Prefigurative politics presumes enemy-free circumstances and has deep anarchist rather than only 1960s roots

Evidence

Like the idea of socialism, the logic of prefiguration was the consequence of certain historical developments and intellectual institutions. Back in an imagined state of nature, if you wanted to build yourself a house, it didn’t make sense to act, while you were cutting down the trees, as if you already lived in one. If marauders attack your village, you should probably not respond by acting the way you hope to live when they are gone. The New Left was not the first to rediscover prefiguration in the modern era. In the nineteenth century, anarchists active in the First International (Karl Marx was also a member) had asked, “How could one expect an egalitarian and free society to emerge out of an authoritarian organization! It is impossible.” Breines credited both anarchism and the Gandhian radical pacifists as “real forerunners” of the New Left. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 84

Categorization

• XREF: The house/tree analogy crystallizes the tension Bevins elsewhere raises about protest efficacy when the state attacks — echoes the overall book’s missing-revolution thesis. — connects to: Prefigurative politics holds that movement structure should mirror desired society — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 82

Broader Connections

• Prefigurative politics holds that movement structure should mirror desired society #expands (0.88) — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 82