Prefigurative organizers treated their horizontal democratic process as the movement’s very goal

Evidence

David Graeber, the anarchist and anthropologist from the United States who was active in the new protest movement, went even further. In a 2002 essay for New Left Review, he explained that for them, the means were the ends. They were not doing something in order to get something else. The point was what they were doing. He wrote, “This is a movement about reinventing democracy. It is not opposed to organization. It is about creating new forms of organization. It is not lacking in ideology. Those new forms of organization are its ideology. It is about creating and enacting horizontal networks instead of top-down structures like states, parties or corporations.” He defended “prefigurative politics” and celebrated a “rich and growing panoply of organizational instruments … all aimed at creating forms of democratic process that allow initiatives to rise from below and attain maximum effective solidarity without stifling dissenting voices, creating leadership positions, or compelling anyone to do anything which they have not freely agreed to do.” — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 130

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes prefigurative politics as the core organizing doctrine of the alter-globalization movement.
• XREF: connects to: Prefigurative politics holds that movement structure should mirror desired society — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 82; A major Brazilian protest movement organized as consensus-based and leaderless by design — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 149; Horizontal protest movements that refuse representation get co-opted or crushed by existing powers — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 444 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Prefigurative politics holds that movement structure should mirror desired society #expands (0.93) — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 82
• A major Brazilian protest movement organized as consensus-based and leaderless by design #exemplifies (0.82) — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 149
• Horizontal protest movements that refuse representation get co-opted or crushed by existing powers #complicates (0.78) — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 444