The Parallel Society vs Totalitarianism | How to Create a Free World

The core claim is that freedom under authoritarian rule is more likely to return through building a “parallel society” than through elections or direct confrontation—because state power is corrupting, self-reinforcing, and often too entrenched to be fixed from within. When governments monopolize force, control information, and dominate bureaucracy, voting can become a safety valve that leaves the underlying system intact. In that setting, the practical alternative is to let state structures “collapse in on themselves” while independent institutions—media, markets, education, culture, and community life—expand alongside them, reducing harm and gradually shifting real power.

The concept traces back to Ivan Jirous, a Czech poet and artistic director of the rock band the Plastic People of the Universe. After band members were arrested for refusing to follow communist directives, Jirous urged Czech artists to create infrastructure outside official channels: independent labels, publishing houses, concert venues, and art exhibitions. The hypothesis was straightforward: if enough independent capacity exists, an “independent society” can form as a pocket of creative freedom inside an oppressive state.

Jirous defined this independent society as one not dependent on official communications or the establishment’s hierarchy of values. Crucially, it would not aim to seize power or replace the ruling apparatus with another version of domination. Instead, it would build structures that respect different rules, where the state’s voice becomes an “insignificant echo” from a world organized differently. That nonviolent, non-replacement logic gained momentum through Vaclav Benda, a Czech Catholic philosopher and mathematician, who coined “parallel society” to describe social, cultural, and economic structures unconstrained by the state. At the height of early-1970s repression, Benda pushed for parallel education and scholarship, parallel political structures, a parallel information network, and even free parallel markets—efforts meant to gradually supplant or at least humanize official institutions.

The rationale was also tactical. Communist regimes held a monopoly on force and were too powerful to defeat head-on, so resistance should focus on building alternatives rather than trying to dismantle every oppressive committee. Jacek Kuron captured the mood with “stop burning down committees, let us build our own.” Jirous framed it as mutual self-defense: people who can’t tolerate bureaucratic suffocation eventually invest talents into something “no one will be able to corrupt,” because attempts to improve the official sphere are futile.

Eastern Europe’s late-1980s upheaval is presented as a culmination of these independent efforts. H. Gordon Skilling describes the 1989 revolutions as both mass discontent and the culmination of citizens’ independent activities to defend rights and create parallel or independent society. A concrete example comes from Romania under Nicolae Ceausescu, where Teodor Zamfir built an underground market for Western films despite bans on their possession and distribution. Smuggled and dubbed movies spread Western culture, and dissidents credited those “seeds of freedom” with helping spark the 1989 revolution.

The argument then pivots to today: technology makes parallel structures easier to scale globally. Rather than waiting for a political savior, people can cultivate independent media, alternative exchange systems, decentralized digital infrastructure, and local businesses; they can also support scholarship, art, and education that bypass censorship. As parallel structures grow, the state’s institutions become less necessary, and—through a “metastasis” process—new structures evolve “from below,” eventually withering official systems and softening the blow if they collapse.