|
In "Disturbing the Peace," a book that is
essentially an interview with Vaclav Havel conducted through the underground
mail in 1985-86 by Karel Hvizdala, a Czech journalist who had emigrated to
West Germany, Havel is invited to discuss his ideas about systems. This song
puts some of his response into lyrical form. mp3* score: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 *A donation of $1 is suggested
for each song downloaded. Donations can be sent via PayPal
to truecomedy@truecomedy.org
or by check payable to True Comedy Theatre Company, at 212 East 13th Street
#4A, New York, NY 10003, U.S.A. These donations will be used as follows:
one-third of the total donations will be used to pay the artists, one-third
will go to the Dagmar and Vaclav Havel
Foundation VIZE 97, and one-third will be used for the general purposes
of True Comedy Theatre Company, a 501(c)3 nonprofit tax-exempt corporation
incorporated in the state of New York for the purpose of producing original
plays and performance artworks. Contributions are fully tax deductible to the
extent allowed by law. |
Some of Havel's Ideas About Systems When it comes to an economic system, I tend to like decentralization: privately owned and managed operations like crafts and trades and service providers: Small enterprises varied in structure, prizing the forms of different traditions and the locations of their operations, resisting strains toward uniform decisions. One-party systems like Communism don't measure up to two-party models, but even two or three major parties won't guarantee democracy's values. Big multinational corporations function like little Socialist nations: centralization, specialization leading to human devaluation. Who will control the means of production, private concerns or public endeavors? That is the old traditional question, but I would make a different suggestion. What's more important is that these structures be scaled to the human dimension, not that the people working inside them be made to fit the needs of some framework. |