1. Protest in Defense of Identity
There are three essential forms of opposing the totalitarian system:
covert passive resistance, overt non-violent protest, and armed struggle. The first form
of activity results, in a way, from a combination of utilitarian calculating and
axiological considerations. The oppositionists may cooperate with the régime and publicly
countenance it, while at the same time they venture to take action in order to liberalize
the system and take the edge off the dictatorship, whenever this is possible, i.e., not
noticed by the authorities, legitimate, or profitable in view of the mildness of the
punishment faced by the offenders. Both individuals and institutions may follow this
pattern. Under the Communist rule in Eastern Europe, even persons holding public offices
in the administration adopted the policy of covert resistance. By putting up this
cunctative opposition, such people renounce their moral principles for a quiet life. In
this rational compromise with the system, evil is tolerated in order to avoid punishment,
and certain values, including moral values, are sacrificed for material profit.
Activity classified as the second form entails evident opposition or
dissidence. Disagreement with the system’s policies is declared, and an ideological
stance is defined, critical of the régime. This is the level of political protest that we
are going to investigate in this article. Under these circumstances, political protest
demonstrates that there is a limit to utilitarian calculating. Concessions are made to the
system (in order to avoid open confrontation and its aftermath), but when the limit is
reached, the opposition, no matter what the consequences, challenges the régime.
Obviously, this need not involve an eruption of riots, as people may refrain from waging a
struggle or setting up barricades, and protest in a non-violent manner.
In 1953, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, the Primate of Poland’s
Catholic Church, formulated the concept of the limit of concession by stating: "Non
possumus—we cannot yield any more." In fact, he was punished for this
declaration by imprisonment.(1) Since then, the opposition
had ceased to pretend that it cooperated with the system, but was not openly contributing
to overthrowing it, either. It merely established a limit that the system must not exceed.
When the level of required concession approached the limit, overt and direct confrontation
ensued, and then the régime "took offense," persecuted and imprisoned
oppositionists, or even had them assassinated, striving to terrify the population lest it
follow suit.
The limit of "non possumus" demarcates the effective
intensity of the identity of the individuals, groups, communities and institutions making
up the opposition: they cannot give in any further without jeopardizing their spiritual
identity and losing the constitutive qualities of their essence; if their concession
exceeded the limit, they might even cease to exist as physically distinct parties, and
become dissolved in an alien element.
Identity is defined in terms of the moral values, principles and
standards adhered to and implemented, as a discrete set of ideas of dignity, honor,
respect and independence. It is the sum total of the qualities that make up the essence of
an agent of activity, causing it to be identical with itself, in spite of the developments
occurring inside and outside it. Thus, it is the spiritual core persevering throughout
changes, and maintaining the unity and consistence of action. An important factor that
sustains identity is the self-consciousness of one’s distinctness and individuality.
It is due to their identity that individuals, groups and institutions exist as independent
agents and have a positive value.(2)
It is the postulate of this article that any dissident activity
undertaken under a totalitarian system comprises—as its substantial, and usually
principal component—the concern over, or intention of, preserving oneself as a
spiritual and moral being. Thus, what is always at stake is, among other things, the
matter of remaining loyal to oneself, asserting one’s identity and fashioning oneself
as a being possessed of a moral value, i.e., free, independent, genuine and maintaining
its dignity.
Two aspects of identity are significant in political protest: the
universal and the particularistic. The former is defined by universal values, rights and
good. The struggle for human dignity, justice and liberty was an important facet of
dissident activity. The concept of human rights, and the Charter of Civil Rights, adopted
as the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe in 1975 (the
Helsinki Accords), and signed by the Communist governments, were instrumental in the
emergence of the anti-Communist opposition, whose representatives referred to them and
demanded that they be observed.(3)
To protect the particularistic identity, people cherished their
national culture, religious values and the ties of community, founded on language, customs
and tradition, and demanded the liberty of promoting this heritage. The protesters
identified themselves with them, and considered squandering it or relinquishing the
struggle for it to amount to self-betrayal. The communities of family, the Church,
literature and youth invariably resisted Sovietization, atheizing, and the upbringing of
the young generation in the spirit of Communism.(4)
The deepest roots of protest against the régime are of a moral and
ideological nature, and may be found in the individuals, their spirituality, values and
self-definition of moral beings. Through resistance, an individual asserts itself as a
moral being, and its decision to undertake dissident activity takes into account its
personal meditation and experience, as well as the contemplation on the general human
condition, on the significance of being human, and on the heritage and values of the
community. It is in the light of these factors that an individual peruses and appraises a
given situation, proposing a desirable state of affairs, and thereby voicing its defiance
of the current circumstances and the practices of the régime.
In the course of this process, identity is sustained as well as
developed and fashioned further. This is because both the individuals’ and the
community’s spiritual activity is awakened and stimulated. Even if the process is
spontaneous, it also evolves at a deeper, spiritual level.
Thus, it is not true that, as some claim, the dissidents are
utilitarians or altruistic egoists, i.e., people driven by personal profit, different only
in that it is in their nature to rejoice when they promote the happiness, liberty and
interests of others. If this were the case, then dissident activity would be merely a
variety of egoism.(5)
In instrumentalist, or utilitarian, activity, the aims are replaceable
and variable, and there is a price to pay for each of them. They may be
"bought," as those who pursue them are induced to give them up or change them.
These are relativistic aims, established with reference to actual or imaginary needs, and
easily replaced by other aims that are equally suitable for the needs. On the other hand,
there are no alternatives to the values that define identity and are implemented even when
the cost of the implementation is higher than the expected profits and benefits,
regardless of the nature—subjective or objective—of the criteria applied to
determine the latter. Dissidents do not seek profit, whether theirs or others’.
Those who oppose totalitarianism do not choose one of the several
available clear-cut options. Their position is one of risk and uncertainty rather than of
confidence. It is not a reckoning of cost and profit that makes them protest, but anger,
desperation and the realization that they have reached the limit beyond which they do not
want to be pushed. They protest because they feel that there is nothing else left to do
and that they cannot go on like this any longer, since this would entail the loss of
material or moral dignity, and denying themselves the right of self-determination and
independent life.
The material standard of living in itself never stirs up opposition
against the régime; it must be accompanied by—at least—a realization of its
injustice or unsuitability for human beings, and a willingness to struggle in order to
demonstrate the validity of one’s consciousness.
The limit at which the non possumus attitude emerges, varies
with societies, nations, institutions or individuals. It depends on the culture,
tradition, upbringing, morality, and even nature of individuals or groups. The
philosophical consciousness and the ability to perceive situations in general terms are
significant factors affecting the establishing of the limit of the concession to the
system.
When exposed to the danger of totalitarianism, the particularistic
identity tends to expand, i.e., to incorporate more and more new properties and values,
considering them important components of itself, and to demand that others (and the
system) acknowledge them. This expansion of the domain of identity and an increase in its
intensity and weight are particularly conspicuous when individuals or groups and
institutions are expressly threatened with physical violence. On such occasions, more and
more qualities, rites and facts become important and sacred for a nation, family or
religious group, and individuals are prepared to sacrifice all, including their lives, in
their defense.
Conversely, when a régime has been imposed by a group that is alien in
the sense of its nationality and religion, and that institutionally aims for a physical
extermination of the oppressed group, then the latter group’s biological survival
takes priority, and spiritual rejuvenation is put off until more propitious circumstances
develop in the future. Such was the case in Poland under the Nazi occupation.
The representatives of the régime are themselves aware of the limits
of identity. Sometimes they provoke controlled confrontation to suppress it at an early
stage. The provocation consists in producing facts or conditions that certain social
groups would deem "insulting" or "unbearable," e.g., arresting a
respected leader, paying "unjust" wages, or dramatic price rises accompanied by
wage-freezing. Such acts offend the sense of honor or dignity of extensive groups of
society.
2. Practical Reason vs. Calculating
Utilitarian (purpose-rational or instrumentalist) action is driven by
amoral interest, while moral (practical) action is motivated by moral values and good, and
the principles of justness. In order to understand political protest, we must distinguish
between personal (private) and social (universal) good and values. The former comprise an
individual’s and its family’s life, health, liberty, safety, dignity and social
reputation; the latter are the same good and values, although concerning the whole of
society and the realm of relations between humans, and additionally the qualities
characteristic of honest community life: justice, truth, equality, integrity, tolerance,
liberty, etc.
In dissident activity, the rules of effectiveness and profit are
subordinated to moral standards and good. This subordination occurs both at the social and
the individual level. The usual case is that what is materially or politically profitable
to the public at large is considered important, although less important than religious and
national values or liberty and civil rights. Accordingly, the protesters appeal to society
to "awaken," relinquish the comfortable life of collaboration and put up a
struggle for spiritual values.
This subordination is even more conspicuous at the level of
individuals, where personal happiness and interests, professional careers and a life of
leisure are sacrificed for dissident activity and the struggle for the just and the good.
Dissidents are not concerned about their own interests and profits, focusing instead on
striving for the community’s good.(6)
Likewise, when choosing values, dissidents renounce their own (moral)
good for a struggle for the community’s.
This, however, does not mean that dissidents adhere to the rules of
value-rational action, as defined by M. Weber.(7) What they
do is consider the advantages and drawbacks of each possible choice and struggle with
themselves. Each such instance of choice is a private trauma, as it requires sacrificing
one’s own and one’s family’s happiness for the community’s values and
good or the principles of justness, without a hope of a "reward" for one’s
devotion. Protesting amounts to making an offering of oneself to the values and
principles, and renouncing profit for justice and the common good.
This choice is the more traumatic and complex as in order to struggle
for the common good, the dissidents must maintain certain individual benefits and values:
their health, life, and intellectual and physical ability; furthermore, action requires
certain material facilities. Thus, dissidents are rational and do not neglect the
instrumentalist aspect of action. Rather than merely immolating themselves, they strive to
make their activity as useful as it is possible within the framework of the accepted
principles and values. Still, this calculating of effectiveness is secondary to practical
considerations of an axiological nature.(8)
Beside the above choices, the protesters must daily make yet another
choice, of fundamental importance: that between greater and lesser social good, or between
greater and lesser evil. As we have stated, what provokes political protest is not any
threat to values and the good, but only the concern over such values as are significant
and essential, and make up group and human identity in a given culture, thereby defining
the limit that cannot be exceeded if one is to remain oneself. Such essential values
cannot be given up or "traded," and other, less significant values are usually
sacrificed to preserve the former.
This division into the more and the less significant is not always
clear, as good and values are seldom ordered in an evident hierarchy, and normally are
assumed as obvious features of activity. It is only when they are in danger that we have
to think them over, establishing priorities of their importance and of action.(9)
The protesters’ meditation concerning the aims and manner of
action in given circumstances, resembles the mode of reasoning that Aristotle describes in
the Nichomachean Ethics when discussing the subject of what action is virtuous in a
certain situation. Dissidents estimate whether in the current circumstances it would be
wise to intensify protest (e.g., by calling strikes), or to content themselves with a
verbal statement of the authorities’ unjust treatment of a certain group. The purpose
of such estimation is to determine a wise course of action or a long-term moral optimum,
taking into account the facts of the reality, among them the effectiveness of action.(10)
This concept may be found, e.g., in Solidarity’s idea of self-contained
revolution. Accordingly, dissidents usually do not call their activity
"political," although it produces political results, and the régime very often
considers it to be political.
The moral plane of struggle, and the struggle for morality, differ from
the utilitarian and strictly political activity, for one thing in that the former
represent a constant effort to sustain and expand the good. Thus, dissidents do not aspire
to overthrow the totalitarian political system, which would be a hopeless and suicidal
mission. Instead, they focus on combating extreme manifestations of evil, those that
disregard the limit of fortitude and the traditional ceiling of the political, i.e., of
submission to the authorities, and serve this purpose through demanding to curb the worst
excesses, and publicly exposing and resisting them. Still, the "worst" does not
cease to exist: as one opportunity for excess is banned, another one automatically emerges
and replaces it.
As we can see, the aims of the spiritual, or moral, struggle are not as
clear-cut as those of the utilitarian activity, and do not constitute specific objects or
conditions, whose fulfillment would satisfy the agents and conclude a given action.
Indeed, each moral aim may be achieved only imperfectly and temporarily, and has to be
sustained through continuous effort; at the same time, a moral attitude requires that the
fulfilled conditions be enhanced and expanded.
As certain worst circumstances disappear, the spiritual life of society
at large becomes more profound and objectively better. The moral consciousness and the
moral requirements that we set to reality undergo changes, as more and more limits are
questioned, and more and more ideals develop and acquire a final shape in specific
situations.
3. Developing an Alternative Society
Beside the form of opposition activity that we have discussed above and
that overtly denies the absolute power of the totalitarian system, there also exists
another, equally important realm of activity, which consists of developing situations and
relationships based on such moral standards, principles and values as kindness,
cooperation, liberty, friendship and religious beliefs. Such attitudes, actions and forms
of community life are independent of the régime and confine its power, although in this
case they do so by developing an alternative world. Thereby, society is offered a
different type of life (to be lived within dissident or religious communities), whose
framework is also defined by the authority of the system. This type of activity, which may
be called "practical virtue," is communicable and spreads through imitation.
Furthermore, it is difficult to fight it, as it pretends to be neutral to the régime: it
questions the system at the pragmatic, rather than the semantic, level, by means of its
assumptions, rather than of its express manifestos or the purposes that it pursues. Thus,
e.g., the motto of the 1980s was: "Don’t set the buildings of the Communist
Party committees on fire—establish your own committees." Consequently, a world
emerges that competes with the official one and is inaccessible to the supporters of the
régime. The inhabitants of this world consider themselves superior to and better than the
proponents of the system, and defy the absolute and ubiquitous relations of power and
supervision to which the system wishes to reduce all social interaction.
Let it be emphasized once more that, contrary to the utilitarian
explanations, dissident activity in all of its forms cannot be considered a mere means to
an external end, in the sense that the activity of a builder constructing a house is a
means to the house which is its product. This is because the former type of activity is a
part of the end, as the very fact of engaging in it undermines the régime. Thus,
dissident activity produces a new reality through democratic cooperation, candid
discussion, development of relationships based on trust, etc. The end, or aim, of such
activity may be found in the activity itself. The very fact of protesting provides a
certain worth, when it produces an extent of liberty and highlights values. For the
protesters, it provides an opportunity to stop consenting to be treated as mere patients
of action, and to turn into agents and competitors, or equal partners, of the régime.
Those who protest do not allow the reduction of themselves, and others, to components of
the system of authority, and develop a reality permeated with moral values and principles,
revealing the unvarnished truth of the totalitarian world.(11)
In the totalitarian system, protesting amounts to walking the tightrope
between life and death, freedom and imprisonment, concession and defiance. The régime
treats dissidents like lunatics. In the Soviet Union, thousands of them were committed to
insane asylums, prisons and gulags. In fact, they may validly be called insane, as their
actions do not take utilitarian calculating into account. What is more, many dissidents
are totally heedless of the rules of effective activity: they protest whenever they can
see evil, although they know in advance that they will not overthrow the system, and will
only place themselves in further jeopardy. In a way, they act like court jesters, except
that the rulers do not tolerate their vagaries.
On the other hand, by treating all the protesters as lunatics and
persecuting them accordingly, the system proves itself to be irrational and certifies
itself as insane. The continuing operation of the régime becomes increasingly expensive,
and those expenses are reimbursed by all the people subjected to its authority, sometimes
even by those outside its sphere of influence. Being unprofitable, the system attempts to
demonstrate its viability by demanding more and more resources, enemies and nations to be
oppressed. The very fact of a formal and public denouncement of the system’s
exceeding the permissible limits of tyranny, material and spiritual robbery, eradication
of tradition, disregard for human dignity and freedom of religion, etc., constitutes a
slap in its face and pillories it. It is so because the system essentially identifies
itself with, and is made up of, its actions. Thus, challenging a specific action of the
system’s implies defying the entire system, which bases on the logic of identity
rather than of profit. Accordingly, when the degree of protest unwittingly and gradually
exceeds the limit of the system’s endurance, the latter may collapse.
Let us finish this inquiry by the following statement: When the
totalitarian system of Communism was overthrown, this was not the result of conscious
organized effort expressly striving to defeat it, but a by-product of actions intended to
establish this system’s limits. Border skirmishes, such as demands for the
legalization of free trade unions, blur the limits and involve both parties in ambiguous
contentions that obfuscate the definition of the conflict, give rise to doubts, make
certain officials willing to grant minor concessions, and produce internal strife within
the authorities. Thus, such skirmishes expose the system’s weaknesses, and especially
its inability to cope with vague and complex situations, and reveal the strength of the
opposition.
Consequently, this type of imperceptible friction may undermine the
essence of the system. At the turning point in history when the trade-union movement of Solidarity
was at the peak of its influence, leading dissident Jacek Kuron observed: "We wanted
to discuss the nation’s issues with the Communist Party, but then it turned out that
the Party was already disintegrating, and no one was willing to represent it."(12)
[Translated by Przemyslaw Znaniecki]
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