Václav Havel: The Power of the Powerless
To the memory of Jan Patocka
"The Power of the Powerless" (October 1978) was originally written ("quickly,"
Havel's essay has had a profound impact on
"Then came the essay by
Translated
by Paul Wilson, "The Power of the Powerless" has appeared several times
in English, foremost in The Power of the Powerless: Citizens Against
the State in Central-Eastern
I
ASPECETR is haunting
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.
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 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 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
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 world's 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
pur poses of this essay. If I refer to it henceforth as a
"posttotalitarian" system, I am fully aware that this is perhaps not the
most precise term, but I am unable to think of a 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 posttotalitarian system, several aspects of
which I shall now attempt to identify.
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
moment's 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 ihe manner expected
of me. I can be depended upon and am beyond reproach. I am obedient and
therefore I have the right to be left in peace." This message, of
course, has an addressee: it is directed above, to the greengrocer's
superior, and at the same time it is a shield that protects the
greengrocer from potential informers. The slogan's. real meaning,
therefore, is rooted firmly in the greengrocer's 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 unquestion~ ingly 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 ihis 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, "What's wrong with ihe 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 ihemselves. 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 iheir adaptation to the
status quo. It is an excuse that everyone can use, from the greengrocer,
who conceals his fear of losing hisjob behind an alleged interest in
the unification of the workers of the world, to the highest functionary,
whose interest in staying iu 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 selfjustification 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 ideotogy plays such an importaut role in the post-totalitarian
system: that complex machinery of units, hierarchies, transmission
belts, and indirect instruments of manipulation which ensure in
countless ways ihe 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.
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, aud 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 posatotalitarian
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 itsel^
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 individual's 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 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 work ing 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 intluence 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.
V
We
have seen that the real meaning of the greengrocer's 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
componenc 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 shape and structure.
This metaphysical order guar antees 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 coher ence. As this aspect grows ín 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 (chietly 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. 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 post-totalitarian 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-ideologyremains undisturbed. No matter who is replaced by
whom, succession is only possible against the backdrop and within the
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 system's 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
im dividual 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 indistinguishable from those who preceded him and those who will
follow. (Let us recall, for instance, the development of Husák or
Gomukka.) The necessity of continually hiding behind and relating to
ritual means that even the more enlightened members of the power struc
ture 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 fmal analysis, with ideological pseudoreality. (In my opinion, one
of the reasons the Dubèek leadership lost control of the situation in
ig68 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 posctotalitarian 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 system's 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.
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 semipublic 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 "antiCharter." 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
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 lampposts, 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 want to be
excluded, to fall into isolation, alienate themselves from society,
break the rules of the game, and risk the loss of iheir peace and
tranquility and security.
The
woman who ignored the greengrocer's slogan may well have hung a similar
sloganjust 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, ihat
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. Metaphysically 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
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 favor 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 by 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 posttotalitarian system makes everyone an instrument 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 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 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 deflne (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
self-directed 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 toward 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 paralyzes 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 existence. Yet, at the same time, each
person is capable, to a greater or lesser degree, of coming to terms
with living within the lie. Each person somehow succumbs to a profane
trivialization of his 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 pseudolife. 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 posttotalitarian
system has been built on foundations laid by the historical encounter
between dictatorship and the consumer society. Is it not true that the
farreaching 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 grayness
and the emptiness of life in the post-totalitarian system only an
intlated 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 its own latent
tendencies?
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
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
ín people, will punish him for his rebellion. It must do so because the
logic of its automatism and self-defense dictate it. The greengrocer has
not committed a simple, individual offense, isolated in its own
uniqueness, but something incomparably more serious. By breaking the
rules of the game, he has disrupted the game as such. He has exposed it
as a mere game. He has shattered the world of appearances, the
fundamental pillar of the system. He has upset the power structure by
tearing apart what holds it together. He has demonstrated that living a
lie is living a lie. He has broken through the exalted facade of the
system and exposed the real, base foundations of power. He has said that
the emperor is naked. And because the emperor is in fact naked,
something extremely dangerous has happened: by his action, the
greengrocer has addressed the world. He has enabled everyone to peer
behind the curtain. 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 co-exist 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 all-inclusiveness. 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 post-totalitarian system, therefore, living
within the truth has more than a mere existential dimension (returning
humanity to its inherent 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?
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 semidarkness, 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, 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 deFmable 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 prediet)
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 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 transformaeions 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 fsom 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 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 fmal
outcome of that reawakening.
I
think the present also can be better understood in the light of this
experience. The confrontation between a thousand Chartists and the
post-totalitarian 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 chieíly 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 qq, 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 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 own human identity to politics, or rather, who does not believe in a
politics that requires such a sacrifice.
The
more thoroughly the posrtotalitarian system frustrates any rival
alternative on the level of real power, as well as any form of politics
independent of the laws of its own automatism, the more definitively the
center of gravity of any potential political threat shifts to the area
of the existential and the pre-political: usually without any conscious
effort, living within the truth becomes the one natural point of
departure for all activities that work against the automatism of the
system. And even if such activities ultimately grow beyond the area of
living within the truth (which means they are transformed into various
parallel structures, movements, institutions, they begin to be regarded
as political activity, they bring real pressure to bear on the official
structures and begin in fact to have a certain influence on the level of
real power), they always carry with them the specific hallmark of their
origins. 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.
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 accouterments
of mass civilization, and who has no roots in the order of being, no
sense of responsibility for anything higher than his own personal
survival, is a demoralized person. The system depends on this
demoralization, deepens it, is in fact a projection of it into society.
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 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 potitical
phenomenon. (And if the revolutionary Marxist belief about morality as a
product of the "superstructure" inhibits any of our friends from
realizing the full significance of this dimerision 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 posculates of that world view
prevents them from properly understanding the mechanisms of their own
political intluence, 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 showfar-reaching consequences.
X
Undeniably,
the most important political event in Czechoslovakia after the advent
of the Husák leadership in ig6g 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 skepticism toward 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 cooperate, or which were
committed to forms of action that made cooperation difficult, were
suddenly struck with the powerful realization that freedom is
indivisible. Everyone understood that an attack on the Czech musical
underground was an attack on a most elementary and important thing,
something that in fact bound everyone together: it was an attack on the
very notion of living within the truth, on the real aims of life. 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 Sládeèek, 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
noncommunists-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 posttotalitarian system, the real
background to the movements that gradually assume political significance
does not usually consist of overtly political events or 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 inter ests 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 excellerece. 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 program, 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 program 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.
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 Patoèka wrote shortly before his death. I think that Chartists
understand this not only as Patoèka'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 semidarkness where things are difficult to
chart or analyze. The chances of predicting the appearance of the
Charter werejust 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.
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, peoplé s interest in political matters naturally
dwindles and independent political thought, insofar as it exists at all,
is seen by the majority as unrealistic, farfetched, 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 vigor 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 appar
ently been made to suffer in vain because of their quixotic efforts to
work politically among an utterly apathetic and demoralized society,
belong today-inevitably-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 posttotalitarian 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
behavior 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 Fmd themselves in a
world of genuinely utopian thinking.
As
I have already tried to indicate, however, genuinely farreaching
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 indif ferent to, even skeptical of,
alternative political models and programs and the private establishment
of opposition political parties, this is not merely because there is a
general feeling of apathy toward 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 nonpolitical 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 can 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 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
"someday," the more easily they can degenerate into new forms of human
enslavement. People who live in the posttotalitarian 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 analyzed 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-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 struotural 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 of the old degeneration, it must
above all 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 neíther 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 available to us, and the means it makes sense to employ.
Westernjournalists, submerged in the political banalities in which they
live, may label our approach as overly legalistic, as too risky,
revisionist, counterrevolutionary, bourgeois, communist, or as too
right-wing or left-wing. But this is the very last thing that interests
us.
XII
One
cocept that is a constant source of confusion chief7y 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 posttotalitarian 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 program, 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 program. 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 agreedupon 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?
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
greengrocer'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 program. It sees its mission as something quite
different, for it has not presented such programs. In fact, if the
presenting of an alternative program 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 defmed it in
point z, that is, as everything thac 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 program 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 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 an 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 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 labeled.
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.
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 posGtotalitarian
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 despitc 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 commiG ment 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.
4.
They are people who lean toward 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
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 speciflcally, 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 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 were another special onegrumbling about the state of
things. In fact, a "dissident" is simply a physicist, a sociologist, a
worker, a poet, individuals who are 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, behavior, 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
fulfill 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 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 q~ 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 an individual, but in the 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 no 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 qq after they had been brought
together in defense 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 defense of other citizens, the more
they are labeled 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.
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, nor social conditions that would have
enabled the Czechs and Slovaks to seek their identity outside the
framework of this empire, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk established a
Czechoslovak national program based on the notion of "small-scale work"
(dro6ncí 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 hard-working people who simply
refuse 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 áre situations where it is worthwhile going
this route, even though it means surrendering one's natural right to
make direct criticisms.
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 practice the principle of "small-scale work" come up
against the post-totalitarian sys tem and flnd 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 behavior, 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 they fail to react to
any of Š's suggestions, but they actually became increasingly hostile
toward him and tried in every way to thwart his efforts to do a good
job. Eventually the situation became so bad that S felt compelled to
write a lengthy letter to the manager's superior, in which he attempted
to analyze 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 policically 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 Partý s district committee,
had friends in higher places and he saw to it that the situation was
resolved in his favor. Š's analysis was described as a "defamatory
document" and S himself was labeled 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 subcitizen, 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 society. This is why our situation
is not comparable to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, when the Czech nation,
in the worst period of Bach's absolutism, had only one real
"dissident," Karel Havlíèek, 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 one 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 re~ sponsible people are those who fmd 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" attitudeseen as an attempt to live within the truth-if one
judges human behavior 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.
XV
Our
greengrocer's attempt to live within the truth may be confined to not
doing certain things. He decides not to put tlags 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 newfound sense of higher responsibility. He may, for
example, organize his fellow greengrocers to act together in defense 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 unoft3cial 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 this does not mean that every ae tempt 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 diffieult 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.
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 pur
poseful 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
co-exist 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 one tenth
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 livlng 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,
externally at least, can be understood as a higher form of living within
the truth, it is far less certain that "dis sident" 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 an other, 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 it-as samizdat. They may be philosophers, historians,
sociologists, and all those who practice 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 practice their work regardless of how it is looked upon by
official institutions; 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 the service of truth, the
truthful life, and the attempt to make room for the genuine aims of
life.
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 Self-Defense:'
The word "defense" 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 program of defense 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 program 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 program:
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 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" program-the "simple" defense of people-is in a
particular sense (and not merely in the circumstances in which we live)
an optimal and most positive program 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 the democratic
societies, where the violencc 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
self-redeeming, "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 íf that
organízatíon 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 themseJves 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 these movements
supersede the kind of politics from whose poine of view their program
can seem so inadequate.
XVII
In
the "dissident" movements of the Soviet bloc, the defense of human
beings usually takes the form of a defense of human and civil rights as
they are entrenched in various official documents such as the Universal
Declaration of Human Ríghts, the International Covenants on Human
Rights, the Concluding Act of the Helsinki Agreement, 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 rec ognize 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 posa 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 coming to a head. It
is appropriate in a classical dictatorship that is eitherjust 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 versus 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 iggó-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 toward 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 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 toward the notion of 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.che Second World War.) As I
have already mentioned, "dissidents" tend to be skeptical 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 toward 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
conser vatism or 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
exploitersNaturally, 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, skeptical, 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
facade, 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 constantly to 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?
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
post-totalitarian 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
posetotalitarian 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 function
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 cosseted together as firmly as possible,
predetermined, regulated, and controlled. Every aberration from the
prescribed course of life is treated as error, license, 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 ever-increasing 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 posttotalitarian 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 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 makes 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 thatjustice 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 Gzechoslovakia were to study only its laws, he 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 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 neighboring superpower.
But
that is not all: if our observer had the opportunity to study the
formal side of the policing andjudicial procedures and practices, how
they look "on paper," he 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 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 made sa~nizdat 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 no more than a
facade, 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 ofjudges, 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.
s.
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
together? The more important the position occupied by the repressive
apparatus in the power structure, the more important that it function
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, defense 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
roo 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 post-totalitarian system
could not exist.
The
entire role of ritual, facades, and excuses appears most eloquenfly, 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 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 schoolchildren, 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.
If
the exercise of power circulates through the whole power structure as
blood flows through 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 hemorrhage 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 oue siders, 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 Ihe 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 facade, 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 facade 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 often 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 factjust 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 ajob 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
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 oné 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 selfjustifying 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.
XVIII
Is
the basicjob of the "dissident" movements is to serve truth, that is,
to serve the real aims of life, and if that necessarily develops into a
defense of individuals and their right to a free and truthful life (that
is, a defense 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 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 indi~ cated 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 perfor~ mances and concerts, seminars, exhibitions,
and so on. (In Poland all of this is vastly more developed: there are
independent publishing houses and many more periodicals, even political
periodicals; they have means of proliferation other than carbon copies,
and so on. In the Soviet Union, samixdat 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 agaán, 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 extricate itself radically
from its involvement in the posttotalitarian system? What else is it but
a nonviolent 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.
Aistorical
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 notjust 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
intojust another more sophisticated ver sion 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 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 program, be merely another version of the schizophrenic life within
a lie which everyone else must live in one way or another? Would it
notjust 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? Patoèka used to say that the most interesting
thing about responsibility is that we carry it with us everywhere. That
means that responsibility is ours, that we must accept it and grasp it
here, now, in this place in time and space where the Lord has set us
down, and that we cannot lie our way out of it by moving somewhere else,
whether it be to an Indian ashram or to a parallel podis. If Western
young people so often discover that retreat to an Indian monastery fails
them as an individual or group solution, then this is obviously
because, and only because, it lacks that element of universality, since
not everyone can retire to an ashram. Christianity is an example of an
opposite way out: it is a point of departure for me here and now-but
only because anyone, anywhere, at any time, may avail themselves of it.
In
other words, the parallel polis points beyond itself and makes sense
only as an act of deepening 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.
XIX
I
have already talked about the political potential of living within the
truth and of the limitations on 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 nnsettle the power structure
and induce or accelerate various hidden confrontations, resulting in
personnel, conceptual, or at least "climactic" changes. It may
significantly influenre the general atmosphere of life, evoke unexpected
and unforeseen social unrest and explosions of discontent. Power shifts
at the center 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
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
overestimate the importance of leading personalities in the
post-totalitarian 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 this 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 defense 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 will or will not take from their experience and work. (If
official Czechoslovak propaganda described the Chartists as "self
appointees," it was not in order to emphasize any real avantgarde
ambitions on their part, but rather a natural ex pression 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
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 behavior, and by independent social self-realization. The
power structure, whether it wants to or not, must always react to this
pressure to a certain extent. Its response, however, is always limited
to two dimensions: repression and adaptation. Sometimes one dominates,
sometimes the other. For exam~ ple, 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 Lhe changing mental and social climate and to react
flexibly to them. Which of these motives happens to predominate in a
given moment is not essential in terms of the final effect.
Adaptation
is the positive dimension of the regimé s response, and it can, and
usually does, have a wide spectrum of forms and phases. Some circles may
try to integrate values of 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 ig6os, progressive communists
began to "discover" certain unacknowledged cultural values and
phenomena. This was a positive step, al~ though 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 halfway measures; they
are attempts to combine and realistically coordinate serving life and
serving the posttotalitarian 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 smokescreen 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 struc tures. 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 workplaces, and so on, may appear under pressure from below. Or
another example: the single, monolithic youth or ganization run by the
state as a typical post-totalitarian "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 least tolerated in varying degrees, by official
institutions. These new institutions are more thanjust 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 ig68
the best-known organizations of this type were KAN, the Club of
Committed Non-Communists, 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 ig68. 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
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 eco~ nomic power is
subordinated to political power. Nor were any essential structural
changes made in the direct instru~ ments 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 programs
that went furthest in this regard were che April 1968 Action Program of
the Communist Party of Czecho~ slovakia and the proposal for economic
reforms. The Action Program-it could not have been otherwise-was full of
contradictions and halfway measures that left the physical as pects 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 initiatives, 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.
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 rgg3, Hungary, the U.S.S.R. and Poland in
1956, Gzechoslovakia 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 ac cidental 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 U.S.S.R. disintegrating under pressure from awakening
national consciousness in the non-Russian areas (in this regard the
Soviet Union cannot expect to remain forever free of the worldwide
struggle For national liberation), rhen we must see the hopelessness 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 devel opments will lead to a
lasting co-existence of two isolated, mutually noninteracting and
mutually indifferent bodiesthe 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 co-exist with the practice of living within a
lie without dramatic tension. The relationship of the posttotalitaxian
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
contlict.
In
this situation there are only two possibilities: either thc
post-totalitarian 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 definitely
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, insofar 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 program
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 intrinsically 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, everyday struggle for a better life here and now. The political
and structural systems that life discovers for itself will clearly
always be-for some time to come, at least-limited, halfway,
unsatisfying, and polluted by debilitating tactics. It cannot be
otherwise, and we must expect this and not be demoralized by it. It is
of great importance that the main thing-the everyday, thankless, and
never ending struggle of human beings to live more freely, truthfully,
and in quiet dignity-never impose any limits on itself, never be
halfhearted, inconsistent, never trap itself in political tactics,
speculating on the outcome of its actions or entertaining fantasies
about the future. The purity of this struggle is the best guarantee of
optimum results when it comes to actual interaction with the
post-totalitarian structures.
XX
The
specific nature of post-totalitarian conditions-with their absence of a
normal political life and the fact that any farreaching 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, long-range 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 wid~ est
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,
at~ tempt to do something about it that contains the necessary element
of 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 em~ phasizes 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 Ihe 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 postindustrial) society, and
Ortega 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 posttotalitarian system is merely an
extreme version of the global automatism of technological civilization.
The human failure that it mirrors is only one variant of Ihe 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, thac is, democracy of the traditional parliamentary
type, can offer solutions that are any more profound. It may even be
said Ihat 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 democ racies can offer
no fundamental opposition to the automatism of technological
civilization and the industrial-cousumer society, for they, too, are
being dragged helplessly along by it. People are manipulated in ways
that are infinitely more subtle and refined than the brutal methods used
in the posttotalitarian societies. But this static complex of rigid,
conceptually sloppy, and politically pragmatic mass political parties
run by professional apparatuses and releasing the citizen from all forms
of concrete and personal responsibility; and those complex focuses of
capital accumulation engaged in secret manipulations and expansion; the
omnipresent dictatorship of consumption, production, advertising,
commerce, consumer culture, and all that flood of information: all of
it, so often analyzed and described, can only with great difficulty be
imagined as the source of humanity's rediscovery of itsel^ In his June
1978 Harvard lecture, Solzhenitsyn describes the illusory nature of
freedoms not based on personal responsibility and the chronic inability
of the traditional democracies, as a result, to oppose violence and
totalitarianism. In a democracy, human beings may enjoy many .personal
freedoms and securities that are unknown to us, but in the end they do
them no good, for they too are ultimately victims of the same
automatism, and are incapable of defending their concerns about their
own identity or preventing their superficialization or transcending
concerns about their own personal survival to become proud and
responsible members of the polis, making a genuine contribution to the
creation of its destiny.
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 serise
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 shortsighted.
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 rg68, 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 isjust 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 hardpressed to find in them that God who
alone can save us.
XXI
And now I may properly be asked the question: What then is to be done?
My
skepticism toward alternative political models and the ability of
systemic reforms or changes to redeem us does not, of course, mean that I
am skeptical 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 iu the universe, a newly grasped sense of higher
responsibility, a newfound inner relationship to other people and to the
human community-these factors clearly indicate the direction in which
we must go.
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 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 long-empty 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 lawmaking 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 struc tures should also disappear. The
principles of their internal organization should be very diverse, with a
minimum of external regulation. The decisive criterion of this
selfconstitution should be the structure's actual significance, and
notjust a mere abstract norm.
Both
political and economic life ought to be founded on the varied and
versatile cooperation of such dynamically appearing and disappearing
organizations. As far as the economic life of society goes, I believe in
the principle of selfmanagement, 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 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 favor of self-control and self-discipline.
As
is perhaps clear from even so general an outline, the systemic
consequences of an existential revolution of this type go significantly
beyond the framework of classical parliamentary democracy. Having
introduced the term "posttotalitarian" 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.
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 "post-democratic"
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 recon~
stitution?
In
other words, are not these informed, nonbureaucratic, 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?
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 than
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
post-totalitarian 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 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?