree of external stability compared
with classical dictatorships. Many local crises which, in an isolated
state, would lead to a change in the system, can be resolved through
direct intervention by the armed forces of the rest of the bloc.
In the second place, if a feature of classical dictatorships is their lack
of historical roots (frequently they appear to be no more than
historical freaks, the fortuitous consequence of fortuitous social
processes or of human and mob tendencies), the same cannot be
said so facilely about our system. For even though our dictatorship
has long since alienated itself completely from the social movements
that give birth to it, the authenticity of these movements (and I am
thinking of the proletarian and socialist movements of the
nineteenth century) gives it undeniable historicity. These origins
provided a solid foundation of sorts on which it could build until it
became the utterly new social and political reality it is today, which
has become so inextricably a part of the structure of the modern
world. A feature of those historical origins was the “correct
understanding of social conflicts in the period from which those
original movements emerged. The fact that at the very core of this
“correct understanding there was a genetic disposition toward the
monstrous alienation characteristic of its subsequence development
is not essential here. And in any case, this element also grew
organically from the climate of that time and therefore can be said
to have its origin there as well.
One legacy of that original “correct understanding is a third
peculiarity that makes our systems different from other modern
dictatorships: it commands an incomparably more precise, logically
structured, generally comprehensible and, in essence, extremely
flexible ideology that, in its elaborateness and completeness, is
almost a secularized religion. It of fears a ready answer to any
question whatsoever; it can scarcely be accepted only in part, and
accepting it has profound implications for human life. In an era
3
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. (In our case,
the connection with Byzantine theocracy is direct: the highest
secular authority is identical with the highest spiritual authority.) It
is true of course that, all this aside, ideology no longer has any great
influence on people, at least within our bloc (with the possible
exception of Russia, where the serf mentality, with its blind, fatalistic
respect for rulers and its automatic acceptance of all their claims, is
still dominant and combined with a superpower patriotism which
traditionally places the interests of empire higher than the interests
of humanity). But this is not important, because ideology plays its
role in our system very well (an issue to which I will return) precisely
because it is what it is.
Fourth, the technique of exercising power in traditional
dictatorships contains a necessary element of improvisation. The
mechanisms for wielding power are for the most part not
established firmly, and there is considerable room for accident and
for the arbitrary and unregulated application of power. Socially,
psychologically, and physically, conditions still exist for the
expression of some form of opposition. In short, there are many
seams on the surface which can split apart before the entire power
structure has managed to stabilize. Our system, on the other hand,
has been developing in the Soviet Union for over sixty years, and for
approximately thirty years in Eastern Europe; moreover, several of
its long-established structural features are derived from Czarist
4
absolutism. In terms of the physical aspects of power, this has led to
the creation of such intricate and well-developed mechanisms for
the direct and indirect manipulation of the entire population that, as
a physical power base, it represents something radically new. At the
same time, let us not forget that the system is made significantly
more effective by state ownership and central direction of all the
means of production. This gives the power structure an
unprecedented and uncontrollable capacity to invest in itself (in the
areas of the bureaucracy and the police, for example) and makes it
easier for that structure, as the sole employer, to manipulate the
day-to-day existence of all citizens.
Finally, if an atmosphere of revolutionary excitement, heroism,
dedication, and boisterous violence on all sides characterizes
classical dictatorships, then the last traces of such an atmosphere
have vanished from the Soviet bloc. For, some time now this bloc has
ceased to be a kind of enclave, isolated from the rest of the
developed world and immune to processes occurring in it. To the
contrary, the Soviet bloc is an integral part of that larger world, and
it shares and shapes the worlds destiny. This means in concrete
terms that the hierarchy of values existing in the developed
countries of the West has, in essence, appeared in our society (the
long period of co-existence with the West has only hastened this
process)In other words, what we have here is simply another form of
the consumer and industrial society, with all its concomitant social,
intellectual, and psychological consequences. It is impossible to
understand the nature of power in our system properly without
taking this into account.
The profound difference between our system-in terms of the nature
of power-and what we traditionally understand by dictatorship, a
difference I hope is clear even from this quite superficial
comparison, has caused me to search for some term appropriate for
our system, purely for the purposes of this essay. If I refer to it
henceforth as a post-totalitarian system, I am fully aware that this is
perhaps not the most precise term, but I am unable to think of a
5
better one. I do not wish to imply by the prefix “poso that the
system is no longer totalitarian; on the contrary, I mean that it is
totalitarian in a way fundamentally different from classical
dictatorships, different from totalitarianism as we usually
understand it.
The circumstances I have mentioned, however, form only a circle of
conditional factors and a kind of phenomenal framework for the
actual composition of power in the post-totalitarian system, several
aspects of which I shall now attempt to identify.
6
III
The manager of a fruit-and-vegetable shop places in his window,
among the onions and carrots, the slogan: “Workers of the world,
unite! Why does he do it? What is he trying to communicate to the
world? Is he genuinely enthusiastic about the idea of unity among
the workers of the world? Is his enthusiasm so great that he feels an
irrepressible impulse to acquaint the public with his ideals? Has he
really given more than a moments thought to how such a unification
might occur and what it would mean?
I think it can safely be assumed that the overwhelming majority of
shopkeepers never think about the slogans they put in their
windows, nor do they use them to express their real opinions. That
poster was delivered to our greengrocer from the enterprise
headquarters along with the onions and carrots. He put them all into
the window simply because it has been done that way for years,
because everyone does it, and because that is the way it has to be. If
he were to refuse, there could be trouble. He could be reproached
for not having the proper decoration in his window; someone might
even accuse him of disloyalty. 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.
Obviously the greengrocer is indifferent to the semantic content of
the slogan on exhibit; he does not put the slogan in his window from
any personal desire to acquaint the public with the ideal it
expresses. This, of course, does not mean that his action has no
motive or significance at all, or that the slogan communicates
nothing to anyone. 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
7
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. The slogans. real meaning,
therefore, is rooted firmly in the greengrocers existence. It reflects
his vital interests. But what are those vital interests?
Let us take note: if the greengrocer had been instructed to display
the slogan “I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient; he
would not be nearly as indifferent to its semantics, even though the
statement would reflect the truth. The greengrocer would be
embarrassed and ashamed to put such an unequivocal statement of
his own degradation in the shop window, and quite naturally so, for
he is a human being and thus has a sense of his own dignity. To
overcome this complication, his expression of loyalty must take the
form of a sign which, at least on its textual surface, indicates a level
of disinterested conviction. It must allow the greengrocer to say,
“Whats wrong with the workers of the world uniting?” Thus the sign
helps the greengrocer to conceal from himself the low foundations
of his obedience, at the same time concealing the low foundations of
power. It hides them behind the facade of something high. And that
something is ideology.
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
8
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.
The smaller a dictatorship and the less stratified by modernization
the society under it, the more directly the will of the dictator can be
exercised- In other words, the dictator can employ more or less
naked discipline, avoiding the complex processes of relating to the
world and of self-justification which ideology involves. But the more
complex the mechanisms of power become, the larger and more
stratified the society they embrace, and the longer they have
operated historically, the more individuals must be connected to
them from outside, and the greater the importance attached to the
ideological excuse. It acts as a kind of bridge between the regime
and the people, across which the regime approaches the people and
the people approach the regime. This explains why ideology plays
such an important role in the post-totalitarian system: that complex
machinery of units, hierarchies, transmission belts, and indirect
instruments of manipulation which ensure in countless ways the
integrity of the regime, leaving nothing to chance, would be quite
simply unthinkable without ideology acting as its all-embracing
excuse and as the excuse for each of its parts.
9
IV
Between the aims of the post-totalitarian system and the aims of life
there is a yawning abyss: while life, in its essence, moves toward
plurality, diversity, independent self-constitution, and self
organization, in short, toward the fulfillment of its own freedom, the
post-totalitarian system demands conformity, uniformity, and
discipline. While life ever strives to create new and improbable
structures, the post-totalitarian system contrives to force life into
its most probable states. The aims of the system reveal its most
essential characteristic to be introversion, a movement toward being
ever more completely and unreservedly itself, which means that the
radius of its influence is continually widening as well. This system
serves people only to the extent necessary to ensure that people will
serve it. Anything beyond this, that is to say, anything which leads
people to overstep their predetermined roles is regarded by the
system as an attack upon itself And in this respect it is correct: every
instance of such transgression is a genuine denial of the system. It
can be said, therefore, that the inner aim of the post-totalitarian
system is not mere preservation of power in the hands of a ruling
clique, as appears to be the case at first sight. Rather, the social
phenomenon of self-preservation is subordinated to something
higher, to a kind of blind automatism which drives the system. No
matter what position individuals hold in the hierarchy of power, they
are not considered by the system to be worth anything in
themselves, but only as things intended to fuel and serve this
automatism. For this reason, an individuals desire for power is
admissible only in so far as its direction coincides with the direction
of the automatism of the system.
Ideology, in creating a bridge of excuses between the system and the
individual, spans the abyss between the aims of the system and the
aims of life. It pretends that the requirements of the system derive
10
from the requirements of life. It is a world of appearances trying to
pass for reality.
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 working class; the complete degradation
of the individual is presented as his ultimate liberation; depriving
people of in 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 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.
11
V
We have seen that the real meaning of the greengrocers slogan has
nothing to do with what the text of the slogan actually says. Even so,
this real meaning is quite clear and generally comprehensible
because the code is so familiar: the greengrocer declares his loyalty
(and he can do no other if his declaration is to be accepted) in the
only way the regime is capable of hearing; that is, by accepting the
prescribed ritual, by accepting appearances as reality, by accepting
the given rules of the game. In doing so, however, he has himself
become a player in the game, thus making it possible for the game to
go on, for it to exist in the first place.
If ideology was originally a bridge between the system and the
individual as an individual, then the moment he steps on to this
bridge it becomes at the same time a bridge between the system and
the individual as a component of the system. That is, 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.
The whole power structure (and we have already discussed its
physical articulation) could not exist at all if there were not a certain
metaphysical order binding all its components together,
interconnecting them and subordinating them to a uniform method
of accountability, supplying the combined operation of all these
components with rules of the game, that is, with certain regulations,
limitations, and legalities. This metaphysical order is fundamental to,
and standard throughout, the entire power structure; it integrates
its communication system and makes possible the internal exchange
and transfer of information and instructions. It is rather like a
collection of traffic signals and directional signs, giving the process
12
shape and structure. This metaphysical order guarantees the inner
coherence of the totalitarian power structure. It is the glue holding
it together, its binding principle, the instrument of its discipline.
Without this glue the structure as a totalitarian structure would
vanish; it would disintegrate into individual atoms chaotically
colliding with one another in their unregulated particular interests
and inclinations. The entire pyramid of totalitarian power, deprived
of the element that binds it together, would collapse in upon itself,
as it were, in a kind of material implosion.
As the interpretation of reality by the power structure, ideology is
always subordinated ultimately to the interests of the structure.
Therefore, it has a natural tendency to disengage itself from reality,
to create a world of appearances, to become ritual. In societies
where there is public competition for power and therefore public
control of that power, there also exists quite naturally public control
of the way that power legitimates itself ideologically. Consequently,
in such conditions there are always certain correctives that
effectively prevent ideology from abandoning reality altogether.
Under totalitarianism, however, these correctives disappear, and
thus there is nothing to prevent ideology from becoming more and
more removed from reality, gradually turning into what it has
already become in the post-totalitarian system: a world of
appearances, a mere ritual, a formalized language deprived of
semantic contact with reality and transformed into a system of ritual
signs that replace reality with pseudo-reality.
Yet, as we have seen, ideology becomes at the same time an
increasingly important component of power, a pillar providing it
with both excusatory legitimacy and an inner coherence. As this
aspect grows n importance, and as it gradually loses touch with
reality, it acquires a peculiar but very real strength. It becomes
reality itself, albeit a reality altogether self-contained, one that on
certain levels (chiefly inside the power structure) may have even
greater weight than reality as such. Increasingly, the virtuosity of the
ritual becomes more important than the reality hidden behind it.
13
The significance of phenomena no longer derives from the
phenomena themselves, but from their locus as concepts in the
ideological context. Reality does not shape theory, but rather the
reverse. Thus power gradually draws closer to ideology than it does
to reality; it draws its strength from theory and becomes entirely
dependent on it. This inevitably leads, of course, to a paradoxical
result: rather than theory, or rather ideology, serving power, power
begins to serve ideology. It is as though ideology had appropriated
power from power, as though it had become dictator itself. It then
appears that theory itself, ritual itself, ideology itself, makes
decisions that affect people, and not the other way around.
If ideology is the principal guarantee of the inner consistency of
power, it becomes at the same time an increasingly important
guarantee of its continuity. Whereas succession to power in classical
dictatorship is always a rather complicated affair (the pretenders
having nothing to give their claims reasonable legitimacy, thereby
forcing them always to resort to confrontations of naked power), in
the post-totalitarian system power is passed on from person to
person, from clique to clique, and from generation to generation in
an essentially more regular fashion. In the selection of pretenders, a
new “king-maker” takes part: it is ritual legitimation, the ability to
rely on ritual, to fulfill it and use it, to allow oneself, as it were, to be
borne aloft by it. Naturally, power struggles exist in the posttotalitarian
system as well, and most of them are far more brutal
than in an open society, for the struggle is not open, regulated by
democratic rules, and subject to public control, but hidden behind
the scenes. (It is difficult to recall a single instance in which the First
Secretary of a ruling Communist Party has been replaced without
the various military and security forces being placed at least on
alert.) This struggle, however, can never (as it can in classical
dictatorships) threaten the very essence of the system and its
continuity. At most it will shake up the power structure, which will
recover quickly precisely because the binding substance-ideology
remains undisturbed. No matter who is replaced by whom,
succession is only possible against the backdrop and within the
14
framework of a common ritual. It can never take place by denying
that ritual.
Because of this dictatorship of the ritual, however, power becomes
clearly anonymous. Individuals are almost dissolved in the ritual.
They allow themselves to be swept along by it and frequently it
seems as though ritual alone carries people from obscurity into the
light of power. Is it not characteristic of the post-totalitarian system
that, on all levels of the power hierarchy, individuals are increasingly
being pushed aside by faceless people, puppets, those uniformed
flunkeys of the rituals and routines of power?
The automatic operation of a power structure thus dehumanized
and made anonymous is a feature of the fundamental automatism of
this system. It would seem that it is precisely the diktats of this
automatism which select people lacking individual will for the power
structure, that it is precisely the diktat of the empty phrase which
summons to power people who use empty phrases as the best
guarantee that the automatism of the post-totalitarian system will
continue.
Western Sovietologists often exaggerate the role of individuals in
the post-totalitarian system and overlook the fact that the ruling
figures, despite the immense power they possess through the
centralized structure of power, are often no more than blind
executors of the systems own internal laws-laws they themselves
never can, and never do, reflect upon. In any case, experience has
taught us again and again that this automatism is far more powerful
than the will of any individual; and should someone possess a more
independent will, he must conceal it behind a ritually anonymous
mask in order to have an opportunity to enter the power hierarchy
at all. And when the individual finally gains a place there and tries to
make his will felt within it, that automatism, with its enormous
inertia, will triumph sooner or later, and either the individual will be
ejected by the power structure like a foreign organism, or he will be
compelled to resign his individuality gradually, once again blending
with the automatism and becoming its servant, almost
15
indistinguishable from those who preceded him and those who will
follow. (Let us recall, for instance, the development of Husk or
Gomukka.) The necessity of continually hiding behind and relating to
ritual means that even the more enlightened members of the power
structure are often obsessed with ideology. They are never able to
plunge straight to the bottom of naked reality, and they always
confuse it, in the final analysis, with ideological pseudoreality. (In my
opinion, one of the reasons the Dubcek leadership lost control of the
situation in 1968 was precisely because, in extreme situations and in
final questions, its members were never capable of extricating
themselves completely from the world of appearances.)
It can be said, therefore, that ideology, as that instrument of internal
communication which assures the power structure of inner
cohesion is, in the post-totalitarian system, some thing that
transcends the physical aspects of power, something that dominates
it to a considerable degree and, therefore, tends to assure its
continuity as well. It is one of the pillars of the systems external
stability. This pillar, however, is built on a very unstable foundation.
It is built on lies. It works only as long as people are willing to live
within the lie.
16
VI
Why in fact did our greengrocer have to put his loyalty on display in
the shop window? Had he not already displayed it sufficiently in
various internal or semi-public ways? At trade-union meetings, after
all, he had always voted as he should. He had always taken part in
various competitions. He voted in elections like a good citizen. He
had even signed the ‘anti-Charter’. Why, on top of all that, should he
have to declare his loyalty publicly? After all, the people who walk
past his window will certainly not stop to read that, in the
greengrocer’s opinion, the workers of the world ought to unite. The
fact of the matter is, they don’t read the slogan at all, and it can be
fairly assumed they don’t even see it. If you were to ask a woman
who had stopped in front of his shop what she saw in the window,
she could certainly tell you whether or not they had tomatoes today,
but it is highly unlikely that she noticed the slogan at all, let alone
what it said.
It seems senseless to require the greengrocer to declare his loyalty
publicly. But it makes sense nevertheless. People ignore his slogan,
but they do so because such slogans are also found in other shop
windows, on lamp posts, bulletin boards, in apartment windows, and
on buildings; they are everywhere, in fact. They form part of the
panorama of everyday life. Of course, while they ignore the details,
people are very aware of that panorama as a whole. And what else is
the greengrocer’s slogan but a small component in that huge
backdrop to daily life?
The greengrocer had to put the slogan in his window, therefore, not
in the hope that someone might read it or be persuaded by it, but to
contribute, along with thousands of other slogans, to the panorama
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’t
17
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 tranquillity and security.
he woman who ignored the greengrocer’s slogan may well have hung
a similar slogan just an hour before in the corridor of the office
where she works. She did it more or less without thinking, just as
our greengrocer did, and she could do so precisely because she was
doing it against the background of the general panorama and with
some awareness of it, that is, against the background of the
panorama of which the greengrocer’s shop window forms a part.
When the greengrocer visits her office, he will not notice her slogan
either, just as she failed to notice his. Nevertheless their slogans are
mutually dependent: both were displayed with some awareness of
the general panorama and, we might say, under its diktat. Both,
however, assist in the creation of that panorama, and therefore they
assist in the creation of that diktat as well. The greengrocer and the
office worker have both adapted to the conditions in which they live,
but in doing so, they help to create those conditions. They do what
is done, what is to be done, what must be done, but at the same time
– by that very token – they confirm that it must be done in fact.
They conform to a particular requirement and in so doing they
themselves perpetuate that requirement. Metaphorically speaking,
without the greengrocer’s slogan the office worker’s slogan could
not exist, and vice versa. Each proposes to the other that something
be repeated and each accepts the other’s proposal. Their mutual
indifference to each other’s slogans is only an illusion: in reality, by
exhibiting their slogans, each compels the other to accept the rules
of the game and to confirm thereby the power that requires the
slogans in the first place. Quite simply, each helps the other to be
obedient. Both are objects in a system of control, but at the same
time they are its subjects as well. They are both victims of the
system and its instruments.
If an entire district town is plastered with slogans that no one reads,
it is on the one hand a message from the district secretary to the
18
regional secretary, but it is also something more: a small example of
the principle of social auto-totality at work. Part of the essence of
the post-totalitarian system is that it draws everyone into its sphere
of power, not so they may realize themselves as human beings, but
so they may surrender their human identity in favour of the identity
of the system, that is, so they may become agents of the system’s
general automatism and servants of its self-determined goals, so
they may participate in the common responsibility for it, so they
may be pulled into and ensnared by it, like Faust with
Mephistopheles. More than this: so they may create through their
involvement a general norm and, thus, bring pressure to bear on
their fellow citizens. And further: so they may learn to be
comfortable with their involvement, to identify with it as though it
were something natural and inevitable and, ultimately, so they may –
with no external urging – come to treat any non-involvement as an
abnormality, as arrogance, as an attack on themselves, as a form of
dropping out of society. By pulling everyone into its power
structure, the post-totalitarian system makes everyone instruments
of a mutual totality, the auto-totality of society.
Everyone, however, is in fact involved and enslaved, not only the
greengrocers but also the prime ministers. Differing positions in the
hierarchy merely establish differing degrees of involvement: the
greengrocer is involved only to a minor extent, but he also has very
little power. The prime minister, naturally, has greater power, but in
return he is far more deeply involved. Both, however, are unfree,
each merely in a somewhat different way. The real accomplice in this
involvement, therefore, is not another person, but the system itself.
Position in the power hierarchy determines the degree of
responsibility and guilt, but it gives no one unlimited responsibility
and guilt, nor does it completely absolve anyone. Thus the conflict
between the aims of life and the aims of the system is not a conflict
between two socially defined and separate communities; and only a
very generalized view (and even that only approximative) permits us
to divide society into the rulers and the ruled. Here, by the way, is
one of the most important differences between the post-totalitarian
19
system and classical dictatorships, in which this line of conflict can
still be drawn according to social class. In the post-totalitarian
system, this line runs de facto through each person, for everyone in
his or her own way is both a victim and a supporter of the system.
What we understand by the system is not, therefore, a social order
imposed by one group upon another, but rather something which
permeates the entire society and is a factor in shaping it, something
which may seem impossible to grasp or define (for it is in the nature
of a mere principle), but which is expressed by the entire society as
an important feature of its life.
The fact that human beings have created, and daily create, this selfdirected
system through which they divest themselves of their
innermost identity, is not therefore the result of some
incomprehensible misunderstanding of history, nor is it history
somehow gone off its rails. Neither is it the product of some
diabolical higher will which has decided, for reasons unknown, to
torment a portion of humanity in this way. It can happen and did
happen only because there is obviously in modern humanity a
certain tendency towards the creation, or at least the toleration, of
such a system. There is obviously something in human beings which
responds to this system, something they reflect and accommodate,
something within them which paralyses every effort of their better
selves to revolt. Human beings are compelled to live within a lie, but
they can be compelled to do so only because they are in fact capable
of living in this way. Therefore not only does the system alienate
humanity, but at the same time alienated humanity supports this
system as its own involuntary masterplan, as a degenerate image of
its own degeneration, as a record of people’s own failure as
individuals.
The essential aims of life are present naturally in every person. In
everyone there is some longing for humanity’s rightful dignity, for
moral integrity, for free expression of being and a sense of
transcendence over the world of existences. Yet, at the same time,
each person is capable, to a greater or lesser degree, of coming to
20
terms with living within the lie. Each person somehow succumbs to
a profane trivialization of his or her inherent humanity, and to
utilitarianism. In everyone there is some willingness to merge with
the anonymous crowd and to flow comfortably along with it down
the river of pseudo-life. This is much more than a simple conflict
between two identities. It is something far worse: it is a challenge to
the very notion of identity itself.
In highly simplified terms, it could be said that the post-totalitarian
system has been built on foundations laid by the historical
encounter between dictatorship and the consumer society. Is it not
true that the far-reaching adaptability to living a lie and the
effortless spread of social auto-totality have some connection with
the general unwillingness of consumption-oriented people to
sacrifice some material certainties for the sake of their own spiritual
and moral integrity? With their willingness to surrender higher
values when faced with the trivializing temptations of modern
civilization? With their vulnerability to the attractions of mass
indifference? And in the end, is not the greyness and the emptiness
of life in the post-totalitarian system only an inflated caricature of
modern life in general? And do we not in fact stand (although in the
external measures of civilization, we are far behind) as a kind of
warning to the West, revealing to it its own latent tendencies?
21
VII
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
children’s 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 auto-totality.
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 in people, will punish him for his rebellion. It
22
must do so because the logic of its automatism and self-defence
dictate it. The greengrocer has not committed a simple, individual
offence, 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 façade 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. He has shown everyone that it is possible to
live within the truth. Living within the lie can constitute the system
only if it is universal. The principle must embrace and permeate
everything. There are no terms whatsoever on which it can coexist
with living within the truth, and therefore everyone who steps out of
line denies it in principle and threatens it in its entirety.
This is understandable: as long as appearance is not confronted with
reality, it does not seem to be appearance. As long as living a lie is
not confronted with living the truth, the perspective needed to
expose its mendacity is lacking. As soon as the alternative appears,
however, it threatens the very existence of appearance and living a
lie in terms of what they are, both their essence and their allinclusiveness.
And at the same time, it is utterly unimportant how
large a space this alternative occupies: its power does not consist in
its physical attributes but in the light it casts on those pillars of the
system and on its unstable foundations. After all, the greengrocer
was a threat to the system not because of any physical or actual
power he had, but because his action went beyond itself, because it
illuminated its surroundings and, of course, because of the
incalculable consequences of that illumination. In the posttotalitarian
system, therefore, living within the truth has more than
a mere existential dimension (returning humanity to its inherent
23
nature), or a noetic dimension (revealing reality as it is), or a moral
dimension (setting an example for others). It also has an
unambiguous political dimension. 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. How does the
power of truth operate? How does truth as a factor of power work?
How can its power – as power – be realized?
24
VIII
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. Only against this
background does living a lie make any sense: it exists because of that
background. In its excusatory, chimerical rootedness in the human
order, it is a response to nothing other than the human
predisposition to truth. Under the orderly surface of the life of lies,
therefore, there slumbers the hidden sphere of life in its real aims, of
its hidden openness to truth.
The singular, explosive, incalculable political power of living within
the truth resides in the fact that living openly within the truth has an
ally, invisible to be sure, but omnipresent: this hidden sphere. It is
from this sphere that life lived openly in the truth grows; it is to this
sphere that it speaks, and in it that it finds understanding. This is
where the potential for communication exists. But this place is
hidden and therefore, from the perspective of power, very
dangerous. The complex ferment that takes place within it goes on
in semi-darkness, and by the time it finally surfaces into the light of
day as an assortment of shocking surprises to the system, it is
usually too late to cover them up in the usual fashion. Thus they
create a situation in which the regime is confounded, invariably
causing panic and driving it to react in inappropriate ways.
It seems that the primary breeding ground for what might, in the
widest possible sense of the word, be understood as an opposition in
the post-totalitarian system is living within the truth. The
confrontation between these opposition forces and the powers that
be, of course, will obviously take a form essentially different from
that typical of an open society or a classical dictatorship. Initially,
this confrontation does not take place on the level of real,
25
institutionalized, quantifiable power which relies on the various
instruments of power, but on a different level altogether: the level of
human consciousness and conscience, the existential level. The
effective range of this special power cannot be measured in terms of
disciples, voters, or soldiers, because it lies spread out in the fifth
column of social consciousness, in the hidden aims of life, in human
beings’ repressed longing for dignity and fundamental rights, for the
realization of their real social and political interests. Its power,
therefore, does not reside in the strength of definable political or
social groups, but chiefly in the strength of a potential, which is
hidden throughout the whole of society, including the official power
structures of that society. 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. This power does not participate in any direct
struggle for power; rather it makes its influence felt in the obscure
arena of being itself. 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, even the most modest attempts to live
within the truth.
Why was Solzhenitsyn driven out of his own country? Certainly not
because he represented a unit of real power, that is, not because any
of the regime’s representatives felt he might unseat them and take
26
their place in government. Solzhenitsyn’s expulsion was something
else: a desperate attempt to plug up the dreadful wellspring of truth,
a truth which might cause incalculable transformations in social
consciousness, which in turn might one day produce political
debacles unpredictable in their consequences. And so the posttotalitarian
system behaved in a characteristic way: it defended the
integrity of the world of appearances in order to defend itself. For
the crust presented by the life of lies is made of strange stuff. As
long as it seals off hermetically the entire society, it appears to be
made of stone. But the moment someone breaks through in one
place, when one person cries out, ‘The emperor is naked!’ – when a
single person breaks the rules of the game, thus exposing it as a
game – everything suddenly appears in another light and the whole
crust seems then to be made of a tissue on the point of tearing and
disintegrating uncontrollably.
When I speak of living within the truth, I naturally do not have in
mind only products of conceptual thought, such as a protest or a
letter written by a group of intellectuals. It can be any means by
which a person or a group revolts against manipulation: anything
from a letter by intellectuals to a workers’ strike, from a rock
concert to a student demonstration, from refusing to vote in the
farcical elections, to making an open speech at some official
congress, or even a hunger strike, for instance. If the suppression of
the aims of life is a complex process, and if it is based on the
multifaceted manipulation of all expressions of life then, by the same
token, every free expression of life indirectly threatens the posttotalitarian
system politically, including forms of expression to
which, in other social systems, no one would attribute any potential
political significance, not to mention explosive power.
The Prague Spring is usually understood as a clash between two
groups on the level of real power: those who wanted to maintain the
system as it was and those who wanted to reform it. It is frequently
forgotten, however, that this encounter was merely the final act and
the inevitable consequence of a long drama originally played out
27
chiefly in the theatre of the spirit and the conscience of society. And
that somewhere at the beginning of this drama, there were
individuals who were willing to live within the truth, even when
things were at their worst. These people had no access to real
power, nor did they aspire to it. The sphere in which they were living
the truth was not necessarily even that of political thought. They
could equally have been poets, painters, musicians, or simply
ordinary citizens who were able to maintain their human dignity.
Today it is naturally difficult to pinpoint when and through which
hidden, winding channel a certain action or attitude influenced a
given milieu, and to trace the virus of truth as it slowly spread
through the tissue of the life of lies, gradually causing it to
disintegrate. One thing, however, seems clear: the attempt at
political reform was not the cause of society’s reawakening, but
rather the final outcome of that reawakening.
I think the present also can be better understood in the light of this
experience. The confrontation between 1000 Chartists and the posttotalitarian
system would appear to be politically hopeless. This is
true, of course, if we look at it through the traditional lens of the
open political system, in which, quite naturally, every political force
is measured chiefly in terms of the positions it holds on the level of
real power. Given that perspective, a mini-party like the Charter
would certainly not stand a chance. If, however, this confrontation is
seen against the background of what we know about power in the
post-totalitarian system, it appears in a fundamentally different
light. For the time being, it is impossible to say with any precision
what impact the appearance of Charter 77, its existence, and its work
has had in the hidden sphere, and how the Charter’s attempt to
rekindle civic self-awareness and confidence is regarded there.
Whether, when, and how this investment will eventually produce
dividends in the form of specific political changes is even less
possible to predict. But that, of course, is all part of living within the
truth. As an existential solution, it takes individuals back to the solid
ground of their own identity; as politics it throws them into a game
of chance where the stakes are all or nothing. For this reason it is
28
undertaken only by those for whom the former is worth risking the
latter, or who have come to the conclusion that there is no other
way to conduct real politics in Czechoslovakia today. Which, by the
way, is the same thing: this conclusion can be reached only by
someone who is unwilling to sacrifice his or her own human identity
to politics, or rather who does not believe in a politics that requires
such a sacrifice.
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 centre 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. Therefore it
seems to me that not even the so-called dissident movements can
be properly understood without constantly bearing in mind this
special background from which they emerge.
29
IX
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 accoutrements of mass civilization, and who has no
roots in the order of being, no sense of responsibility for anything
higher than his or her own personal survival, is a demoralized
person. The system depends on this demoralization, deepens it, is in
fact a projection of it into society.
Living within the truth, as humanity’s revolt against an enforced
position, is, on the contrary, an attempt to regain control over one’s
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 or she 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.)
If living within the truth in the post-totalitarian system becomes the
chief breeding ground for independent, alternative political ideas,
then all considerations about the nature and future prospects of
these ideas must necessarily reflect this moral dimension as a
political phenomenon. (And if the revolutionary Marxist belief about
morality as a product of the ‘superstructure’ inhibits any of our
30
friends from realizing the full significance of this dimension and, in
one way or another, from including it in their view of the world, it is
to their own detriment: an anxious fidelity to the postu-lates of that
world view prevents them from properly understanding the
mechanisms of their own political influence, thus paradoxically
making them precisely what they, as Marxists, so often suspect
others of being – victims of ‘false consciousness’.) The very special
political significance of morality in the post-totalitarian system is a
phenomenon that is at the very least unusual in modern political
history, a phenomenon that might well have – as I shall soon attempt
to show – far-reaching consequences.
31
X
Undeniably, the most important political event in Czechoslovakia
after the advent of the Husák leadership in 1969 was the appearance
of Charter 77. The spiritual and intellectual climate surrounding its
appearance, however, was not the product of any immediate political
event. That climate was created by the trial of some young musicians
associated with a rock group called ‘The Plastic People of the
Universe’. Their trial was not a confrontation of two differing
political forces or conceptions, but two differing conceptions of life.
On the one hand, there was the sterile puritanism of the posttotalitarian
establishment and, on the other hand, 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. Moreover, when the trial took place, a new mood had begun to
surface after the years of waiting, of apathy and of scepticism
towards various forms of resistance. 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 co-operate, or which were committed to forms of
action that made co-operation difficult, were suddenly struck with
the powerful realization that freedom is indivisible. Everyone
understood that an attack on the Czech musical underground was
32
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. The freedom to
play rock music was understood as a human freedom and thus as
essentially the same as the freedom to engage in philosophical and
political reflection, the freedom to write, the freedom to express and
defend the various social and political interests of society. People
were inspired to feel a genuine sense of solidarity with the young
musicians and they came to realize that not standing up for the
freedom of others, regardless of how remote their means of
creativity or their attitude to life, meant surrendering one’s own
freedom. (There is no freedom without equality before the law, and
there is no equality before the law without freedom; Charter 77 has
given this ancient notion a new and characteristic dimension, which
has immensely important implications for modern Czech history.
What Slábeček, the author of the book Sixty-eight, in a brilliant
analysis, calls the ‘principle of exclusion’, lies at the root of all our
present-day moral and political misery. This principle was born at
the end of the Second World War in that strange collusion of
democrats and communists and was subsequently developed further
and further, right to the ‘bitter end’. For the first time in decades this
principle has been overcome, by Charter 77: all those united in the
Charter have, for the first time, become equal partners. Charter 77 is
not merely a coalition of communists and non-communists – that
would be nothing historically new and, from the moral and political
point of view, nothing revolutionary – but it is a community that is a
priori open to anyone, and no one in it is a priori assigned an
inferior position.) This was the climate, then, in which Charter 77
was created. Who could have foreseen that the prosecution of one
or two obscure rock groups would have such far-reaching
consequences?
I think that the origins of Charter 77 illustrate very well what I have
already suggested above: that in the post-totalitarian system, the
real background to the movements that gradually assume political
significance does not usually consist of overtly political events of
33
confrontations between different forces or concepts that are openly
political. These movements for the most part originate elsewhere, in
the far broader area of the ‘pre-political’, where ‘living within a lie’
confronts ‘living within the truth’, that is, where the demands of the
post-totalitarian system conflict with the real aims of life. These real
aims can naturally assume a great many forms. Sometimes they
appear as the basic material or social interests of a group or an
individual; at other times, they may appear as certain intellectual
and spiritual interests; at still other times, they may be the most
fundamental of existential demands, such as the simple longing of
people to live their own lives in dignity. Such a conflict acquires a
political character, then, not because of the elementary political
nature of the aims demanding to be heard but simply because, given
the complex system of manipulation on which the post-totalitarian
system is founded and on which it is also dependent, every free
human act or expression, every attempt to live within the truth,
must necessarily appear as a threat to the system and, thus, as
something which is political par excellence. Any eventual political
articulation of the movements that grow out of this ‘pre-political’
hinterland is secondary. It develops and matures as a result of a
subsequent confrontation with the system, and not because it
started off as a political programme, project or impulse.
Once again, the events of 1968 confirm this. The communist
politicians who were trying to reform the system came forward with
their programme not because they had suddenly experienced a
mystical enlightenment, but because they were led to do so by
continued and increasing pressure from areas of life that had
nothing to do with politics in the traditional sense of the word. In
fact they were trying in political ways to solve the social conflicts
(which in fact were confrontations between the aims of the system
and the aims of life) that almost every level of society had been
experiencing daily, and had been thinking about with increasing
openness for years. Backed by this living resonance throughout
society, scholars and artists had defined the problem in a wide
variety of ways and students were demanding solutions.
34
The genesis of Charter 77 also illustrates the special political
significance of the moral aspect of things that I have mentioned.
Charter 77 would have been unimaginable without that powerful
sense of solidarity among widely differing groups, and without the
sudden realization that it was impossible to go on waiting any
longer, and that the truth had to be spoken loudly and collectively,
regardless of the virtual certainty of sanctions and the uncertainty
of any tangible results in the immediate future. ‘There are some
things worth suffering for,’ Jan Patocka wrote shortly before his
death. I think that Chartists understand this not only as Patocka’s
legacy, but also as the best explanation of why they do what they do.
Seen from the outside, and chiefly from the vantage point of the
system and its power structure, Charter 77 came as a surprise, as a
bolt out of the blue. It was not a bolt out of the blue, of course, but
that impression is understandable, since the ferment that led to it
took place in the ‘hidden sphere’, in that semi-darkness where things
are difficult to chart or analyse. The chances of predicting the
appearance of the Charter were just as slight as the chances are now
of predicting where it will lead. Once again, it was that shock, so
typical of moments when something from the hidden sphere
suddenly bursts through the moribund surface of ‘living within a lie’.
The more one is trapped in the world of appearances, the more
surprising it is when something like that happens.
35
XI
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. The gap that results is filled by ideological ritual. In such a
situation, people’s interest in political matters naturally dwindles
and independent political thought, in so far as it exists at all, is seen
by the majority as unrealistic, far-fetched, a kind of self-indulgent
game, hopelessly distant from their everyday concerns; something
admirable, perhaps, but quite pointless, because it is on the one
hand entirely utopian and on the other hand extraordinarily
dangerous, in view of the unusual vigour with which any move in
that direction is persecuted by the regime.
Yet even in such societies, individuals and groups of people exist
who do not abandon politics as a vocation and who, in one way or
another, strive to think independently, to express themselves and in
some cases even to organize politically, because that is a part of
their attempt to live within the truth.
The fact that these people exist and work is in itself immensely
important and worthwhile. Even in the worst of times, they maintain
the continuity of political thought. If some genuine political impulse
emerges from this or that ‘pre-political’ confrontation and is
properly articulated early enough, thus increasing its chances of
relative success, then this is frequently due to these isolated
‘generals without an army’ who, because they have maintained the
continuity of political thought in the face of enormous difficulties,
can at the right moment enrich the new impulse with the fruits of
their own political thinking. Once again, there is ample evidence for
this process in Czechoslovakia. Almost all those who were political
prisoners in the early 1970s, who had apparently been made to suffer
in vain because of their quixotic efforts to work politically among an
utterly apathetic and demoralized society, belong today – inevitably
36
– among the most active Chartists. In Charter 77, the moral legacy of
their earlier sacrifices is valued, and they have enriched this
movement with their experience and that element of political
thinking.
And yet it seems to me that the thought and activity of those friends
who have never given up direct political work and who are always
ready to assume direct political responsibility very often suffer from
one chronic fault: an insufficient understanding of the historical
uniqueness of the post-totalitarian system as a social and political
reality. They have little understanding of the specific nature of
power that is typical for this system and therefore they overestimate
the importance of direct political work in the traditional sense.
Moreover, they fail to appreciate the political significance of those
‘pre-political’ events and processes that provide the living humus
from which genuine political change usually springs. As political
actors – or, rather, as people with political ambitions – they
frequently try to pick up where natural political life left off. They
maintain models of behaviour that may have been appropriate in
more normal political circumstances and thus, without really being
aware of it, they bring an outmoded way of thinking, old habits,
conceptions, categories and notions to bear on circumstances that
are quite new and radically different, without first giving adequate
thought to the meaning and substance of such things in the new
circumstances, to what politics as such means now, to what sort of
thing can have political impact and potential, and in what way.
Because such people have been excluded from the structures of
power and are no longer able to influence those structures directly
(and because they remain faithful to traditional notions of politics
established in more or less democratic societies or in classical
dictatorships) they frequently, in a sense, lose touch with reality.
Why make compromises with reality, they say, when none of our
proposals will ever be accepted anyway? Thus they find themselves
in a world of genuinely utopian thinking.
37
As I have already tried to indicate, however, genuinely far-reaching
political events do not emerge from the same sources and in the
same way in the post-totalitarian system as they do in a democracy.
And if a large portion of the public is indifferent to, even sceptical of,
alternative political models and programmes and the private
establishment of opposition political parties, this is not merely
because there is a general feeling of apathy towards public affairs
and a loss of that sense of ‘higher responsibility’; in other words, it is
not just a consequence of the general demoralization. There is also a
bit of healthy social instinct at work in this attitude. It is as if people
sensed intuitively that ‘nothing is what it seems any longer’, as the
saying goes, and that from now on, therefore, things must be done
entirely differently as well.
If some of the most important political impulses in Soviet bloc
countries in recent years have come initially – that is, before being
felt on the level of actual power – from mathematicians,
philosophers, physicians, writers, historians, ordinary workers and
so on, more frequently than from politicians, and if the driving force
behind the various ‘dissident movements’ comes from so many
people in ‘non-political’ professions, this is not because these people
are more clever than those who see themselves primarily as
politicians. 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.
There is no way around it: no matter how beautiful an alternative
political model may be, it can no longer speak to the ‘hidden sphere’,
inspire people and society, call for real political ferment. 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
38
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. Abstract projects for an ideal political or economic
order do not interest them to anything like the same extent – and
rightly so – not only because everyone knows how little chance they
have of succeeding, but also because today people feel that the less
political policies are derived from a concrete and human ‘here and
now’ and the more they fix their sights on an abstract ‘some day’, the
more easily they can degenerate into new forms of human
enslavement. People who live in the post-totalitarian system know
only too well that the question of whether one or several political
parties are in power, and how these parties define and label
themselves, is of far less importance than the question of whether or
not it is possible to live like a human being.
To shed the burden of traditional political categories and habits and
open oneself up fully to the world of human existence and then to
draw political conclusions only after having analysed it: this is not
only politically more realistic but at the same time, from the point of
view of an ‘ideal state of affairs’, politically more promising as well. A
genuine, profound and lasting change for the better – as I shall
attempt to show elsewhere – can no longer result from the victory
(were such a victory possible) of any particular traditional political
conception, which can ultimately be only external, that is, a
structural or systemic conception. More than ever before, such a
change will have to derive from human existence, from the
fundamental reconstitution of the position of people in the world,
their relationships to themselves and to each other, and to the
universe. If a better economic and political model is to be created,
then perhaps more than ever before it must derive from profound
existential and moral changes in society. This is not something that
can be designed and introduced like a new car. If it is to be more
than just a new variation on the old degeneration, it must above all
39
be an expression of life in the process of transforming itself. A better
system will not automatically ensure a better life. In fact the
opposite is true: only by creating a better life can a better system be
developed.
Once more I repeat that I am not underestimating the importance of
political thought and conceptual political work. On the contrary, I
think that genuine political thought and genuinely political work is
precisely what we continually fail to achieve. If I say ‘genuine’,
however, I have in mind the kind of thought and conceptual work
that has freed itself of all the traditional political schemata that have
been imported into our circumstances from a world that will never
return (and whose return, even were it possible, would provide no
permanent solution to the most important problems).
The Second and Fourth Internationals, like many other political
powers and organizations, may naturally provide significant political
support for various efforts of ours, but neither of them can solve our
problems for us. They operate in a different world and are a product
of different circumstances. Their theoretical concepts can be
interesting and instructive to us but one thing is certain: we cannot
solve our problems simply by identifying with these organizations.
And the attempt in our country to place what we do in the context
of some of the discussions that dominate political life in democratic
societies often seems like sheer folly. For example, is it possible to
talk seriously about whether we want to change the system or
merely reform it? In the circumstances under which we live, this is a
pseudo-problem, since for the time being there is simply no way we
can accomplish either goal. We are not even clear about where
reform ends and change begins. We know from a number of harsh
experiences that neither reform nor change is in itself a guarantee of
anything. We know that ultimately it is all the same to us whether or
not the system in which we live, in the light of a particular doctrine,
appears ‘changed’ or ‘reformed’. Our concern is whether we can live
with dignity in such a system, whether it serves people rather than
people serving it. We are struggling to achieve this with the means
40
available to us, and the means it makes sense to employ. Western
journalists, submerged in the political banalities in which they live,
may label our approach as overly legalistic, as too risky, revisionist,
counter-revolutionary, bourgeois, communist, or as too right-wing
or left-wing. But this is the very last thing that interests us.
41
XII
One concept that is a constant source of confusion chiefly because
it has been imported into our circumstances from circumstances
that are entirely different, is the concept of an opposition. What
exactly is an opposition in the post-totalitarian system?
In democratic societies with a traditional parliamentary system of
government, political opposition is understood as a political force on
the level of actual power (most frequently a party or coalition of
parties) which is not a part of the government. It offers an
alternative political programme, it has ambitions to govern, and it is
recognized and respected by the government in power as a natural
element in the political life of the country. It seeks to spread its
influence by political means, and competes for power on the basis of
agreed-upon legal regulations.
In addition to this form of opposition, there exists the phenomenon
of the ‘extra-parliamentary opposition’, which again consists of
forces organized more or less on the level of actual power, but which
operate outside the rules created by the system, and which employ
different means than are usual within that framework.
In classical dictatorships, the term opposition is understood to mean
the political forces which have also come out with an alternative
political programme. They operate either legally or on the outer
limits of legality, but in any case they cannot compete for power
within the limits of some agreed-upon regulations. Or the term
opposition may be applied to forces preparing for a violent
confrontation with the ruling power, or who feel themselves to be in
this state of confrontation already, such as various guerrilla groups
or liberation movements.
An opposition in the post-totalitarian system does not exist in any of
these senses. In what way, then, can the term be used?
42
1. Occasionally the term ‘opposition’ is applied, mainly by
western journalists, to persons or groups inside the power
structure who find themselves in a state of hidden conflict
with the highest authorities. The reasons for this conflict may
be certain differences (not very sharp differences, naturally) of
a conceptual nature, but more frequently it is quite simply a
longing for power or a personal antipathy to others who
represent that power.
2. Opposition here can also be understood as everything that
does or can have an indirect political effect in the sense
already mentioned, that is, everything the post-totalitarian
system feels threatened by, which in fact means everything it is
threatened by. In this sense, the opposition is every attempt to
live within the truth, from the green-grocer’s refusal to put the
slogan in his window to a freely written poem; in other words,
everything in which the genuine aims of life go beyond the
limits placed on them by the aims of the system.
3. More frequently, however, the opposition is usually understood
(again, largely by western journalists) as groups of people who
make public their nonconformist stances and critical opinions,
who make no secret of their independent thinking and who, to
a greater or lesser degree, consider themselves a political
force. In this sense, the notion of an ‘opposition’ more or less
overlaps with the notion of ‘dissent’, although, of course, there
are great differences in the degree to which that label is
accepted or rejected. It depends not only on the extent to
which these people understand their power as a directly
political force, and on whether they have ambitions to
participate in actual power, but also on how each of them
understands the notion of an ‘opposition’.
Again, here is an example: in its original declaration, Charter 77
emphasized that it was not an opposition because it had no
intention of presenting an alternative political programme. It sees its
mission as something quite different, for it has not presented such
43
programmes. In fact, if the presenting of an alternative programme
defines the nature of an opposition in post-totalitarian states, then
the Charter cannot be considered an opposition.
The Czechoslovak government, however, has considered Charter 77
as an expressly oppositional association from the very beginning,
and has treated it accordingly. This means that the government –
and this is only natural – understands the term ‘opposition’ more or
less as I defined it in point 2, that is, as everything that manages to
avoid total manipulation and which therefore denies the principle
that the system has an absolute claim on the individual.
If we accept this definition of opposition, then of course we must,
along with the government, consider the Charter a genuine
opposition, because it represents a serious challenge to the integrity
of post-totalitarian power, founded as it is on the universality of
‘living with a lie’.
It is a different matter, however, when we look at the extent to
which individual signatories of Charter 77 think of themselves as an
opposition. My impression is that most base their understanding of
the term opposition on the traditional meaning of the word as it
became established in democratic societies (or in classical
dictatorships); therefore, they understand ‘opposition’, even in
Czechoslovakia, as a politically defined force which, although it does
not operate on the level of actual power, and even less within the
framework of certain rules respected by the government, would still
not reject the opportunity to participate in actual power because it
has, in a sense, an alternative political programme whose
proponents are prepared to accept direct political responsibility for
it. Given this notion of an opposition, some Chartists – the great
majority – do not see themselves in this way. Others – a minority –
do, even though they fully respect the fact that there is no room
within Charter 77 for ‘oppositional’ activity in this sense. At the same
time, however, perhaps every Chartist is familiar enough with the
specific nature of conditions in the post-totalitarian system to
realize that it is not only the struggle for human rights that has its
44
own peculiar political power, but incomparably more ‘innocent’
activities as well, and therefore they can be understood as an aspect
of opposition. No Chartist can really object to being considered in
‘opposition’ in this sense.
There is another circumstance, however, that considerably
complicates matters. For many decades, the power-ruling society in
the Soviet bloc has used the label ‘opposition’ as the blackest of
indictments, as synonymous with the word ‘enemy’. To brand
someone ‘a member of the opposition’ is tantamount to saying he or
she is trying to overthrow the government and put an end to
socialism (naturally in the pay of the imperialists). There have been
times when this label led straight to the gallows, and of course this
does not encourage people to apply the same label to themselves.
Moreover, it is only a word, and what is actually done is more
important than how it is labelled.
The final reason why many reject such a term is because there is
something negative about the notion of an ‘opposition’. People who
so define themselves do so in relation to a prior ‘position’. In other
words, they relate themselves specifically to the power that rules
society and through it, define themselves, deriving their own
‘position’ from the position of the regime. For people who have
simply decided to live within the truth, to say aloud what they think,
to express their solidarity with their fellow citizens, to create as they
want and simply to live in harmony with their better ‘self’, it is
naturally disagreeable to feel required to define their own, original
and positive ‘position’ negatively, in terms of something else, and to
think of themselves primarily as people who are against something,
not simply as people who are what they are.
Obviously, the only way to avoid misunderstanding is to say clearly –
before one starts using them – in what sense the terms ‘opposition’
and ‘member of the opposition’ are being used and how they are in
fact to be understood in our circumstances.
45
XIII
If the term ‘opposition’ has been imported from democratic societies
into the post-totalitarian system without general agreement on
what the word means in conditions that are so different, then the
term ‘dissident’ was, on the contrary, chosen by western journalists
and is now generally accepted as the label for a phenomenon
peculiar to the post-totalitarian system and almost never occurring
– at least not in that form – in democratic societies.
Who are these ‘dissidents’?
It seems that the term is applied primarily to citizens of the Soviet
bloc who have decided to live within the truth and who, in addition,
meet the following criteria:
1. They express their nonconformist positions and critical
opinions publicly and systematically, within the very strict
limits available to them, and because of this, they are known in
the West.
2. Despite being unable to publish at home and despite every
possible form of persecution by their governments, they have,
by virtue of their attitudes, managed to win a certain esteem,
both from the public and from their government, and thus they
actually enjoy a very limited and very strange degree of
indirect, actual power in their own milieu as well. This either
protects them from the worst forms of persecution, or at least
it ensures that if they are persecuted, it will mean certain
political complications for their governments.
3. The horizon of their critical attention and their commitment
reaches beyond the narrow context of their immediate
surroundings or special interests to embrace more general
causes and, thus, their work becomes political in nature,
although the degree to which they think of themselves as a
directly political force may vary a great deal.
46
4. They are people who lean towards intellectual pursuits, that is,
they are ‘writing’ people, people for whom the written word is
the primary – and often the only – political medium they
command, and that can gain them attention, particularly from
abroad. Other ways in which they seek to live within the truth
are either lost to the foreign observer in the elusive local
milieu or – if they reach beyond this local framework – they
appear to be only somewhat less visible complements to what
they have written.
5. Regardless of their actual vocations, these people are talked
about in the West more frequently in terms of their activities
as committed citizens, or in terms of the critical, political
aspects of their work, than in terms of the ‘real’ work they do
in their own fields. From personal experience, I know that
there is an invisible line you cross – without even wanting to or
becoming aware of it – beyond which they cease to treat you
as a writer who happens to be a concerned citizen and begin
talking of you as a ‘dissident’ who almost incidentally (in his or
her spare time, perhaps?) happens to write plays as well.
Unquestionably, there are people who meet all of these criteria.
What is debatable is whether we should be using a special term for a
group defined in such an essentially accidental way, and specifically,
whether they should be called ‘dissidents’. It does happen, however,
and there is clearly nothing we can do about it. Sometimes, to
facilitate communication, we even use the label ourselves, although
it is done with distaste, rather ironically, and almost always in
quotation marks.
Perhaps it is now appropriate to outline some of the reasons why
‘dissidents’ themselves are not very happy to be referred to in this
way. In the first place, the word is problematic from an etymological
point of view. 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
47
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’.
But that is not the most important thing. The term ‘dissident’
frequently implies a special profession, as if, along with the more
normal vocations, there was another special one – grumbling about
the state of things. In fact, a ‘dissident’ is simply a physicist, a
sociologist, a worker, a poet, individuals who are merely doing what
they feel they must and, consequently, who find themselves in open
conflict with the regime. This conflict has not come about through
any conscious intention on their part, but simply through the inner
logic of their thinking, behaviour or work (often confronted with
external circumstances more or less beyond their control). They
have not, in other words, consciously decided to be professional
malcontents, rather as one decides to be a tailor or a blacksmith.
In fact, of course, they do not usually discover they are ‘dissidents’
until long after they have actually become one. ‘Dissent’ springs from
motivations far different from the desire for titles or fame. In short,
they do not decide to become ‘dissidents’, and even if they were to
devote twenty-four hours a day to it, it would still not be a
profession, but primarily an existential attitude. Moreover, it is an
attitude that is in no way the exclusive property of those who have
earned themselves the title of ‘dissident’ just because they happen to
fulfil those accidental external conditions already mentioned. There
are thousands of nameless people who try to live within the truth
and millions who want to but cannot, perhaps only because to do so
in the circumstances in which they live, they would need ten times
the courage of those who have already taken the first step. If several
dozen are randomly chosen from among all these people and put
into a special category, this can utterly distort the general picture. It
does so in two different ways. Either it suggests that ‘dissidents’ are
a group of prominent people, a ‘protected species’ who are
permitted to do things others are not and whom the government
may even be cultivating as living proof of its generosity; or it lends
48
support to the illusion that since there is no more than a handful of
malcontents to whom not very much is really being done, all the rest
are therefore content, for were they not so, they would be
‘dissidents’ too.
But that is not all. This categorization also unintentionally supports
the impression that the primary concern of these ‘dissidents’ is some
vested interest that they share as a group, as though their entire
argument with the government were no more than a rather abstruse
conflict between two opposed groups, a conflict that leaves society
out of it altogether. But such an impression profoundly contradicts
the real importance of the ‘dissident’ attitude, which stands or falls
on its interest in others, in what ails society as a whole, in other
words, on an interest in all those who do not speak up. If ‘dissidents’
have any kind of authority at all and if they have not been
exterminated long ago like exotic insects that have appeared where
they have no business being, then this is not because the
government holds this exclusive group and their exclusive ideas in
such awe, but because it is perfectly aware of the potential political
power of ‘living within the truth’ rooted in the hidden sphere, and
well aware too of the kind of world ‘dissent’ grows out of and the
world it addresses: the everyday human world, the world of daily
tension between the aims of life and the aims of the system. (Can
there be any better evidence of this than the government’s action
after Charter 77 appeared, when it launched a campaign to compel
the entire nation to declare that Charter 77 was wrong? Those
millions of signatures proved, among other things, that just the
opposite was true.) The political organs and the police do not lavish
such enormous attention on ‘dissidents’ – which may give the
impression that the government fears them as they might fear an
alternative power clique – because they actually are such a power
clique, but because they are ordinary people with ordinary cares,
differing from the rest only in that they say aloud what the rest
cannot say or are afraid to say. I have already mentioned
Solzhenitsyn’s political influence: it does not reside in some
exclusive political power he possesses as a individual, but in the
49
experience of those millions of Gulag victims which he simply
amplified and communicated to millions of other people of good will.
To institutionalize a select category of well-known or prominent
‘dissidents’ means in fact to deny the most intrinsic moral aspect of
their activity. As we have seen, the ‘dissident movement’ grows out
of the principle of equality, founded on the notion that human rights
and freedoms are indivisible. After all, did not ‘well-known
dissidents’ unite in KOR to defend unknown workers? And was it not
precisely for this reason that they became ‘well-known dissidents’?
And did not the ‘well-known dissidents’ unite in Charter 77 after
they had been brought together in defence of those unknown
musicians, and did they not unite in the Charter precisely with them,
and did they not become ‘well-known dissidents’ precisely because
of that? It is truly a cruel paradox that the more some citizens stand
up in defence of other citizens, the more they are labelled with a
word that in effect separates them from those ‘other citizens’.
This explanation, I hope, will make clear the significance of the
quotation marks I have put around the word ‘dissident’ throughout
this essay.
50
XIV
At the time when the Czech lands and Slovakia were an integral part
of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and when there existed neither the
historical nor the political, psychological or social conditions that
would have enabled the Czechs and Slovaks to seek their identity
outside the framework of this empire, T. G. Masaryk established a
Czechoslovak national programme based on the notion of ‘smallscale
work’ (drobná práce). By that he meant honest and responsible
work in widely different areas of life but within the existing social
order, work that would stimulate national creativity and national
self-confidence. Naturally he placed particular emphasis on
intelligent and enlightened upbringing and education, and on the
moral and humanitarian aspects of life. Masaryk believed that the
only possible starting point for a more dignified national destiny was
humanity itself. Humanity’s first task was to create the conditions
for a more human life; and in Masaryk’s view, the task of
transforming the stature of the nation began with the
transformation of human beings.
This notion of ‘working for the good of the nation’ took root in
Czechoslovak society and in many ways it was successful and is still
alive today. Along with those who exploit the notion as a
sophisticated excuse for collaborating with the regime, there are
still many, even today, who genuinely uphold the ideal and, in some
areas at least, can point to indisputable achievements. It is hard to
say how much worse things would be if there were not many hardworking
people who simply refused to give up and try constantly to
do the best they can, paying an unavoidable minimum to ‘living
within a lie’ so that they might give their utmost to the authentic
needs of society. These people assume, correctly, that every piece of
good work is an indirect criticism of bad politics, and that there are
situations where it is worthwhile going this route, even though it
means surrendering one’s natural right to make direct criticisms.
51
Today, however, there are very clear limitations to this attitude, even
compared to the situation in the 1960s. More and more frequently,
those who attempt to practise the principle of ‘small-scale work’
come up against the post-totalitarian system and find themselves
facing a dilemma: either one retreats from that position, dilutes the
honesty, responsibility and consistency on which it is based and
simply adapts to circumstances (the approach taken by the
majority), or one continues on the way begun and inevitably comes
into conflict with the regime (the approach taken by a minority).
If the notion of small-scale work was never intended as an
imperative to survive in the existing social and political structure at
any cost (in which case individuals who allowed themselves to be
excluded from that structure would necessarily appear to have given
up ‘working for the nation’) then today it is even less significant.
There is no general model of behaviour, that is, no neat, universally
valid way of determining the point at which small-scale work ceases
to be ‘for the good of the nation’ and becomes ‘detrimental to the
nation’. It is more than clear, however, that the danger of such a
reversal is becoming more and more acute and that small-scale
work, with increasing frequency, is coming up against that limit
beyond which avoiding conflict means compromising its very
essence.
In 1974, when I was employed in a brewery, my immediate superior
was a certain Š, a person well-versed in the art of making beer. He
was proud of his profession and he wanted our brewery to brew
good beer. He spent almost all his time at work, continually thinking
up improvements and he frequently made the rest of us feel
uncomfortable because he assumed that we loved brewing as much
as he did. In the midst of the slovenly indifference to work that
socialism encourages, a more constructive worker would be difficult
to imagine.
The brewery itself was managed by people who understood their
work less and were less fond of it, but who were politically more
influential. They were bringing the brewery to ruin and not only did
52
they fail to react to any of Š’s suggestions, but they actually became
increasingly hostile towards him and tried in every way to thwart his
efforts to do a good job. Eventually the situation became so bad that
Š felt compelled to write a lengthy letter to the manager’s superior,
in which he attempted to analyse the brewery’s difficulties. He
explained why it was the worst in the district and pointed to those
responsible.
His voice might have been heard. The manager, who was politically
powerful but otherwise ignorant of beer, a man who loathed workers
and was given to intrigue, might have been replaced and conditions
in the brewery might have been improved on the basis of Š’s
suggestions. Had this happened, it would have been a perfect
example of small-scale work in action. Unfortunately the precise
opposite occurred: the manager of the brewery, who was a member
of the Communist Party’s district committee, had friends in higher
places and he saw to it that the situation was resolved in his favour.
Š’s analysis was described as a ‘defamatory document’ and Š himself
was labelled a ‘political saboteur’. He was thrown out of the brewery
and shifted to another one where he was given a job requiring no
skill. Here the notion of small-scale work had come up against the
wall of the post-totalitarian system. By speaking the truth, Š had
stepped out of line, broken the rules, cast himself out, and he ended
up as a sub-citizen, stigmatized as an enemy. He could now say
anything he wanted, but he could never, as a matter of principle,
expect to be heard. He had become the ‘dissident’ of the Eastern
Bohemian Brewery.
I think this is a model case which, from another point of view,
illustrates what I have already said in the preceding section: you do
not become a ‘dissident’ just because you decide one day to take up
this most unusual career. You are thrown into it by your personal
sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external
circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and
placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to
do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of
53
society. This is why our situation is not comparable to the AustroHungarian
Empire, when the Czech nation, in the worst period of
Bach’s absolutism,fn1 had only one real ‘dissident’, Karel Havlicek,
who was imprisoned in Brixen. Today, if we are not to be snobbish
about it, we must admit that ‘dissidents’ can be found on every
street-corner.
To rebuke ‘dissidents’ for having abandoned ‘small-scale work’ is
simply absurd. ‘Dissent’ is not an alternative to Masaryk’s notion, it is
frequently its only possible outcome. I say ‘frequently’ in order to
emphasize that this is not always the case. I am far from believing
that the only decent and responsible people are those who find
themselves at odds with the existing social and political structures.
After all, the brewmaster Š might have won his battle. To condemn
those who have kept their positions simply because they have kept
them, in other words, for not being ‘dissidents’, would be just as
absurd as to hold them up as an example to the ‘dissidents’. In any
case, it contradicts the whole ‘dissident’ attitude – seen as an
attempt to live within the truth – if one judges human behaviour not
according to what it is and whether it is good or not, but according
to the personal circumstances such an attempt has brought one to.
54
XV
Our greengrocer’s 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. The
greengrocer may begin to do something concrete, something that
goes beyond an immediately personal self-defensive reaction against
manipulation, something that will manifest his new-found sense of
higher responsibility. He may, for example, organize his fellow
greengrocers to act together in defence of their interests. He may
write letters to various institutions, drawing their attention to
instances of disorder and injustice around him. He may seek out
unofficial literature, copy it and lend it to his friends.
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 dealt with in the essays to follow, 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 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.
55
Here and there – thanks to the nature, the assumptions and the
professions of some people, but also thanks to a number of
accidental circumstances such as the specific nature of the local
milieu, friends, and so on – a more coherent and visible initiative
may emerge from this wide and anonymous hinterland, an initiative
that transcends ‘merely’ individual revolt and is transformed into
more conscious, structured and purposeful work. The point where
living within the truth ceases to be a mere negation of living with a
lie and becomes articulate in a particular way, is the point at which
something is born that might be called ‘the independent spiritual,
social and political life of society’. This independent life is not
separated from the rest of life (‘dependent life’) by some sharply
defined line. Both types frequently coexist in the same people.
Nevertheless, its most important focus is marked by a relatively high
degree of inner emancipation. It sails upon the vast ocean of the
manipulated life like little boats, tossed by the waves but always
bobbing back as visible messengers of living within the truth,
articulating the suppressed aims of life.
What is this independent life of society? The spectrum of its
expressions and activities is naturally very wide. It includes
everything from self-education and thinking about the world,
through free creative activity and its communication to others, to
the most varied free, civic attitudes, including instances of
independent social self-organization. In short, it is an area in which
living within the truth becomes articulate and materializes in a
visible way.
Thus what will later be referred to as ‘citizens’ initiatives’, ‘dissident
movements’ or even ‘oppositions’, emerge, like the proverbial onetenth
of the iceberg visible above the water, from that area, from the
independent life of society. In other words, just as the independent
life of society develops out of living within the truth in the widest
sense of the word, as the distinct, articulated expression of that life,
so ‘dissent’ gradually emerges from the ‘independent life of society’.
Yet there is a marked difference: if the independent life of society,
56
externally at least, can be understood as a higher form of living
within the truth, it is far less certain that ‘dissident movements’ are
necessarily a higher form of the ‘independent life of society’. They
are simply one manifestation of it and though they may be the most
visible and, at first glance, the most political (and most clearly
articulated) expression of it, they are far from necessarily being the
most mature or even the most important, not only in the general
social sense but even in terms of direct political influence. After all,
‘dissent’ has been artificially removed from its place of birth by
having been given a special name. In fact, however, it is not possible
to think of it separated from the whole background out of which it
develops, of which it is an integral part, and from which it draws all
its vital strength. In any case, it follows from what has already been
said about the peculiarities of the post-totalitarian system that what
appears to be the most political of forces in a given moment, and
what thinks of itself in such terms, need not necessarily in fact be
such a force. The extent to which it is a real political force is due
exclusively to its pre-political context.
What follows from this description? Nothing more and nothing less
than this: it is impossible to talk about what in fact ‘dissidents’ do
and the effect of their work without first talking about the work of
all those who, in one way or another, take part in the independent
life of society and who are not necessarily ‘dissidents’ at all. They
may be writers who write as they wish without regard for
censorship or official demands and who issue their work – when
official publishers refuse to print them – as samizdat. They may be
philosophers, historians, sociologists and all those who practise
independent scholarship and, if it is impossible through official or
semi-official channels, who also circulate their work in samizdat or
who organize private discussions, lectures and seminars. They may
be teachers who privately teach young people things that are kept
from them in the state schools; clergymen who either in office or, if
they are deprived of their charges, outside it, try to carry on a free
religious life; painters, musicians and singers who practise their
work regardless of how it is looked upon by official institutions;
57
everyone who shares this independent culture and helps to spread
it; people who, using the means available to them, try to express and
defend the actual social interests of workers, to put real meaning
back into trade unions or to form independent ones; people who are
not afraid to call the attention of officials to cases of injustice and
who strive to see that the laws are observed; and the different
groups of young people who try to extricate themselves from
manipulation and live in their own way, in the spirit of their own
hierarchy of values. The list could go on.
Very few would think of calling all these people ‘dissidents’. And yet
are not the well-known ‘dissidents’ simply people like them? Are not
all these activities in fact what ‘dissidents’ do as well? Do they not
produce scholarly work and publish it in samizdat? Do they not write
plays and novels and poems? Do they not lecture to students in
private ‘universities’? Do they not struggle against various forms of
injustice and attempt to ascertain and express the genuine social
interests of various sectors of the population?
After having tried to indicate the sources, the inner structure and
some aspects of the ‘dissident’ attitude as such, I have clearly shifted
my viewpoint from outside, as it were, to an investigation of what
these ‘dissidents’ actually do, how their initiatives are manifested
and where they lead.
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
58
the service of truth, the truthful life and the attempt to make room
for the genuine aims of life.
59
XVI
The post-totalitarian system is mounting a total assault on humans
and humans stand against it alone, abandoned and isolated. It is
therefore entirely natural that all the ‘dissident movements’ are
explicitly defensive movements: they exist to defend human beings
and the genuine aims of life against the aims of the system.
Today the Polish group KOR is called the Committee for Social SelfDefence.
The word ‘defence’ appears in the names of other similar
groups in Poland, but even the Soviet Helsinki monitoring group and
our own Charter 77 are clearly defensive in nature.
In terms of traditional politics, this programme of defence is
understandable, even though it may appear minimal, provisional and
ultimately negative. It offers no new conception, model or ideology,
and therefore it is not ‘politics’·in the proper sense of the word,
since politics always assumes a ‘positive’ programme and can
scarcely limit itself to defending someone against something.
Such a view, I think, reveals the limitations of the traditionally
political way of looking at things. The post-totalitarian system, after
all, is not the manifestation of a particular political line followed by a
particular government. It is something radically different: it is a
complex, profound and long-term violation of society, or rather the
self-violation of society. To oppose it merely by establishing a
different political line and then striving for a change in government
would not only be unrealistic, it would be utterly inadequate, for it
would never come near to touching the root of the matter. For some
time now, the problem has no longer resided in a political line or
programme: it is a problem of life itself.
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 people’s everyday
lives; at the same time (and perhaps precisely because of this) it is
60
also an incomparably more consistent approach because it aims at
the very essence of things.
There are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to
understand truth, just as we must descend to the bottom of a well to
see the stars in broad daylight. It seems to me that today, this
‘provisional’, ‘minimal’ and ‘negative’ programme – the ‘simple’
defence of people – is in a particular sense (and not merely in the
circumstances in which we live) an optimal and most positive
programme because it forces politics to return to its only proper
starting point, proper that is, if all the old mistakes are to be
avoided: individual people. In democratic societies, where the
violence done to human beings is not nearly so obvious and cruel,
this fundamental revolution in politics has yet to happen, and some
things will probably have to get worse there before the urgent need
for that revolution is reflected in politics. In our world, precisely
because of the misery in which we find ourselves, it would seem that
politics has already undergone that transformation: the central
concern of political thought is no longer abstract visions of a selfredeeming,
‘positive’ model (and of course the opportunistic political
practices that are the reverse of the same coin), but rather the
people who have so far merely been enslaved by those models and
their practices.
Every society, of course, requires some degree of organization. Yet if
that organization is to serve people and not the other way around,
then people will have to be liberated and space created so that they
may organize themselves in meaningful ways. The depravity of the
opposite approach, in which people are first organized in one way or
another (by someone who always knows best ‘what the people need’)
so they may then allegedly be liberated, is something we have known
on our own skins only too well.
To sum up: most people who are too bound to the traditional
political way of thinking see the weaknesses of the ‘dissident
movements’ in their purely defensive character. In contrast, I see
that as their greatest strength. I believe that this is precisely where
61
these movements supercede the kind of politics from whose point of
view their programme can seem so inadequate.
62
XVII
In the ‘dissident movements’ of the Soviet bloc, the defence of
human beings usually takes the form of a defence of human and civil
rights as they are entrenched in various official documents such as
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International
Covenants on Human Rights, the Final Act of the Helsinki
Conference and the constitutions of individual states. These
movements set out to defend anyone who is being prosecuted for
acting in the spirit of those rights, and they in turn act in the same
spirit in their work, by insisting over and over again that the regime
recognize and respect human and civil rights, and by drawing
attention to the areas of life where this is not the case.
Their work, therefore, is based on the principle of legality: they
operate publicly and openly, insisting not only that their activity is in
line with the law, but that achieving respect for the law is one of
their main aims. This principle of legality, which provides both the
point of departure and the framework for their activities, is common
to all ‘dissident’ groups in the Soviet bloc, even though individual
groups have never worked out any formal agreement on that point.
This circumstance raises an important question: Why, in conditions
where a widespread and arbitrary abuse of power is the rule, is there
such a general and spontaneous acceptance of the principle of
legality?
On the primary level, this stress on legality is a natural expression of
specific conditions that exist in the post-totalitarian system, and the
consequence of an elementary understanding of that specificity. If
there are in essence only two ways to struggle for a free society –
that is, through legal means and through (armed or unarmed) revolt
– then it should be obvious at once how inappropriate the latter
alternative is in the post-totalitarian system. Revolt is appropriate
when conditions are clearly and openly in motion, during a war for
example, or in situations where social or political conflicts are
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coming to a head. It is appropriate in a classical dictatorship that is
either just setting itself up or is in a state of collapse. In other words,
it is appropriate where social forces of comparable strength (for
example, a government of occupation vs a nation fighting for its
freedom) are confronting each other on the level of actual power, or
where there is a clear distinction between the usurpers of power
and the subjugated population, or when society finds itself in a state
of open crisis. Conditions in the post-totalitarian system – except in
extremely explosive situations like the one in Hungary in 1956 – are,
of course, precisely the opposite. They are static and stable, and
social crises, for the most part, exist only latently (though they run
much deeper). Society is not sharply polarized on the level of actual
political power, but, as we have seen, the fundamental lines of
conflict run right through each person. In this situation, no attempt
at revolt could ever hope to set up even a minimum of resonance in
the rest of society, because that society is ‘soporific’, submerged in a
consumer rat-race and wholly involved in the post-totalitarian
system (that is, participating in it and acting as agents of its
‘automatism’), and it would simply find anything like revolt
unacceptable. It would interpret the revolt as an attack upon itself
and, rather than supporting the revolt, it would very probably react
by intensifying its bias towards the system, since, in its view, the
system can at least guarantee a certain quasi-legality. Add to this the
fact that the post-totalitarian system has at its disposal a complex
mechanism of direct and indirect surveillance that has no equal in
history and it is clear that not only would any attempt to revolt
come to a dead end politically, but it would also be almost
technically impossible to carry off. Most probably it would be
liquidated before it had a chance to translate its intentions into
action. Even if revolt were possible, however, it would remain the
solitary gesture of a few isolated individuals and they would be
opposed not only by a gigantic apparatus of national (and
supranational) power, but also by the very society in whose name
they were mounting their revolt in the first place. (This, by the way,
is another reason why the regime and its propaganda have been
64
ascribing terroristic aims to the ‘dissident movements’ and accusing
them of illegal and conspiratorial methods.)
All of this, however, is not the main reason why the ‘dissident
movements’ support the principle of legality. That reason lies
deeper, in the innermost structure of the ‘dissident’ attitude. This
attitude is and must be fundamentally hostile towards the notion of
violent change as such to the system – and every revolt, essentially,
aims at violent change – simply because it places its faith in violence.
(Generally, the ‘dissident’ attitude can only accept violence as a
necessary evil in extreme situations, when direct violence can only
be met by violence and where remaining passive would in effect
mean supporting violence: let us recall, for example, that the
blindness of European pacifism was one of the factors that prepared
the ground for the Second World War.) As I have already mentioned,
‘dissidents’ tend to be sceptical about political thought based on the
faith that profound social changes can only be achieved by bringing
about (regardless of the method) changes in the system or in the
government, and the belief that such changes – because they are
considered ‘fundamental’ – justify the sacrifice of ‘less fundamental’
things, in other words, human lives. Respect for a theoretical
concept here outweighs respect for human life. Yet this is precisely
what threatens to enslave humanity all over again.
‘Dissident movements’, as I have tried to indicate, share exactly the
opposite view. They understand systemic change as something
superficial, something secondary, something that in itself can
guarantee nothing. Thus an attitude that turns away from abstract
political visions of the future towards concrete human beings and
ways of defending them effectively in the here and now is quite
naturally accompanied by an intensified antipathy to all forms of
violence carried out in the name of ‘a better future’, and by a
profound belief that a future secured by violence might actually be
worse than what exists now; in other words, the future would be
fatally stigmatized by the very means used to secure it. At the same
time, this attitude is not to be mistaken for political conservatism or
65
political moderation. The ‘dissident movements’ do not shy away
from the idea of violent political overthrow because the idea seems
too radical, but on the contrary, because it does not seem radical
enough. For them, the problem lies far too deep to be settled
through mere systemic changes, either governmental or
technological. Some people, faithful to the classical Marxist
doctrines of the nineteenth century, understand our system as the
hegemony of an exploiting class over an exploited class and,
operating from the postulate that exploiters never surrender their
power voluntarily, they see the only solution in a revolution to sweep
away the exploiters. Naturally, they regard such things as the
struggle for human rights as something hopelessly legalistic, illusory,
opportunistic and ultimately misleading because it makes the
doubtful assumption that you can negotiate in good faith with your
exploiters on the basis of a false legality. The problem is that they
are unable to find anyone determined enough to carry out this
revolution, with the result that they become bitter, sceptical, passive
and ultimately apathetic – in other words, they end up precisely
where the system wants them to be. This is one example of how far
one can be misled by mechanically applying, in post-totalitarian
circumstances, ideological models from another world and another
time.
Of course, one need not be an advocate of violent revolution to ask
whether an appeal to legality makes any sense at all when the laws –
and particularly the general laws concerning human rights – are no
more than a façade, an aspect of the world of appearances, a mere
game behind which lies total manipulation. ‘They can ratify anything
because they will still go ahead and do whatever they want anyway’ –
this is an opinion we often encounter. Is it not true that to
constantly ‘take them at their word’, to appeal to laws every child
knows are binding only as long as the government wishes, is in the
end just a kind of hypocrisy, a Švejkian obstructionism and, finally,
just another way of playing the game, another form of self-delusion?
In other words, is the legalistic approach at all compatible with the
principle of ‘living within the truth’?
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This question can only be answered by first looking at the wider
implications of how the legal code functions in the post-totalitarian
system.
In a classical dictatorship, to a far greater extent than in the posttotalitarian
system, the will of the ruler is carried out directly, in an
unregulated fashion. A dictatorship has no reason to hide its
foundations, nor to conceal the real workings of power, and
therefore it need not encumber itself to any great extent with a legal
code. The post-totalitarian system, on the other hand, is utterly
obsessed with the need to bind everything in a single order: life in
such a state is thoroughly permeated by a dense network of
regulations, proclamations, directives, norms, orders and rules. (It is
not called a bureaucratic system without good reason.) A large
proportion of those norms functions as direct instruments of the
complex manipulation of life that is intrinsic to the post-totalitarian
system. Individuals are reduced to little more than tiny cogs in an
enormous mechanism and their significance is limited to their
function in this mechanism. Their job, housing accommodation,
movements, social and cultural expressions, everything, in short,
must be cossetted together as firmly as possible, predetermined,
regulated and controlled. Every aberration from the prescribed
course of life is treated as error, licence and anarchy. From the cook
in the restaurant who, without hard-to-get permission from the
bureaucratic apparatus, cannot cook something special for his
customers, to the singer who cannot perform his new song at a
concert without bureaucratic approval, everyone, in all aspects of
their life, is caught in this regulatory tangle of red tape, the
inevitable product of the post-totalitarian system. With everincreasing
consistency, it binds all the expressions and aims of life to
the spirit of its own aims: the vested interests of its own smooth,
automatic operation.
In a narrower sense the legal code serves the post-totalitarian
system in this direct way as well, that is, it too forms a part of the
world of regulations and prohibitions. At the same time, however, it
67
performs the same service in another indirect way, one that brings it
remarkably closer – depending on which level of the law is involved
– to ideology and in some cases making it a direct component of
that ideology.
1. Like ideology, the legal code functions as an excuse. It wraps
the base exercise of power in the noble apparel of the letter of
the law; it creates the pleasing illusion that justice is done,
society protected and the exercise of power objectively
regulated. All this is done to conceal the real essence of posttotalitarian
legal practice: the total manipulation of society. If
an outside observer who knew nothing at all about life in
Czechoslovakia were to study only its laws, he or she would be
utterly incapable of understanding what we were complaining
about. The hidden political manipulation of the courts and of
public prosecutors, the limitations placed on lawyers’ ability to
defend their clients, the closed nature, de facto, of trials, the
arbitrary actions of the security forces, their position of
authority over the judiciary, the absurdly broad application of
several deliberately vague sections of that code, and of course
the state’s utter disregard for the positive sections of that code
(the rights of citizens): all of this would remain hidden from our
outside observer. The only thing he or she would take away
would be the impression that our legal code is not much worse
than the legal code of other civilized countries, and not much
different either, except perhaps for certain curiosities, such as
the entrenchment in the constitution of a single political
party’s eternal rule and the state’s love for a neighbouring
superpower. But that is not all: if our observer had the
opportunity to study the formal side of policing and judicial
procedures and practices, how they look ‘on paper’, he or she
would discover that for the most part the common rules of
criminal procedure are observed: charges are laid within the
prescribed period following arrest, and it is the same with
detention orders. Indictments are properly delivered, the
accused has a lawyer, and so on. In other words, everyone has
68
an excuse: they have all observed the law. In reality, however,
they have cruelly and pointlessly ruined a young person’s life,
perhaps for no other reason than because he or she made
samizdat copies of a novel written by a banned writer, or
because the police deliberately falsified their testimony (as
everyone knows, from the judge on down to the defendant).
Yet all of this somehow remains in the background. The
falsified testimony is not necessarily obvious from the trial
documents and the section of the criminal code dealing with
incitement does not formally exclude the application of that
charge to the copying of a banned novel. In other words, the
legal code – at least in several areas – is not more than a
façade, an aspect of the world of appearances. Then why is it
there at all? For exactly the same reason as ideology is there: it
provides a bridge of excuses between the system and
individuals, making it easier for them to enter the power
structure and serve the arbitrary demands of power. The
excuse lets individuals fool themselves into thinking they are
merely upholding the law and protecting society from
criminals. (Without this excuse, how much more difficult it
would be to recruit new generations of judges, prosecutors
and interrogators!) As an aspect of the world of appearances,
however, the legal code deceives not only the conscience of
prosecutors, it deceives the public, it deceives foreign
observers, and it even deceives history itself.
2. Like ideology, the legal code is an essential instrument of ritual
communication outside the power structure. It is the legal
code that gives the exercise of power a form, a framework, a
set of rules. It is the legal code that enables all components of
the system to communicate, to put themselves in a good light,
to establish their own legitimacy. It provides their whole game
with its ‘rules’ and engineers with their technology. Can the
exercise of post-totalitarian power be imagined at all without
this universal ritual making it all possible, serving as a common
language to bind the relevant sectors of the power structure
69
together? The more important the position occupied by the
repressive apparatus in the power structure, the more
important that it functions according to some kind of formal
code. How, otherwise, could people be so easily and
inconspicuously locked up for copying banned books if there
were no judges, prosecutors, interrogators, defence lawyers,
court stenographers and thick files, and if all this were not held
together by some firm order? And above all, without that
innocent-looking Section 100 on incitement? This could all be
done, of course, without a legal code and its accessories, but
only in some ephemeral dictatorship run by a Ugandan bandit,
not in a system that embraces such a huge portion of civilized
humankind and represents an integral, stable and respected
part of the modern world. That would not only be unthinkable,
it would quite simply be technically impossible. Without the
legal code functioning as a ritually cohesive force, the posttotalitarian
system could not exist.
The entire role of ritual, façades and excuses appears most
eloquently, of course, not in the proscriptive section of the legal
code, which sets out what a citizen may not do and what the
grounds for prosecution are, but in the section declaring what he or
she may do and what his or her rights are. Here there is truly
nothing but ‘words, words, words’. Yet even that part of the code is
of immense importance to the system, for it is here that the system
establishes its legitimacy as a whole, before its own citizens, before
school children, before the international public and before history.
The system cannot afford to disregard this because it cannot permit
itself to cast doubt upon the fundamental postulates of its ideology,
which are so essential to its very existence. (We have already seen
how the power structure is enslaved by its own ideology and its
ideological prestige.) To do this would be to deny everything it tries
to present itself as and, thus, one of the main pillars on which the
system rests would be undermined: the integrity of the world of
appearances.
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If the exercise of power circulates through the whole power
structure as blood flows though veins, then the legal code can be
understood as something that reinforces the walls of those veins.
Without it, the blood of power could not circulate in an organized
way and the body of society would haemorrhage at random. Order
would collapse.
A persistent and never-ending appeal to the laws – not just to the
laws concerning human rights, but to all laws – does not mean at all
that those who do so have succumbed to the illusion that in our
system the law is anything other than what it is. They are well aware
of the role it plays. But precisely because they know how desperately
the system depends on it – on the ‘noble’ version of the law, that is –
they also know how enormously significant such appeals are.
Because the system cannot do without the law, because it is
hopelessly tied down by the necessity of pretending the laws are
observed, it is compelled to react in some way to such appeals.
Demanding that the laws be upheld is thus an act of living within the
truth that threatens the whole mendacious structure at its point of
maximum mendacity. Over and over again, such appeals make the
purely ritualistic nature of the law clear to society and to those who
inhabit its power structures. They draw attention to its real material
substance and thus, indirectly, compel all those who take refuge
behind the law to affirm and make credible this agency of excuses,
this means of communication, this reinforcement of the social
arteries outside of which their will could not be made to circulate
through society. They are compelled to do so for the sake of their
own consciences, for the impression they make on outsiders, to
maintain themselves in power (as part of the system’s own
mechanism of self-preservation and its principles of cohesion), or
simply out of fear that they will be reproached for being ‘clumsy’ in
handling the ritual. They have no other choice: because they cannot
discard the rules of their own game, they can only attend more
carefully to those rules. Not to react to challenges means to
undermine their own excuse and lose control of their mutual
communications system. To assume that the laws are a mere façade,
71
that they have no validity and that therefore it is pointless to appeal
to them would mean to go on reinforcing those aspects of the law
that create the façade and the ritual. It would mean confirming the
law as an aspect of the world of appearances and enabling those who
exploit it to rest easy with the cheapest (and therefore the most
mendacious) form of their excuse.
I have frequently witnessed policemen, prosecutors or judges – if
they were dealing with an experienced Chartist or a courageous
lawyer, and if they were exposed to public attention (as individuals
with a name, no longer protected by the anonymity of the apparatus)
– suddenly and anxiously begin to take particular care that no cracks
appear in the ritual. This does not alter the fact that a despotic
power is hiding behind that ritual, but the very existence of the
officials’ anxiety necessarily regulates, limits and slows down the
operation of that despotism.
This, of course, is not enough. But an essential part of the ‘dissident’
attitude is that it comes out of the reality of the human ‘here and
now’. It places more importance on oft-repeated and consistent
concrete action – even though it may be inadequate and though it
may ease only insignificantly the suffering of a single insignificant
citizen – than it does in some abstract ‘fundamental solution’ in an
uncertain future. In any case, is not this in fact just another form of
‘small-scale work’ in the Masarykian sense, with which the ‘dissident’
attitude seemed at first to be in such sharp contradiction?
This section would be incomplete without stressing certain internal
limitations to the policy of ‘taking them at their own word’. The point
is this: even in the most ideal of cases, the law is only one of several
imperfect and more or less external ways of defending what is better
in life against what is worse. By itself, the law can never create
anything better. Its purpose is to render a service and its meaning
does not lie in the law itself. Establishing respect for the law does
not automatically ensure a better life for that, after all, is a job for
people and not for laws and institutions. It is possible to imagine a
society with good laws that are fully respected but in which it is
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impossible to live. Conversely, one can imagine life being quite
bearable even where the laws are imperfect and imperfectly applied.
The most important thing is always the quality of that life and
whether or not the laws enhance life or repress it, not merely
whether they are upheld or not. (Often strict observance of the law
could have a disastrous impact on human dignity.) The key to a
humane, dignified, rich and happy life does not lie either in the
constitution or in the criminal code. These merely establish what
may or may not be done and, thus, they can make life easier or more
difficult. They limit or permit, they punish, tolerate or defend, but
they can never give life substance or meaning. The struggle for what
is called ‘legality’ must constantly keep this legality in perspective
against the background of life as it really is. Without keeping one’s
eyes open to the real dimensions of life’s beauty and misery, and
without a moral relationship to life, this struggle will sooner or later
come to grief on the rocks of some self-justifying system of
scholastics. Without really wanting to, one would thus become more
and more like the observer who comes to conclusions about our
system only on the basis of trial documents and is satisfied if all the
appropriate regulations have been observed.
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XVIII
If the basic job of the ‘dissident movements’ is to serve truth, that is,
to serve the real aims of life, and if that necessarily develops into a
defence of the individual and his or her right to a free and truthful
life (that is, a defence of human rights and a struggle to see the laws
respected) then another stage of this approach, perhaps the most
mature stage so far, is what Václav Benda has called the
development of parallel structures.
When those who have decided to live within the truth have been
denied any direct influence on the existing social structures, not to
mention the opportunity to participate in them, and when these
people begin to create what I have called the independent life of
society, this independent life begins, of itself, to become structured
in a certain way. Sometimes there are only very embryonic
indications of this process of structuring; at other times, the
structures are already quite well-developed. Their genesis and
evolution are inseparable from the phenomenon of ‘dissent’, even
though they reach far beyond the arbitrarily defined area of activity
usually indicated by that term.
What are these structures? Ivan Jirous was the first in
Czechoslovakia to formulate and apply in practice the concept of a
‘second culture’. Although at first he was thinking chiefly of
nonconformist rock music and only certain literary, artistic or
performance events close to the sensibilities of those nonconformist
musical groups, the term ‘second culture’ very rapidly came to be
used for the whole area of independent and repressed culture, that
is, not only for art and its various currents but also for the
humanities, the social sciences and philosophical thought. This
‘second culture’, quite naturally, has created elementary
organizational forms: samizdat editions of books and magazines,
private performances and concerts, seminars, exhibitions and so on.
(In Poland all of this is vastly more developed: there are independent
74
publishing houses and many more periodicals, even politieal
periodicals; they have means of proliferation other than carbon
copies, and so on. In the Soviet Union, samizdat has a longer
tradition and clearly its forms are quite different.) Culture, therefore,
is a sphere in which the ‘parallel structures’ can be observed in their
most highly developed form. Benda, of course, gives thought to
potential or embryonic forms of such structures in other spheres as
well: from a parallel information network to parallel forms of
education (private universities), parallel trade unions, parallel foreign
contacts, to a kind of hypothesis on a parallel economy. On the basis
of these parallel structures, he then develops the notion of a ‘parallel
polis’ or state or, rather, he sees the rudiments of such a polis in
these structures.
At a certain stage in its development, the independent life of society
and the ‘dissident movements’ cannot avoid a certain amount of
organization and institutionalization. This is a natural development
and unless this independent life of society is somehow radically
suppressed and eliminated, the tendency will grow. Along with it, a
parallel political life will also necessarily evolve, and to a certain
extent it exists already in Czechoslovakia. Various groupings of a
more or less political nature will continue to define themselves
politically, to act and confront each other.
These parallel structures, it may be said, represent the most
articulated expressions so far of ‘living within the truth’. One of the
most important tasks the ‘dissident movements’ have set themselves
is to support and develop them. Once again, it confirms the fact that
all attempts by society to resist the pressure of the system have
their essential beginnings in the pre-political area. For what else are
parallel structures than an area where a different life can be lived, a
life that is in harmony with its own aims and which in turn
structures itself in harmony with those aims? What else are those
initial attempts at social self-organization than the efforts of a
certain part of society to live – as a society – within the truth, to rid
itself of the self-sustaining aspects of totalitarianism and, thus, to
75
extricate itself radically from its involvement in the post-totalitarian
system? What else is it but a non-violent attempt by people to
negate the system within themselves and to establish their lives on a
new basis, that of their own proper identity? And does this tendency
not confirm once more the principle of returning the focus to actual
individuals? After all, the parallel structures do not grow a priori out
of a theoretical vision of systemic changes (there are no political
sects involved), but from the aims of life and the authentic needs of
real people. In fact, all eventual changes in the system, changes we
may observe here in their rudimentary forms, have come about as it
were de facto, from ‘below’, because life compelled them to, not
because they came before life, somehow directing it or forcing some
change on it.
Historical experience teaches us that any genuinely 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; it must foreshadow a general solution and, thus, it is not
just the expression of an introverted, self-contained responsibility
that individuals have to and for themselves alone, but responsibility
to and for the world. Thus it would be quite wrong to understand the
parallel structures and the parallel polis as a retreat into a ghetto
and as an act of isolation, addressing itself only to the welfare of
those who had decided on such a course, and who are indifferent to
the rest. It would be wrong, in short, to consider it an essentially
group solution that has nothing to do with the general situation.
Such a concept would, from the start, alienate the notion of living
within the truth from its proper point of departure, which is concern
for others, transforming it ultimately into just another more
sophisticated version of ‘living within a lie’. In doing so, of course, it
would cease to be a genuine point of departure for individuals and
groups and would recall the false notion of ‘dissidents’ as an
exclusive group with exclusive interests, carrying on their own
exclusive dialogue with the powers that be. In any case, even the
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most highly developed forms of life in the parallel structures, even
that most mature form of the parallel polis can only exist – at least in
post-totalitarian circumstances – when the individual is at the same
time lodged in the ‘first’, official structure by a thousand different
relationships, even though it may only be the fact that one buys
what one needs in their stores, uses their money and obeys their
laws. Certainly one can imagine life in its ‘baser’ aspects flourishing
in the parallel polis, but would not such a life, lived deliberately that
way, as a programme, be merely another version of the
schizophrenic life ‘within a lie’ which everyone else must live in one
way or another? Would it not just be further evidence that a point of
departure that is not a ‘model’ solution, that is not applicable to
others, cannot be meaningful for an individual either? Patocka 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 polis. 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, any where, at any time, may avail themselves of it.
In other words, the parallel polis points beyond itself and only makes
sense as an act of deepening one’s responsibility to and for the
whole, as a way of discovering the most appropriate locus for this
responsibility, not as an escape from it.
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XIX
I have already talked about the political potential of living within the
truth and of the limitations upon predicting whether, how and when
a given expression of that life within the truth can lead to actual
changes. I have also mentioned how irrelevant trying to calculate the
risks in this regard are, for an essential feature of independent
initiatives is that they are always, initially at least, an all or nothing
gamble.
Nevertheless this outline of some of the work done by ‘dissident
movements’ would be incomplete without considering, if only very
generally, some of the different ways this work might actually affect
society; in other words, about the ways that responsibility to and for
the whole might (without necessarily meaning that it must) be
realized in practice.
In the first place, it has to be emphasized that the whole sphere
comprising the independent life of society and even more so the
‘dissident movement’ as such, is naturally far from being the only
potential factor that might influence the history of countries living
under the post-totalitarian system. The latent social crisis in such
societies can at any time, independently of these movements,
provoke a wide variety of political changes. It may unsettle the
power structure and induce or accelerate various hidden
confrontations, resulting in personnel, conceptual or at least
‘climactic’ changes. It may significantly influence the general
atmosphere of life, evoke unexpected and unforeseen social unrest
and explosions of discontent. Power shifts at the centre of the bloc
can influence conditions in the different countries in various ways.
Economic factors naturally have an important influence, as do
broader trends of global civilization. An extremely important area,
which could be a source of radical changes and political upsets, is
represented by international politics, the policies adopted by the
other superpower and all the other countries, the changing
78
structure of international interests and the positions taken by our
bloc. Even the people who end up in the highest positions are not
without significance, although as I have already said, one ought not
to overestimate the importance of leading personalities in the posttotalitarian
system. There are many such influences and
combinations of influence, and the eventual political impact of the
‘dissident movement’ is thinkable only against this general
background and in the context that background provides. That
impact is only one of the many factors (and far from the most
important one) that affect political developments, and it differs from
the other factors perhaps only in that its essential focus is reflecting
upon that political development from the point of view of a defence
of people and seeking an immediate application of that reflection.
The primary purpose of the outward direction of these movements
is always, as we have seen, to have an impact on society, not to affect
the power structure, at least not directly and immediately.
Independent initiatives address the hidden sphere; they
demonstrate that living within the truth is a human and social
alternative and they struggle to expand the space available for that
life; they help – even though it is, of course, indirect help – to raise
the confidence of citizens; they shatter the world of ‘appearances’
and unmask the real nature of power. They do not assume a
messianic role; they are not a social ‘avant-garde’ or ‘elite’ that alone
knows best, and whose task it is to ‘raise the consciousness’ of the
‘unconscious’ masses (that arrogant self-projection is, once again,
intrinsic to an essentially different way of thinking, the kind that
feels it has a patent on some ‘ideal project’ and therefore that it has
the right to impose it on society). Nor do they want to lead anyone.
They leave it up to each individual to decide what he or she will or
will not take from their experience and work. (If official
Czechoslovak propaganda described the Chartists as ‘selfappointees’,
it was not in order to emphasize any real ‘avant-garde’
ambitions on their part, but rather a natural expression of how the
regime thinks, its tendency to judge others according to itself, since
behind any expression of criticism it automatically sees the desire to
79
cast the mighty from their seats and rule in their places ‘in the name
of the people’, the same pretext the regime itself has used for years.)
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 behaviour’, and by independent social selfrealization.
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. For
example, the Polish ‘Flying University’ came under increased
persecution and the ‘flying teachers’ were detained by the police. At
the same time, however, professors in existing official universities
tried to enrich their own curricula with several subjects hitherto
considered taboo and this was a result of indirect pressure exerted
by the ‘Flying University’. The motives for this adaptation may vary
from the ‘ideal’ (the hidden sphere has received the message and
conscience and the will to truth are awakened) to the purely
utilitarian: the regime’s instinct for survival compels it to notice the
changing ideas and the changing mental and social climate and react
flexibly to them. Which of these motives happens to predominate in
a given moment is not essential in terms of the final affect.
Adaptation is the positive dimension of the regime’s response, and it
can, and usually does, have a wide spectrum of forms and phases.
Some circles may try to integrate values or people from the ‘parallel
world’ into the official structures, to appropriate them, to become a
little like them while trying to make them a little like themselves,
and thus to adjust an obvious and untenable imbalance. In the 1960s,
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progressive communists began to ‘discover’ certain unacknowledged
cultural values and phenomena. This was a positive step, although
not without its dangers, since the ‘integrated’ or ‘appropriated’
values lost something of their independence and originality, and
having been given a cloak of officiality and conformity, their
credibility was somewhat weakened. In a further phase, this
adaptation can lead to various attempts on the part of the official
structures to reform, both in terms of their ultimate goals and
structurally. Such reforms are usually half-way measures; they are
attempts to combine and realistically co-ordinate serving life and
serving the post-totalitarian ‘automatism’. But they cannot be
otherwise. They muddy what was originally a clear demarcation line
between living within the truth and living with a lie. They cast a
smoke-screen over the situation, mystify society and make it
difficult for people to keep their bearings. This, of course, does not
alter the fact that it is always essentially good when it happens
because it opens out new spaces. But it does make it more difficult
to distinguish between ‘admissible’ and ‘inadmissible’ compromises.
Another – and higher – phase of adaptation is a process of internal
differentiation that takes place in the official structures. These
structures open themselves to more or less institutionalized forms
of plurality because the real aims of life demand it. (One example:
without changing the centralized and institutional basis of cultural
life, new publishing houses, group periodicals, artists’ groups,
parallel research institutes and work places and so on, may appear
under pressure from ‘below’. Or another example: the single,
monolithic youth organization run by the state as a typical posttotalitarian
‘transmission belt’ disintegrates under the pressure of
real needs into a number of more or less independent organizations
such as the Union of University Students, the Union of Secondary
School Students, the Organization of Working Youth, and so on.)
There is a direct relationship between this kind of differentiation,
which allows initiatives from below to be felt, and the appearance
and constitution of new structures which are already parallel, or
rather independent, but which at the same time are respected, or at
81
least tolerated in varying degrees, by official institutions. These new
institutions are more than just liberalized official structures adapted
to the authentic needs of life; they are a direct expression of those
needs, demanding a position in the context of what is already here.
In other words, they are genuine expressions of the tendency of
society to organize itself. (In Czechoslovakia in 1968 the best known
organizations of this type were KAN, The Club of Committed NonCommunists,
and K231, an organization of former political
prisoners.)
The ultimate phase of this process is the situation in which the
official structures – as agencies of the post-totalitarian system,
existing only to serve its automatism and constructed in the spirit of
that role – simply begin withering away and dying off, to be replaced
by new structures that have evolved from ‘below’ and are put
together in a fundamentally different way.
Certainly many other ways may be imagined in which the aims of life
can bring about political transformations in the general organization
of things and weaken on all levels the hold that techniques of
manipulation have on society. Here I have mentioned only the way in
which the general organization of things was in fact changed as we
experienced it ourselves in Czechoslovakia around 1968. It must be
added that all these concrete instances were part of a specific
historical process which ought not be thought of as the only
alternative, nor as necessarily repeatable (particularly not in our
country), a fact which, of course, takes nothing away from the
importance of the general lessons which are still sought and found
in it to this day.
While on the subject of 1968 in Czechoslovakia, it may be
appropriate to point to some of the characteristic aspects of
developments at that time. All the transformations, first in the
general ‘mood’, then conceptually and finally structurally, did not
occur under pressure from the kind of parallel structures that are
taking shape today. Such structures – which are sharply defined
antitheses of the official structures – quite simply did not exist at
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the time, nor were there any ‘dissidents’ in the present sense of the
word. The changes that took place were simply a consequence of
pressures of the most varied sort, some thorough-going, some
partial. There were spontaneous attempts at freer forms of thinking,
independent creation and political articulation. There were longterm,
spontaneous and inconspicuous efforts to bring about the
interpenetration of the independent life of society with the existing
structures, usually beginning with the quiet institutionalization of
this life on and around the periphery of the official structures. In
other words, it was a gradual process of social awakening, a kind of
‘creeping’ process in which the hidden spheres gradually opened
out. (There is some truth in the official propaganda which talks
about a ‘creeping counter-revolution’ in Czechoslovakia, referring to
how the aims of life proceed.) 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 have simply 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. (I am thinking here mainly of the many ‘anti-dogmatic’
reform communists who grew to become, over the years, a force
inside the official structures.) Neither the proper conditions nor the
raison d’être existed for those limited, ‘self-structuring’ independent
initiatives familiar from the present era of ‘dissident movements’
that stand so sharply outside the official structures and are
unrecognized by them en bloc. At that time, the post-totalitarian
system in Czechoslovakia had not yet petrified into the static, sterile
and stable forms that exist today, forms that compel people to fall
back on their own organizing capabilities. For many historical and
social reasons, the regime in 1968 was more open. The power
structure, exhausted by Stalinist despotism and helplessly groping
about for painless reform, was inevitably rotting from within, quite
83
incapable of offering any intelligent opposition to changes in the
mood, to the way its younger members regarded things and to the
thousands of authentic expressions of life on the ‘pre-political’ level
that sprang up in that vast political terrain between the official and
the unofficial.
From the more general point of view, yet another typical
circumstance appears to be important: the social ferment that came
to a head in 1968 never – in terms of actual structural changes –
went any further than the reform, the differentiation or the
replacement of structures that were really only of secondary
importance. It did not affect the very essence of the power structure
in the post-totalitarian system, which is to say its political model,
the fundamental principles of social organization, not even the
economic model in which all economic power is subordinated to
political power. Nor were any essential structural changes made in
the direct instruments of power (the army, the police, the judiciary,
etc.). On that level, the issue was never more than a change in the
mood, the personnel, the political line and, above all, changes in how
that power was exercised. Everything else remained at the stage of
discussion and planning. The two officially accepted programmes
that went furthest in this regard were the April, 1968 Action
Programme of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and the
proposal for economic reforms. The Action Programme – it could
not have been otherwise – was full of contradictions and half-way
measures that left the physical aspects of power untouched. And the
economic proposals, while they went a long way to accommodate
the aims of life in the economic sphere (they accepted such notions
as a plurality of interests and intiatives, dynamic incentives,
restrictions upon the economic command system), left untouched
the basic pillar of economic power, that is, the principle of state,
rather than genuine social ownership of the means of production. So
there is a gap here which no social movement in the posttotalitarian
system has ever been able to bridge, with the possible
exception of those few days during the Hungarian uprising.
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What other developmental alternative might emerge in the future?
Replying to that question would mean entering the realm of pure
speculation. For the time being, it can be said that the latent social
crisis in the system has always (and there is no reason to believe it
will not continue to do so) resulted in a variety of political and social
disturbances (Germany in 1953, Hungary, the USSR and Poland in
1956, Czechoslovakia and Poland in 1968, and Poland in 1970 and
1976), all of them very different in their backgrounds, the course of
their evolution and their final consequences. If we look at the
enormous complex of different factors that led to such disturbances,
and at the impossibility of predicting what accidental accumulation
of events will cause that fermentation in the hidden sphere to break
through to the light of day (the problem ‘of the final straw’); and if
we consider how impossible it is to guess what the future holds,
given such opposing trends as, on the one hand, the increasingly
profound integration of the ‘bloc’ and the expansion of power within
it, and on the other hand the prospects of the USSR disintegrating
under pressure from awakening national consciousness in the nonRussian
areas (in this regard the Soviet Union cannot expect to
remain forever free of the world-wide struggle for national
liberation), then we must see the haplessness of trying to make
long-range predictions.
In any case, I do not believe that this type of speculation has any
immediate significance for the ‘dissident movements’ since these
movements, after all, do not develop from speculative thinking, and
so to establish themselves on that basis would mean alienating
themselves from the very source of their identity.
As far as prospects for the ‘dissident movements’ as such go, there
seems to be very little likelihood that future developments will lead
to a lasting coexistence of two isolated, mutually non-interacting
and mutually indifferent bodies – the main polis and the parallel
polis. As long as it remains what it is, the practice of living within the
truth cannot fail to be a threat to the system. It is quite impossible to
imagine it continuing to coexist with the practice of living within a
85
lie without dramatic tension. The relationship of the posttotalitarian
system – as long as it remains what it is – and the
independent life of society – as long as it remains the locus of a
renewed responsibility for the whole and to the whole – will always
be one of either latent or open conflict.
In this situation there are only two possibilities: either the posttotalitarian
system will go on developing (that is, will be able to go on
developing), thus inevitably coming closer to some dreadful
Orwellian vision of a world of absolute manipulation, while all the
more articulate expressions of living within the truth are definitively
snuffed out; or the independent life of society (the parallel polis),
including the ‘dissident movements’, will slowly but surely become a
social phenomenon of growing importance, taking a real part in the
life of society with increasing clarity and influencing the general
situation. Of course this will always be only one of many factors
influencing the situation and it will operate rather in the
background, in concert with the other factors and in a way
appropriate to the background.
Whether it ought to focus on reforming the official structures or on
encouraging differentiation, or on replacing them with new
structures, whether the intent is to ‘ameliorate’ the system or, on the
contrary, to tear it down: these and similar questions, in so far as
they are not pseudo-problems, can be posed by the ‘dissident
movement’ only within the context of a particular situation, when
the movement is faced with a concrete task. In other words, it must
pose questions, as it were, ad hoc, out of a concrete consideration of
the authentic needs of life. To reply to such questions abstractly and
to formulate a political programme in terms of some hypothetical
future would mean, I believe, a return to the spirit and methods of
traditional politics, and this would limit and alienate the work of
‘dissent’ where it is most instrinsically itself and has the most
genuine prospects for the future. 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,
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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, half-way, 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 neverending
struggle of human beings to live more freely, truthfully and in
quiet dignity – never imposes 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 posttotalitarian
structures.
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XX
The specific nature of post-totalitarian conditions – with their
absence of a normal political life and the fact that any far-reaching
political change is utterly unforeseeable – has one positive aspect: it
compels us to examine our situation in terms of its deeper
coherences and to consider our future in the context of global, longrange
prospects of the world of which we are a part. The fact that
the most intrinsic and fundamental confrontation between human
beings and the system takes place at a level incomparably more
profound than that of traditional politics would seem, at the same
time, to determine as well the direction such considerations will
take.
Our attention, therefore, inevitably turns to the most essential
matter: the crisis of contemporary technological society as a whole,
the crisis that Heidegger describes as the ineptitude of humanity
face to face with the planetary power of technology. Technology –
that child of modern science, which in turn is a child of modern
metaphysics – is out of humanity’s control, has ceased to serve us,
has enslaved us and compelled us to participate in the preparation
of our own destruction. And humanity can find no way out: we have
no idea and no faith, and even less do we have a political conception
to help us bring things back under human control. We look on
helplessly as that coldly functioning machine we have created
inevitably engulfs us, tearing us away from our natural affiliations
(for instance from our habitat in the widest sense of that word,
including our habitat in the biosphere) just as it removes us from the
experience of ‘being’ and casts us into the world of ‘existences’. This
situation has already been described from many different angles and
many individuals and social groups have sought, often painfully, to
find ways out of it (for instance through oriental thought or by
forming communes). The only social, or rather political, attempt to
do something about it that contains the necessary element of
88
universality (responsibility to and for the whole) is the desperate
and, given the turmoil the world is in, fading voice of the ecological
movement, and even there the attempt is limited to a particular
notion of how to use technology to oppose the dictatorship of
technology.
‘Only a God can save us now,’ Heidegger says, and he emphasizes the
necessity of ‘a different way of thinking’, that is, of a departure from
what philosophy has been for centuries, and a radical change in the
way in which humanity understands itself, the world and its position
in it. He knows no way out and all he can recommend is ‘preparing
expectations’.
Various thinkers and movements feel that this as yet unknown way
out might be most generally characterized as a broad ‘existential
revolution’. I share this view, and I also share the opinion that a
solution cannot be sought in some technological sleight of hand,
that is, in some external proposal for change, or in a revolution that
is merely philosophical, merely social, merely technological or even
merely political. These are all areas where the consequences of an
‘existential revolution’ can and must be felt; but their most intrinsic
locus can only be human existence in the profoundest sense of the
word. It is only from that basis that it can become a generally ethical
– and, of course, ultimately a political – reconstitution of society.
What we call the consumer and industrial (or post-industrial)
society, and Ortea y Gasset once understood as ‘the revolt of the
masses’, as well as the intellectual, moral, political and social misery
in the world today: all of this is perhaps merely an aspect of the deep
crisis in which humanity, dragged helplessly along by the
automatism of global technological civilization, finds itself.
The post-totalitarian system is only one aspect – a particularly
drastic aspect and thus all the more revealing of its real origins – of
this general inability of modern humanity to be the master of its own
situation. The automatism of the post-totalitarian system is merely
an extreme version of the global automatism of technological
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civilization. The human failure that it mirrors is only one variant of
the general failure of modern humanity.
This planetary challenge to the position of human beings in the
world is, of course, also taking place in the western world, the only
difference being the social and political forms it takes. Heidegger
refers expressly to a crisis of democracy. 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-consumer 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 post-totalitarian 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 foci 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 analysed
and described, can only with great difficulty be imagined as the
source of humanity’s rediscovery of itself. In his June 1978 Harvard
lecture,fn1 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
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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.
Because all our prospects for a significant change for the better are
very long range indeed, we are obliged to take note of this deep
crisis of traditional democracy. Certainly, if conditions were to be
created for democracy in some countries in the Soviet bloc
(although this is becoming increasingly improbable), it might be an
appropriate transitional solution that would help to restore the
devastated sense of civic awareness, to renew democratic
discussion, to allow for the crystallization of an elementary political
plurality, an essential expression of the aims of life. But to cling to
the notion of traditional parliamentary democracy as one’s political
ideal and to succumb to the illusion that only this ‘tried and true’
form is capable of guaranteeing human beings enduring dignity and
an independent role in society would, in my opinion, be at the very
least short-sighted.
I see a renewed focus of politics on real people as something far
more profound than merely returning to the everyday mechanisms
of western (or if you like bourgeois) democracy. In 1968 I felt that our
problem could be solved by forming an opposition party that would
compete publicly for power with the Communist Party. I have long
since come to realize, however, that it is just not that simple and
that no opposition party in and of itself, just as no new electoral laws
in and of themselves, could make society proof against some new
form of violence. No ‘dry’ organizational measures in themselves can
provide that guarantee, and we would be hard pressed to find in
them that God who alone can save us.
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XXI
And now I may properly be asked the question: What is to be done,
then?
My scepticism towards alternative political models and the ability of
systemic reforms or changes to redeem us does not, of course, mean
that I am sceptical of political thought altogether. Nor does my
emphasis on the importance of focusing concern on real human
beings disqualify me from considering the possible structural
consequences flowing from it. On the contrary, if A was said, then B
should be said as well. Nevertheless, I will offer only a few very
general 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 new-found inner relationship to other
people and to the human community – these factors clearly indicate
the direction in which we must go.
And the political consequences? Most probably they could be
reflected in the constitution of structures that will derive from this
‘new spirit’, from human factors rather than from a particular
formalization of political relationships and guarantees. In other
words, the issue is the rehabilitation of values like trust, openness,
responsibility, solidarity, love. I believe in structures that are not
aimed at the ‘technical’ aspect of the execution of power, but at the
significance of that execution in structures held together more by a
commonly shared feeling of the importance of certain communities
than by commonly shared expansionist ambitions directed ‘outward’.
There 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
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principle place no limits on the genesis of different structures. Any
accumulation of power whatsoever (one of the characteristics of
automatism) should be profoundly alien to it. They would be
structures not in the sense of organizations or institutions, but like a
community. Their authority certainly cannot be based on longempty
traditions, like the tradition of mass political parties, but
rather on how, in concrete terms, they enter into a given situation.
Rather than a strategic agglomeration of formalized organizations, it
is better to have organizations springing up ad hoc, infused with
enthusiasm for a particular purpose and disappearing when that
purpose has been achieved. The leaders’ authority ought to derive
from their personalities and be personally tested in their particular
surroundings, and not from their position in any nomenklatura. They
should enjoy great personal confidence and even great law-making
powers based on that confidence. This would appear to be the only
way out of the classic impotence of traditional democratic
organizations, which frequently seem founded more on mistrust
than mutual confidence, and more on collective irresponsibility than
on responsibility. It is only with the full existential backing of every
member of the community that a permanent bulwark against
‘creeping totalitarianism’ can be established. These structures
should naturally arise from below as a consequence of authentic
social ‘self-organization’; they should derive vital energy from·a
living dialogue with the genuine needs from which they arise, and
when these needs are gone, the structures should also disappear.
The principles of their internal organization should be very diverse,
with a minimum of external regulation. The decisive criterion of this
‘self-constitution’ should be the structure’s actual significance, and
not just a mere abstract norm.
Both political and economic life ought to be founded on the varied
and versatile co-operation of such dynamically appearing and
disappearing organizations. As far as the economic life of society
goes, I believe in the principle of self-management, which is
probably the only way of achieving what all the theorists of socialism
have dreamed about, that is, the genuine (i.e. informal) participation
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of workers in economic decision-making, leading to a feeling of
genuine responsibility for their collective work. The principles of
control and discipline ought to be abandoned in favour of selfcontrol
and self-discipline.
As is perhaps clear from even so general an outline, the systemic
consequences of an ‘existential revolution’ of this type goes
significantly beyond the framework of classical parliamentary
democracy. Having introduced the term ‘post-totalitarian’ for the
purposes of this discussion, perhaps I should refer to the notion I
have just outlined – purely for the moment – as the prospects for a
‘post-democratic’ system.
Undoubtedly this notion could be developed further, but I think it
would be a foolish undertaking, to say the least, because slowly but
surely the whole idea would become alienated, separated from itself.
After all, the essence of such a ‘post-democracy’ is also that it can
only develop via facti, as a process deriving directly from life, from a
new atmosphere and a new ‘spirit’ (political thought, of course,
would play a role here, though not as a director, merely as a guide).
It would be presumptuous, however, to try to foresee the structural
expressions of this ‘new spirit’ without that spirit actually being
present and without knowing its concrete physiognomy.
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XXII
I would probably have omitted the entire preceding section as a
more suitable subject for private meditation were it not for a certain
recurring sensation. It may seem rather presumptuous, and
therefore I will present it as a question: Does not this vision of ‘postdemocratic’
structures in some ways remind one of the ‘dissident’
groups or some of the independent citizens’ initiatives as we already
know them from our own surroundings? Do not these small
communities, bound together by thousands of shared tribulations,
give rise to some of those special ‘humanly meaningful’ political
relationships and ties that we have been talking about? Are not these
communities (and they are communities more than organizations) –
motivated mainly by a common belief in the profound significance of
what they are doing since they have no chance of direct, external
success – joined together by precisely the kind of atmosphere in
which the formalized and ritualized ties common in the official
structures are supplanted by a living sense of solidarity and
fraternity? Do not these ‘post-democratic’ relationships of
immediate personal trust and the informal rights of individuals
based on them come out of the background of all those commonly
shared difficulties? Do not these groups emerge, live and disappear
under pressure from concrete and authentic needs, unburdened by
the ballast of hollow traditions? Is not their attempt to create an
articulate form of ‘living within the truth’ and to renew the feeling of
higher responsibility in an apathetic society really a sign of some
kind of rudimentary moral reconstitution?
In other words, are not these informal, non-bureaucratic, dynamic
and open communities that comprise the ‘parallel polis’ a kind of
rudimentary prefiguration, a symbolic model of those more
meaningful ‘post-democratic’ political structures that might become
the foundation of a better society?
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I know from thousands of personal experiences how the mere
circumstance of having signed Charter 77 has immediately created a
deeper and more open relationship and evoked sudden and powerful
feelings of genuine community among people who were all but
strangers before. This kind of thing happens only rarely, if at all, even
among people who have worked together for long periods in some
apathetic official structure. It is as though the mere awareness and
acceptance of a common task and a shared experience were enough
to transform people and the climate of their lives, as though it gave
their public work a more human dimension that is seldom found
elsewhere.
Perhaps all this is only the consequence of a common threat.
Perhaps the moment the threat ends or eases, the mood it helped
create will begin to dissipate as well. (The aim of those who threaten
us, however, is precisely the opposite. Again and again, one is
shocked by the energy they devote to contaminating, in various
despicable ways, all the human relationships inside the threatened
community.)
Yet even if that were so, it would change nothing in the question I
have posed.
We do not know the way out of the marasmus of the world, and it
would be an expression of unforgivable pride were we to see the
little we do as a fundamental solution, or were we to present
ourselves, our community and our solutions to vital problems as the
only thing worth doing.
Even so, I think that given all these preceding thoughts on posttotalitarian
conditions, and given the circumstances and the inner
constitution of the developing efforts to defend human beings and
their identity in such conditions, the questions I have posed are
appropriate. If nothing else, they are an invitation to reflect
concretely on our own experience and to give some thought to
whether certain elements of that experience do not – without our
really being aware of it – point somewhere further, beyond their
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apparent limits, and whether right here, in our everyday lives,
certain challenges are not already encoded, quietly waiting for the
moment when they will be read and grasped.
For the real question is whether the ‘brighter future’ is really always
so distant. What if, on the contrary, it has been here for a long time
already, and only our own blindness and weakness has prevented us
from seeing it around us and within us, and kept us from developing
it?
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