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The Power of the Powerless.
Havel, Václav. "The Power of the Powerless." In Living in Truth, edited by Jan Vladislav, 36–122. London: Faber and Faber, 1986.
Why this matters here
Havel’s 1978 essay “The Power of the Powerless” imagines the greengrocer who posts a slogan he need not believe, showing how systems persist in the space between people who each avoid being first to acknowledge what everyone can see. When Others Become Leaders uses that scene to mark leadership as the costly interruption of performed agreement, not merely the occupation of office. Havel analyzes living within a lie; the book asks how leadership circulates when performance has become the price of remaining safe.
