The Poverty of Pre-Figurative Politics

“The internal difficulties seem to be almost greater than the external obstacles. For although no doubt exists on the question of “Whence,” all the greater confusion prevails on the question of “Whither.” Not only has a state of general anarchy set in among the reformers, but everyone will have to admit to himself that he has no exact idea what the future ought to be. On the other hand, it is precisely the advantage of the new trend that we do not dogmatically anticipate the world, but only want to find the new world through criticism of the old one. Hitherto philosophers have had the solution of all riddles lying in their writing-desks, and the stupid, esoteric world had only to open its mouth for the roast pigeons of absolute knowledge to fly into it. […] But, if constructing the future and settling everything for all times are not our affair, it is all the more clear what we have to accomplish at present: I am referring to ruthless criticism of all that exists, ruthless both in the sense of not being afraid of the results it arrives at and in the sense of being just as little afraid of conflict with the powers that be.”

Karl Marx, Letter to Arnold Ruge, September 1843

What is the core of pre-figurative politics? It’s found in the slogan “creating the new world within the shell of the old”. What does this position assume and presuppose? It assumes, first and foremost, that it is indeed possible to create the new world here and now: that we can – and should – establish islands, as it were, free from the malaise of the existing order. Thus autonomous spaces – be it punk houses or larger land areas -, cooperative enterprises etc are to be established, and because they are democratic, non-hierarchic and transparent they carry within them the seeds of socialism.

The presupposition for this perspective is not the class struggle. The question asked by the people pushing pre-figurative politics or in the circles they arise, is not “Where does the class struggle go? What problems face the class as a whole or in particular branches?”. On the contrary, the question for them is “What can we do? What use is there in theory when we can live socialism here and now?”. In other words, it’s the activist that here opens its mouth, and a stench of roast pigeons gushes out of him.

But let’s take the prefigurative outlook into consideration as a whole. As mentioned, it’s more often than not pushed as an excuse for activism rather than serious political activity. Be that as it may, prefigurative politics nevertheless take onto itself the task of changing the whole of society. Is the core assumption – to create socialism here and now, if only in smaller capitalism-free islands – tenable? The old Marxologist Andrew Kliman argues it is literally a politics of make-believe. We would add that it furthermore mistakes the core contradictions of capitalism with its management. The problem is not the class contradiction, but lack of democracy – so as long as something is run “really democratically” it naturally is good for and strengthens the class. This malaise of mistaking the class contradiction for one between “those in power” and “the people”, or “democracy” and “real democracy” is common on the left, and especially among the activists of prefigurativity.

It flows naturally from this that, in the case of the coop, as long as an enterprise is run by its workers, it’s socialist. The mistake here is twofold. First of all, private ownership is but one of the central characteristics of capitalism, be it the most central. But this problem is not solved in bits and pieces. The old slogan of “worker’s control” cannot be taken out of the context of full revolution and destruction of the old order, or at least generalised class struggle, that attacks the whole social order of capitalism: commodity exchange, and following from this isolated enterprises; as well as wage labour, state rule, religion, the family… Secondly, in the mind of “prefiguratists” coops are no longer seen as a particular outcome of particular struggles, but something to be used as a strategy.This ignores how and when coops come about. When arising out of a struggle, it’s usually in times of crisis: the capitalist leaves his factory and parts of his machinery behind to seek more fertile grounds for his capital. The workers, left to themselves without a job to go to, go together to continue production on their own. Nothing has changed but ownership and management: the enterprise still produces for exchange – and of course it does: the rest of capitalist society is left untouched. In fact, when workers take over an enterprise in times of crisis, the pressure from the market makes the workers work harder in order to save their business – the workers freely choose to be more exploited. In other words, it’s self-managed misery.

This second point rings similar to the Marxist theory that trusts, state ownership, stock companies etc makes the transition to socialism easier. But when examined closer the point made by the Marxists is fundamentally different: their point is to show that capitalism drives towards a contradiction between private ownership and social production – in other words, the trust, the worker’s owned enterprise (either through stocks or in the case of the coop) etc are still capitalist enterprises.

Another curious point in pre-figurative politics, is the specific role given to the revolutionary organisation. Its role is not to organise revolutionary workers, produce theory and intervene – instead the revolutionary organisation itself is supposed to prefigure the post-revolutionary society. We write “instead”, because all the while it’s possible to do both, those pushing for this kind of politics sacrifice the former for the latter. And since the revolutionary organisation itself prefigures the coming society, it is believed that there is a one-to-one relationship between how the revolutionary organisation organises and the outcome of the revolution. Maybe this wouldn’t be so laughable, had not the real question been how a couple of hundreds of anarchists are to organise themselves. The result of all this is disastrous: a fetish for democracy and organisation, expressed in stale discussions about organisational structures, correct democratic procedures etc, devoid of any political content. And for many, this becomes the main – or even only – “theoretical” discussions the revolutionary organisation intervene in, further delaying any meaningful discussions on class struggle and its ultimate aim: abolishing capitalism.

Let’s chew on this particular problem a little more. What kind of views on the relations between the revolutionary organisation and the class are we met with here? A view that aggrandizes the revolutionaries and their role in the making of revolution – it is again activism that rears its ugly head. Organising is of course important, so is questioning how we organise. But the fact that a handful anarchists believe that they themselves prefigure a society that inevitably has to include 7, 10 or 12 billions – depending on your pessimism – is testimony to a great delusion of grandeur. The problem of the relations between class and party is not overcome by simply ignoring the question.

Contrary to the analysis and politics presented above, we say that, on the contrary, it’s only capitalism that prefigures communism. And only through uprooting capitalist society as a whole, does “worker’s control” make sense. Furthermore, democracy does not solve the antagonisms of capitalist society, not as a whole nor within each enterprise. Whereas the activists of pre-figurativity proudly propose to live socialism today, they tend to preserve the old world within the shell of the new. It is a socialism for the poor, that leave revolutionary theory and activity for the sake of doing something. As opposed to this, we want to create the new world on the ashes of the old.