The Romance of Prefiguration and the Task of Organization

In this short commentary, I reflect on the strengths and limitations of thinking about social change in terms of prefiguration. It’s a fashionable term in social movements and amongst academic commentators, but is it a helpful one? What practices, strategies and forms of organisation does it exclude? I begin with Carl Bogg’s 1977 essay which defined prefigurative organising as an antidote to party Marxism but does not celebrate it uncritically. I then move on to consider just why so many people seem to be charmed by the idea of prefiguration, before concluding with some remarks on why those committed to prefiguration cannot evade questions of strategy, of a dynamic relation between means and ends, if they wish to address both personal and institutional politics.