The term prefigurative politics is widespread within various activist movements, and in short, it describes modes of organization and tactics undertaken that accurately reflect the future society being sought.
The I.W.W. and other anarchist activists refer to this as "building a new world in the shell of the old." If a group is aiming to eliminate class distinctions, prefigurative politics demands that there be no class distinctions within that group. The same principle applies to hierarchy: if a group is fighting to abolish some or all forms of hierarchy in larger society, prefigurative politics demands they do the same within their group. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or the Wobblies) is an international union currently headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. At its peak in 1923 the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. ... Anarchism is a generic term describing various political philosophies and social movements that advocate the elimination of hierarchy and imposed authority. ...
Perspectives on Prefigurative Politics
Anthropologist David Graeber in Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology described the prefigurative politics of those at the 1999 Seattle WTO protest: David Graeber David Graeber is an anarchist and anthropologist. ... Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology is one of a series of pamphlets published by Prickly Paradigm Press in Chicago. ... Protest activity surrounding the WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999, which was to be the launch of a new millennial round of trade negotiations, occurred on November 30, 1999, when the World Trade Organization (WTO) convened in Seattle, Washington, USA. The negotiations were quickly overshadowed by massive and controversial street protests...
When protesters in Seattle chanted "this is what democracy looks like," they meant to be taken literally. In the best tradition of direct action, they not only confronted a certain form of power, exposing its mechanisms and attempting literally to stop it in its tracks: they did it in a way which demonstrated why the kind of social relations on which it is based were unnecessary. This is why all the condescending remarks about the movement being dominated by a bunch of dumb kids with no coherent ideology completely missed the mark. The diversity was a function of the decentralized form of organization, and this organization was the movement’s ideology. (p. 84)
Examples of Prefigurative Political Programs
The Black Panther Party in the United States was responsible for creating what members referred to as survival programs, including the well-known Free Breakfast for Children Program. These programs were designed to provide food, education, medical care and clothing for individuals outside of traditional capitalist relations as well as state social programs. This article is about the American political organization. ... The Black Panther Party (originally called the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense) was a revolutionary Black nationalist organization in the United States that formed in the late 1960s and grew to national prominence before falling apart due to factional rivalries stirred up by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. ... The Free Breakfast for Children Program was a program started by the Black Panther Party in the 1960s. ...
In green politics nonviolence has a central role and it is one of the key values of the green political movement.
Some green political parties, like the Dutch GroenLinks, evolved out of the cooperation of peace movement and the environmental movement in their resistance to nuclear weapons and nuclear energy.
Leon Trotsky, Frantz Fanon, Subhash Chandra Bose, Ward Churchill and Malcolm X were fervent critics of nonviolence, arguing variously that nonviolence and pacifism are an attempt to impose the morals of the bourgeoisie upon the proletariat, that violence is a necessary accompaniment to revolutionary change, or that the right to self-defence is fundamental.
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