Havel Power Ideology

Havel’s “The Power of the Powerless” emerged in the midst of normalization in Czechoslovakia. It expresses exasperation with the propagandistic modes of control that persisted throughout the Soviet Union despite the seemingly universal recognition at this point of the system’s failures. The greengrocer’s obligatory, ritualistic display of the “Workers of the World Unite!” poster is symptomatic of the continuing dominance of ideology over the lives of those behind the iron curtain. Havel views all ideology with circumspect hesitance, claiming that ideology “offers human beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality while making it easier for them to part with them.” 1 As Arendt argued in the case of true totalitarian regimes, post-totalitarianism subsumes the individual to the system, the difference perhaps being that post-totalitarianism functions even though both the rulers and the ruled lack the full strength of true ideological conviction.

Yet Havel’s complete aversion seems difficult to sustain. The end point in which he ideally situates human society (indeed, this conceptualization of an ideal state of human affairs invokes both Hegelian and Marxist ideology) entails, “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.” Havel calls this the “independent life of society” and later clarifies the way it manifests with the examples of “self-education and thinking about the world… and instances of independent social self-organization.” 2 Rather than eschewing ideology, it would seem that Havel merely espouses a minimalist construction of liberalism, and a society that promotes basic freedoms. His reservations stem more from the failures of a particular ideology, or from the potential of ideology to entrench interests and turn dark, not to very notion of ideology.

Havel’s dissection of the role of ideology in perpetuating Soviet regimes invokes much...