In this part of an essay entitled “Politics, Morality and Civility”, Havel concentrates on an important aspect in the development of citizenship. It is evident that Havel’s ideal state involves a cultured citizenship – what he calls “civility” in the wider sense of the world. The fundamentals of a state lie in the building and molding of individuals – upon civility is his future republic based.
From my political ideals, it should be clear enough that what I would like to accentuate in every possible way in my practice of politics is culture. Culture in the widest possible sense of the world, including everything from what might be called the culture of everyday life – or “civility” – to what we know as high culture, including the arts and sciences.
I don’t mean that the state should heavily subsidize culture as a particular area of human endeavour, nor do I at all share the indignant fear of many artists that the period we are going through now is ruining culture and will eventually destroy it. Most of our artists have, unwittingly, grown accustomed to the unending generosity of the socialist state. It subsidised a number of cultural institutions and offices, heedless of whether a film cost one million or ten million crowns, or whether anyone ever went to see it.
It didn’t matter how many idle actors the theatres had on their payrolls; the main thing was that everyone was on one, and thus on the take. The Communist state knew, better than the Czech-Californian philosopher, where the greatest danger to it lay: in the realm of the intellect and the spirit. It knew who first had to be pacified through irrational largesse. That the state was less and less successful at doing so is another matter which merely confirms how right it was to be afraid; for, despite all the bribes and prizes and titles thrown their way, the artists were among the first to rebel.
This nostalgic complaint by artists who fondly remember their “social security” under socialism therefore leaves me unmoved. Culture must, in part at least, learn how to make its own way.
