"The Power of the Powerless" is a 1978 essay Vaclav Havel wrote to help advance the thinking and the courage of individuals and groups trying to live positive, honest lives, faithful to truth as they understood it, self-asserting rather than docile, and trying hard not to cower under the Soviet regime behind the Iron Curtain. This essay has much value in any society where power has been accumulated in places distant from the influence of the citizens, where power is used shamelessly and recklessly by those who have consolidated it, and where the institutions of free civic society have been captured or hollowed out, leaving them unable to serve their vital purposes.
The essay is long and addresses several aspects of political and daily life in such circumstances. Here I will say a few words about the first short section, and I'll paste a version of it in below.
In those early paragraphs, Havel notes that outsiders call people like him dissidents, and says the things dissidents do in that society is dissent. Havel is keen to resist the simplification of these terms. He doesn't care for outsiders to do the naming. People inside the society, living in truth in the crisis, should say who they are and what they are about, Havel asserts there. Don't let outsiders tell you what you should be called. Of course in our political climate aggressive and dismissive naming takes place so often that it's hard to take note of it and push each time it happens. Nevertheless, Havel claims the right of naming for the people living the life. Naming is doubly important because people who love making propaganda are often masters of imposing cunningly misleading names on others.
In addition, Havel begins to talk in specific ways about the circumstances of his country at that time — doing so is necessary for thinking clearly in the pages ahead. And likely most important of all, he begins to ask about the real power of these powerless citizens.
Here is the language of section 1 of "The Power of the Powerless" as translated by Paul Wilson:
A specter is haunting Eastern Europe: the specter of what in the West is called "dissent." This specter has not appeared out of thin air. It is a natural and inevitable consequence of the present historical phase of the system it is haunting. It was born at a time when this system, for a thousand reasons, can no longer base itself on the unadulterated, brutal, and arbitrary application of power, eliminating all expressions of nonconformity. What is more, the system has become so ossified politically that there is practically no way for such nonconformity to be implemented within its official structures.
Who are these so-called dissidents? Where does their point of view come from, and what importance does it have? What is the significance of the "independent initiatives" in which "dissidents" collaborate, and what real chances do such initiatives have of success? Is it appropriate to refer to "dissidents" as an opposition? If so, what exactly is such an opposition within the framework of this system? What does it do? What role does it play in society? What are its hopes and on what are they based? Is it within the power of the "dissidents"–as a category of sub-citizen 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.