Havel: The Power Of The Powerless - Critical Review

I read The Power of the Powerless. Here are my thoughts, in 5-10 minute chunks. This is the first chunk

Havel describes the modern technocratic dictatorship as one in which there is no distinction between truth and power.

The core of Havel's thesis, is the opposition between "the authentic aims of life" and "the lie" at the center of totalitarian dictatorship. What stitches this opposition together, is IDEOLOGY.

While Havel's description of the relationship between the individual and the state, characterized by a bond of ideology is compelling, still, try as he might, he cannot escape his Marxist training. This is fundamentally a Marxist analysis of his own predicament.

Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay provide some useful insights into Chapter 5 of Havel's little book. Turns out he's making the same postmodern critique of his Communist society, as Foucault was making of western liberalism.

Havel treats us to his ecstatic vision of man after the Existential Revolution

There is a fascinating parallel between Rousseau and Havel, that runs as a through-line through Marx. The entire French tradition in the Enlightenment is responsible for this egalitarian strain of thought.

Harari describes the highest value of science "as an institution" to be power. He's not wrong, but he falls down in the implication that there's nothing wrong with this. His questioner gets the problem intuitively, but can't articulate it. It's precisely what Vaclav Havel describes as the equation of truth and power in modern technocratic totalitarian dictatorships.