The Power of the Powerless

The Power of the Powerless is a classic treatise on political dissent written by a man who lived under a post-totalitarian regime in the former Czechoslovakia. Furthermore, in addition to describing how to resist totalitarianism, the book also critiques the pre-supposed supremacy of Western democracies that shackle their citizens with “unfreedom”; that is, a system where people enslave themselves because they neither ask who they are nor what they should be doing. Subsequently, the “unfree” citizen is fearful, demoralized and is adept at normalization: accepting the way things are without any argument about how they should be. To call a citizen of the West “unfree” at the time of the book’s original publication (1970s) may have seemed far-fetched. Yet, history has proven Havel to be a prophet who foretold that democracy is a god who would inevitably fail.So according to Havel, what nurtures totalitarianism? Ideology. And, because ideology is the principal guarantor of the continuity of power, it is when power serves ideology that totalitarianism rises. Totalitarian ideology is disconnected from reality and the real needs of the people, which is why the system demands that people “live within the lie.” Hence, even if an individual has a conflict of conscience, the best they can offer is concessions and smiles. It is from this perspective that Havel is not surprised by the rise of immoral State power, but he is surprised at people’s willingness to accept the lie so long as they are sufficiently protected. Many people will elect to obey to “take the path of least resistance” but it is impossible to conform to a requirement and not perpetuate it. Totalitarianism is therefore only possible with the consent of the oppressed.The hope? That the people possess a potential the State does not: to act consistent with the truth, which poses an existential threat to the whole system of lies. The power of the powerless is the potential ability of all human beings to “live within the truth,” which is any means by which a person or a group revolts against manipulation. Because the end in mind is truth, freedom and human dignity, a genuine “dissident” or “opposition movement” is therefore by definition non-political: its genuine aim goes beyond the limits placed on it by the system (i.e, a republican/democrat, rich/poor, black/white cause). And, dissidents and the movements they create are never messianic for it is the height of arrogance proclaim, “If only we were in power, we could fix this.” Reality and utopia are mutually exclusive and any attempt to fashion paradise ends in misery.Havel’s prophecy about technology enslaving us is mind-bending considering he wrote it 40+ years ago:"We look on helplessly as that coldly functioning machine we have created inevitably engulfs us, tearing us away from our natural affiliations … just as it removes us from the experience of ‘being’ and casts us into the world of ‘existences’.”The author consequently concludes that we cannot use technology to overthrow the dictatorship of technology. What the reader is left to consider is purposely living a post-technology life.The book ends with concrete, actionable strategies that answer the question, “What is to be done?” The author also challenges us to meditate on a pressing question: if a “brighter future” is distant in the future or, on the contrary, the brighter future has been here for a long time but it is our own blindness and weakness that has clouded our vision and nurtured our apathy. Havel inspires all readers to throw down the idol of government-sanctioned salvation; instead, every individual carries personal responsibility with then everywhere they go. Accordingly, every person is capable of living in the truth and materializing parallel structures based on innate human freedom, dignity, and personal trust. A man can only trust whom he knows, which means another power of the powerless lies in decentralized, local networks out of the reach of tyrants and built from the ground up with the concrete needs of people in mind.

Great book, but the worst part was the intro by Timothy Snyder. His writing is poor and he is also breathtakingly ignorant about what actually brought about the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014. He then mentions Trump and Brexit in a negative light, further eroding any sense of objectivity.He is an ideological leftwing hack who is wholly unqualified to write the intro to this book, because he, as a historian, has already distorted events from just a few years ago. Trump Derangement Syndrome makes people dumber than if they had drank an entire bottle of spirits.Tim Snyder should look up Mass Formation. It is his type of thinking that leads to totalitarianism and he doesnt even know it. What an unserious person

Timothy Snyder's introduction is appallingly bad. Not sure how it came to be that he was allowed to write such a simple minded inaccurate account to what is truly a masterpiece by Havel.

Some reviewers found this to be a difficult read (too bad for them!), but the astute analyses of life under the Soviet-imposed "cancel culture" in latter-20th-Century Czechoslovakia is well worth it. What Havel refers to as "post-totalitarianism" i would term more accurately "soft totalitarianism," which is tyranny enforced by social sanctions such as blacklisting from employment or higher education, or an inability to publish or broadcast one's opinions, insights, or even inconvenient facts. Make no mistake, though, as the effects on personal, political and economic freedom are really the same as those of Stalinist "hard totalitarianism" enforced by arrests, torture, and the gulags. Not having lived under socialist tyranny (not yet, anyway), I have no basis on which to agree or disagree with Havel's insights from having done so. I could only soak up his insights like a sponge. My only disagreement with Havel is with Chapter XXI, where he discusses "What is to be done, then?" In it, Havel seems to have adopted the same overly-idealistic view of human nature that has inspired nearly every form of totalitarianism known to mankind. Given Havel's life experience (as of 1978, at least) of having spent his entire adult life under the thumb of Soviet socialist tyranny, he can hardly be faulted for not taking into account Lord Acton's famous saying, that "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Chances are, Havel did not have access to Lord Acton's writings, nor those of other classical liberals such as Locke, Jefferson, and many others. All in all, I cannot recommend this book highly enough, particularly as the so-called "Woke" cancel-culture incarnation of soft totalitarianism is gaining increasing dominance in our once-free America.

Havel's roadmap toward liberty and human fulfillment in the face of the new tyrannies is so right on. I keep re-reading it.But ignore the intro, Dr. Snyder - prof at Yale - understands Havel but has no clue about how it applies to American politics; he's drunk the radical left kool-aid.As per Havel - Lord help us live in the truth and live truly.

This is a must read in todays liberal dream world !

If Timothy Snyder's "On Tyranny: 20 lessons from the twentieth century" is a quick guide/primer on how to survive and resist in a totalitarian world, then Havel's book is what gave those short lessons their background reference and philosophical grounding. Having survived those experiences himself, what Havel wrote goes beyond theoretical arguments, but cuts deep into the core of the antitheses to a post-totalitarian society. Highly recommended.

The book is great. The introduction by Mr. Timothy Snyder is unfortunately biased but his personal ideology.

When the book was written, our world was not as interconnected and instant as it is today. It was difficult to follow closely a country’s news if we relied only on the soundbites of news headlines. Today, probably to the horror of Havel, who also speaks of dictatorship of technology in the book, we can follow a distant place’s news in real time, if we care to spare the time and attention. In the past, what Havel calls a post-totalitarian system could act behind closed door. Today when CCP moves into HK, it is broadcast to the world in the minutest details. Online journalism, KOL and social media get the news out in quantity that it is physically impossible to digest it all. What is the upshot? What happens in HK in the past 18 months offers a clash course of Havel’s book – what CCP does to HK is as if followed the scripts of this book. It is amazing.It is a pretty elaborate operation – but for what? I have never understood why bandits expend so much effort to dress themselves up in noble apparel – for what? Why can’t they tell the truth of what they are doing but have to derive pack of lies? Havel distinguishes between classical and post-totalitarian rule. The latter rules over by creating a system that spins a world of appearance. In other words, unlike a classical totalitarian regime, the system permeates every corner of ordinary life for control, bringing the battlefront to each and every individual. The system needs to create living within a lie to survive while humanity demands us to live within the truth. There is always the tension. To bridge the two worlds, the totalitarian regime derives elaborate ideology and a legal code to soothe the tension faced by individuals. That bridging machinery is critical to the existence of the system as it pacifies or dulls the conscience of those who follow the set rules of the game by the totalitarian regime. The ideology and a legal code legitimize the system and seek to provide a reasoning in order that its following eschews from having a moral conflict. No wonder so much is invested in “perfecting” the electoral rules (so that it becomes a technical impossibility for the opposition to gain control of the Legislative Council) and imposing a new HK National Security Law which gives an all-embracing legal lever to round up all opposition leaders and activists. As their charges are groundless and those in power pretty much do whatever they want, why do they bother to give it a name and title? Havel has helped me understand.His dissection of the force of resistance is equally interesting. First he does not believe that participating in the political system as opposition is an effective route as the system is controlled and rigged with farcical election. Second, he does not believe in violent revolt as this will hurt the cause and alienate the mass. Third, resistance is in everyone living within the truth. The West coined the word “dissidents” for those living within the truth who had surfaced. But the support is much broader as there is a vast hidden sphere, even if they may need awakening to begin with. A mature campaign is to have a parallel system running to the state-controlled system to accommodate living with the truth. This already happens in HK at least in their economic life where they have a “Yellow Economic Sphere”.It explains why the totalitarian regime has to be so ruthless in stamping out the activists in HK with no one spared. It is because any suggestion of the underlying “truth” is a threat to the system and will awaken the sleeping dragon (mass support). The safest is to stamp out all truth. It also explains why they are keen to use florid language to explain themselves – this is to communicate to their people and not to the world. They care to hold their internal coherence of their fabricated lies (the ideology and the legal code).According to this book, the “dissident movement” is far from over. It is in fact proceeding at a great momentum if people had understood it. At the very least, most of HongKongers have awakened to the truth. It is no longer the minority cry anymore. It has achieved the necessary element of universality (responsibility to and for the whole). They have long experience of a better alternative which they prefer. When an institutional structure is imposed on HK, they can tell what is lie and what is truth, what kind of rule allows them to live freely. In other words, they are not easily deceived. Now it is a question of courage if HongKongers will insist on living within the truth rather than being participants to perpetuate the automatism of the central system in a world of appearance.Havel also foresees this deeper crisis: "all of this is perhaps merely an aspect of the deep crisis in which humanity, dragged helplessly along by the automatism of global technological civilisation, 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.... People are manipulated in ways that are infinitely more subtle and refined than the brutal methods used in the post-totalitarian societies" (p. 135-136). This is well underway. The notion now is "how to use technology to oppose the dictatorship of technology. 'Only God can save us now,' Heidegger says..." (p.134).

"The Power of the Powerless" by Václav Havel: This novel is extremely interesting as it tells the philosophical and psychological story of why people live under oppressive regimes act the way they do also explains the subliminal characteristics and methods of control that oppressors and their advisers undertake to maintain control over people's lives. Every line is like a punch-line with short chapters, each encapsulating a different facet of how a totalitarian regime works and succeeds. I would recommend this to many different readers - especially if you are interested in how power has been manipulated and abused throughout history, and the psychology of those at the forefront of it.

I saw this book mentioned in someone's tweet and decided to check it out it is definitely an against communism essay . Not a fun read and a little arduous but it's as expected I wasn't looking to be entertained.

Orwell’s 1984 shows how broken states oppress people and grind the living happiness out of life. This book shows the way out from under. Written from real life after the Russia smashed the tentative liberation of Czechoslovakia. Describes the operation and functionality of oppression. How society can escape it it chooses to.

Short but eye opening explanation of oppressive regimes.