1 - A New Society in the Shell of the Old

Summary

It is often held that ‘[p]olitics is about ends and means –about the values that we pursue and the methods by which we pursue them’ (Isaac 2002: 32). One question that –explicitly or implicitly, directly or indirectly –seems to be at stake in nearly every debate in political theory and philosophy, then, is: how exactly do these means and ends relate to each other? Does the end justify any means? Or is there a limit to the methods that can legitimately be used to realise one’s ends? Of all tendencies or schools in political theory, anarchism arguably takes the most radical position on this matter: namely, that the means of political action should be consistent with the pursued ends. Many anarchists have insisted that revolutionary movements should seek to embody or reflect their ideal image of a future society within their own practices and organisational structures. The difference between means and ends thus becomes negligible. As the anarchist feminist Emma Goldman wrote in 1924, reflecting on her recent experiences in the newly founded Soviet Union:

There is no greater fallacy than the belief that aims and purposes are one thing, while methods and tactics are another. … All human experience teaches that methods and means cannot be separated from the ultimate aim. The means employed become, through individual habit and social practice, part and parcel of the final purpose; they influence it, modify it, and presently the aims and means become identical. … No revolution can ever succeed as a factor of liberation unless the MEANS used to further it be identical in spirit and tendency with the PURPOSES to be achieved. (Goldman 2003: 260–1)

Throughout the history of anarchist theory and practice, various terms and phrases have been used to pinpoint this particular view of political practice. Today, the term ‘prefiguration’ is often used in reference to this idea ‘that the means be in accordance with the ends’ (Franks 2003: 16). But traditionally, it has also been described as an attempt to ‘build a new society in the shell of the old’ (Graeber 2013: 232–3). In this chapter, I sketch a brief history of prefiguration as an idea of political practice, which outdates its use as a term, and retrace it to the commencement of anarchism as a distinctive political tradition. Anarchists have employed this idea of ‘prefiguration’ in two different, but related, ways.