Live now, as far as possible, the relations of the world you want to build. For in the end the world we make will consist not only of what we wanted but of how we treated one another while walking towards it.
One of the oldest impasses of political movements is how far the bad methods of today may be used in the name of a beautiful future. Can a rigid hierarchy be accepted in order to build an equal society? Can obedience be demanded in the name of freedom? Can a world without violence be built by frightening people? Does the coercion called “temporary” really stay temporary, or does it settle inside the movement and become the shape of the future? History gives no comfortable answers. We have seen many times that good ends do not by themselves make the means good.
The approach called prefigurative politics looks precisely at this tension. The word may sound academic and remote at first, but what it describes is quite simple: live now, as far as possible, the relations of the world you want to build. If you want equality, organise equally; if you want freedom, do not expect blind obedience; if you defend solidarity, do not reward competition internally. The future is not only a goal described in manifestos. It begins to appear already in how a meeting is run, how money is shared, how criticism is received and to whom the work nobody wants to see is left.
The end does not stand apart from the means
The thought “let us take power first, we will free ourselves later” has an attractive side. In today’s harsh conditions, dealing with horizontality, long discussions and broad participation can look slow. When the opposing power centre is extremely organised and ruthless, those fighting it are told they must be more disciplined, more central and faster. A temporary command structure is set up; criticisms are postponed to a suitable time; decisions being taken by a narrow cadre is explained as necessity. It is believed that all of this will be dismantled in the future.
But what we call a means is not a neutral object used on the way to a goal and then put down. It shapes people’s behaviour, their expectations and their relations with one another. A cadre that has worked for years by giving orders does not spontaneously learn to listen on the morning of victory. Nor do people who have constantly obeyed turn into free citizens by decree. An organisation in which secrecy, suspicion and punishment are normal does not suddenly become an open and safe community once it reaches its goal. The habits produced along the way become the material of the destination.
Prefigurative politics is therefore not a call to “be flawless under all conditions.” It does not deny the security needs of people organising under repression, the moments requiring quick decisions, or real inequalities of power. It only asks us to see the trace that every method named as necessity leaves on the future. Rather than assuming that the relation we build today will vanish tomorrow, it reminds us that tomorrow will largely be born from that relation.
The future in the meeting
To understand what kind of world a movement wants it is not enough to read its programme; one must look at its meetings. Who speaks, whose words are cut short, who prepares the agenda, where is the decision shaped before it even reaches the table? Who makes the tea, who takes the notes, how long does it take a newcomer to feel they belong? The distance between grand sentences about freedom and everyday behaviour is sometimes more revealing than any political text.
In a community that calls itself horizontal, a few experienced people may constantly have the last word. The absence of an official leader does not mean leadership has disappeared; it may only make accountability harder. Likewise, leaving tasks open to everyone may not produce equal sharing. Those who are confident take the visible roles while care, cleaning and follow-up fall to the same people. The prefigurative approach therefore treats continual reflection on the structure itself as important. Declaring a principle is not enough; its everyday equivalent must be built.
This should not mean shutting movements into endless internal disputes. Turning every mistake into a moral trial quickly exhausts a small community. But constantly postponing internal power relations by saying “the real issue is bigger” leads to the order opposed outside being reproduced inside. What we call a rehearsal of the future is not showy; sometimes it is as ordinary as shortening a meeting, making room for participants with children, or gently stopping the same person from speaking every time.
Can small-scale experiments change the world?
Cooperatives, common gardens, solidarity kitchens, free-software communities, shared care networks and participatory cultural spaces are the examples most often given of prefigurative politics. They try to test within the present some relations of an order that has not yet arrived. People do not merely demand another world; they show that production, sharing or decision-making can be arranged otherwise.
A justified objection is raised against such ventures: can small, sheltered islands really change the larger economic order? A cooperative may begin behaving like other businesses in order to survive in the market. A solidarity network built on voluntary labour may run on the backs of those with the most time. A shared living space may unwittingly carry society’s class privileges inside. A few hundred people living differently does not abolish the property and state relations that determine the lives of millions.
The value of prefigurative politics is not in treating these experiments as flawless models of the future. It sees them both as fields of learning and as the material support of wider struggles. A solidarity kitchen feeding striking workers is not merely a lovely example of the future; it increases the endurance of today’s struggle. A space used in common is not only an alternative way of living; it creates ground on which people can meet and organise. A small experiment narrows in effect when it becomes an escape from the outside world; when it connects to the struggle outside it can grow unexpectedly.
The trap of the search for purity
Caring about the harmony of means and ends can easily turn into a competition in purity. Who is more horizontal, who is more consistent, whose daily life fits the declared principles better? Once that race begins, politics ceases to be a field in which people can transform together; it becomes a narrow circle in which those who live rightly test those who live wrongly. Yet none of us was raised outside the world we want to change. We learned competition, gender roles, taking refuge in authority and overlooking others’ labour inside the present society. We cannot be purified of these by a meeting resolution.
Prefiguration cannot begin with flawless people. On the contrary, it is the effort to learn to build other relations along with our flaws. What matters is not that a structure makes no mistakes but how it meets mistakes. Is criticism immediately treated as betrayal? Is the person harmed listened to when they can speak? Can someone who takes responsibility change their behaviour without being marked for life? How is the line drawn between accountability and punishment, between safety and exclusion? The ethics of the future are tested most in these difficult moments.
Prefigurative politics must therefore be not a regime of righteousness in which people constantly lecture one another, but a form of relation that makes power visible and keeps transformation possible. Otherwise a new discipline may be built in the name of freedom, and a new order of status in the name of equality.
The future seeps in from the present
When we tie politics only to great moments of victory, we spend most of life in a waiting room. We say we will behave differently after the revolution, once the election is won, when the right government arrives, when economic conditions improve. Until then we put up with today’s hierarchies, its roughness and its small injustices. But a life is lived while waiting, and that life shapes us.
Prefigurative politics does not claim we can bring the future wholly into the present. No small space built amid the state, the market and deep inequalities can escape their influence entirely. Even so, it does not leave the future merely as a distant goal. In every shared decision, every relation of solidarity and every small arrangement towards sharing power, it tries to build a piece of it.
Perhaps the real matter is, before asking which means are “permissible” for reaching our aim, to ask whom the means we use are turning us into. For in the end the world we build will consist not only of what we wanted but of how we treated one another while walking towards it.