Prefigurative Politics - Paul Raekstad

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and a host of other non-hierarchical movements.9 Also often discussed is the so-called New Democracy Movement – which includes not only Occupy and the Movement of the Squares, but also 15M in Spain, Nuit Debout in France, and more10 – as has a broad swathe of North American social movements.11 Other important examples include 21st Century Socialism12 and Democratic Confederalism,13 which try to combine taking existing state power with certain forms of prefigurative politics. Finally, we would be remiss not to mention the resurgent syndicalist movements worldwide (Ness 2014).

      On a theoretical level, different kinds of prefigurative politics are also being fiercely debated among thinkers drawing on classical anarchist14 and Marxist ideas.15 Most thinkers discuss only one or two kinds of prefiguration, limited themselves to only one or two cases, or they talk about prefiguration as part of, or in relation to, a whole host of other things. They do not provide an overview of the different major strands of prefigurative politics today and the different arguments for and against them. That’s what this book sets out to do, offering a way into thinking about the theory and practices of prefigurative politics, with a particular focus on those parts of it that are important and contested today. Our book does not, however, try to be completely comprehensive or to provide a complete guide to everything that has been and might be labelled ‘prefigurative politics’. To take just one example, we do not write very much about cooperatives, in part because there’s not that much disagreement about their role in the transition to a better society.

      One of the biggest challenges in writing about prefigurative politics is that you can’t simply be told what it is. You can’t properly understand it by simply reading or hearing about what it’s like. You have to experience if for yourself. In fact, as we will see, one of the most prominent arguments for prefigurative politics is precisely that it can show you something that can’t be properly explained through words alone: what free, equal, and democratic forms of social organisation might really be like.

      However, this also highlights one of the limitations of the book. Our views and arguments are significantly shaped by the strengths and weaknesses that our social and historical position brings with it. We are two white people with PhDs who work in Western European universities. Both of us grew up and went to school in Scandinavian countries in the 1990s and 2000s, when social welfare services were generous to those with citizenship, and when university studies were financially well-supported by the public purse. Further studies that would lead to an academic career seemed like a sensible choice for somebody who wanted to pursue radical theory and politics, but who was not from an affluent family. Our primary interest in this topic stems from a desire to see real social change – we don’t only want to speak to other academics. We have therefore written this book in a language that is as readable as possible to a broader audience.

      Before we summarise the chapters, here’s some advice about reading this book. It’s short and compact, but goes over a lot of ideas and arguments. If you’ve mainly trained by studying liberal politics and political ideas, there will be a lot of material here that you won’t be very familiar with. One of the most challenging aspects of this can be understanding the process-based worldview that’s often part of the movements and theory we discuss. We therefore recommend that you read it slowly, take your time, and feel free to go back to things that you don’t quite remember or are confused about. (We often find this useful ourselves.) Chapters 2 and 3 are the heaviest of the book, because they set out the fundamental ideas and definitions you need to be aware of to understand many of the debates and arguments about prefigurative politics we discuss later on. If you find those chapters tough, it might be possible to skip to Chapter 4 onwards and revisit Chapters 2 and 3 a little later once you’ve familiarised yourself with some of the other main ideas and arguments. It would be impossible, however, to fully understand our central arguments without reading those two chapters – so skip them at your own peril!

      The following chapters unfold in a partly logical and partly chronological order, as the debate about prefigurative politics has developed. We start with some historical background on the concept and explain our own definition of it in Chapter 2. Here we explore the different kinds of political ideas and movements that the concept has been associated with (even where the term itself has not been used). These include utopian socialism, anarchism, certain strands of Marxism, and Black feminism. We also look at the term’s development since Carl Boggs’ two articles in 1977, elaborate on our definition of it, and explain why a broad understanding of it is more fruitful than a narrow one.

      We then proceed to the two main interconnected arguments for why prefigurative politics is a necessary part of revolutionary strategy. Firstly, Chapter 4 examines the argument that we need to prefigure the formal decision-making structures of a free, equal, and democratic socialist society in order to build the powers, drives, and consciousness necessary for the transition to such a society. This emphasises that prefiguration is far from something that has been or should be restricted only to local, small-scale organisations – though it applies to those as well. We reconstruct these arguments for prefigurative politics – from the federalists of the First International to contemporary activists – and consider and respond to the most prominent criticisms of such organising. Finally, we consider the limitations of a narrow focus on formal decision-making structures and how it leads us to see the importance of broader understandings of and approaches to prefiguration.

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