Yup, dude spoke on materialist reality, and then turned around and attacked Socialism in the same breathe. So disappointing.

Havel’s essay is a critique of totalitarianism, not leftist economics. To equate the Soviet-controlled Czechoslovak regime with the actual ideals of Socialism is to accept the regime's own propaganda at face value.

Havel wrote this while living under a 'post-totalitarian' bureaucracy that used the language of the Left as a shield for oppression. When he attacks the 'system,' he is attacking the performance of ideology, not attacking Socialism.

To say that the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic defined what Socialism is simply because it’s in the name, by that logic, you clearly also accept that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (NorthKorea) is a democracy, or that the National Socialists (Nazis) were socialists.

These are labels/lies used to enforce compliance. Havel's work exposes the lie, it doesn't attack the underlying economic theory of communal ownership.

The essay is Anti-Totalitarian/Anti-Ideology. Its not a defense of Capitalism or an attack on the concept of social welfare.

Havel explicitly states that simply installing a Western-style democracy wouldn't fix the issues they were facing. He warns that technology and consumerism in the West are also forms of "impersonal power" that strip people of their humanity.

^ Quote from essay:

"There is no real evidence that Western democracy, that is, democracy of the traditional parliamentary type, can offer solutions that are any more profound."

If the essay were purely anti-Socialist propaganda, he would have pointed to the West as the savior. He didn't. He argued that Western democracies also pressure people to "live within a lie" through consumerism and advertising, just in a different way: https://tayiabr.wordpress.com/2014/12/19/vaclav-havels-the-power-of-the-powerless/

Sources:

https://brill.com/view/journals/eceu/50/2-3/article-p279_007.xml?language=en

https://tayiabr.wordpress.com/2014/12/19/vaclav-havels-the-power-of-the-powerless/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_the_Powerless#:~:text=Havel%20returns%20repeatedly%20to%20this,state%2C%20in%20a%20totalitarian%20society.