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Paul Raekstad. Prefigurative Politics
Contents
Guide
Pages
Prefigurative Politics. Building Tomorrow Today
Copyright page
Acknowledgements
1 Introduction
(a) Prefigurative Politics Before It Was Named
(b) The Term and the Idea
(c) About This Book
(d) The Chapters of the Book
Notes
2 What Prefigurative Politics Is and Is Not
(a) Prefigurative Politics Gains its Current Meaning
(b) Prefigurative Politics as Organisational Structure
(c) A Broader Conception
(d) Is Everything Prefigurative?
Notes
3 Praxis and Social Change
(a) Powers
(b) Drives
(c) Consciousness
(d) Praxis and Social Change
Notes
4 Decision-Making in Large-Scale Organisations
(a) Federalism in the First International and Beyond
(b) The Arguments for Formal Prefigurative Decision-Making Structures
(i) Empowerment
(ii) The Drive to Change
(iii) Consciousness-Raising
(c) The Necessity of Hierarchy?
(d) Political Organisation and Seeking State Power
(e) Defence
(f) The Formal and the Informal
Notes
5 The Personal is Political
(a) The Personal/Political Distinction
(b) Addressing Informal Hierarchies and Inequalities
(c) Reason and Emotions
(d) Intersectionality
Notes
6 Prefigurative Politics and the State
(a) State Power Neither Sufficient Nor Necessary
(b) The Praxis of the State
(c) State Power and Building a New Society
(d) Nationalisation and Dictatorship
(e) 21st Century Socialism
(f) Democratic Confederalism
Notes
7 Radical Prefigurativism, Not Liberal Individualism
(a) Prefigurative Politics as Naive
(b) Prefigurative Politics as Insular
(c) Prefigurative Politics as Divisive
Notes
8 Conclusion: Now. Here. You
Bibliography
Index
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Paul Raekstad
Sofa Saio Gradin
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Boggs was not surprised that this approach to socialist revolution has led, not to free, equal, and democratic utopias, but to regimes that have often reproduced the very hierarchies they were intended to oppose. Boggs’ two articles touch on several key issues that we will expand on in this book: the tension between prefigurative approaches to revolution and the seizure of the state; an attention to informal as well as formal power relations; and a focus on hierarchies that stem from other relations than class relations, such as patriarchy, white supremacy, and ableism.
The definition of prefigurative politics Boggs provided was a broad one: an organisation or movement embodying ‘those forms of social relations, decision-making, culture, and human experience that are [its] ultimate goal’ (1977b: 100). Subsequent authors have defined prefigurative politics more narrowly; for example, some focus only on the use of horizontal organisational structures in social movement groups, and others on an apparent reluctance by social movements to organise strategically (see e.g. Breines 1980; Smucker 2017). Like Boggs, we prefer a broader definition of prefigurative politics, but we have our own exact formulation. We define prefigurative politics as the deliberate experimental implementation of desired future social relations and practices in the here-and-now. We will use ‘prefigurative politics’ and ‘prefigurativism’ synonymously to refer to this idea.7 This definition captures a wide variety of things that get labelled prefigurative politics – from the organisational debates in the First International to the subversion of gendered norms in the contemporary feminist movement. Being committed to prefigurative politics means being committed to the idea that if we want to replace certain social structures, then we need to reflect some aspect(s) of the future structures we want in the movements and organisations we develop to fight for them. On this definition, prefigurative politics is a much more common phenomenon than is often thought. It is not an alternative to struggle against our society’s oppression, exploitation, and injustice; it’s a way of carrying that struggle out.
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