MATERIALIZMUS A MACHIAVELLIZMUS. POHĽAD MIROSLAVA KUSÉHO NA ČESKOSLOVENSKÚ SPOLOČNOSŤ V OBDOBÍ NORMALIZÁCIE

In the 1970s and the 1980s, the Czechoslovak regime of so called normalization could not reestablish terror of former Stalinist style. Slovak Marxist philosopher and dissident Miroslav Kusý (*1931) interpreted this situation as an agreement between the Communist Party on the one hand and the ruled people on the other which he expressed in the following line: “Shut up and you will be happy”. Kusý argues that an unconditional ban to criticize the political and economic situation of the country was accompanied by a special form of the official language people had to use in their public communication. Accepting these rules, they obtained a satisfaction of their personal economic needs. They were not obliged to believe in the socialist ideology of the Communist Party. However they had to pretend “as if” they did so. This caused a Machiavellian behaviour of common people: in order to gain their material prosperity people acted differently in public than they thought and acted in private.