This essay was originally published at Deep Transformation Network.
To know what it is I mean by 'prefigurative direct action', you first need to know what prefigurative politics is. So...
Prefigurative politics in a very few words:
Anti-authoritarian activists and theorists often refer to prefigurative politics as "building a new world in the shell of the old." If a group is fighting to abolish some or all forms of hierarchy in society, prefigurative politics demands they individually and as a group adhere as closely to that goal as possible in their everyday political practice. -- from A New World in the Shell of the Old: prefigurative politics, direct action, education | openDemocracy
And from Wikipedia:
Prefigurative politics are the modes of organization and social relationships that strive to reflect the future society being sought by the group. According to Carl Boggs, who coined the term, the desire is to embody "within the ongoing political practice of a movement [...] those forms of social relations, decision-making, culture, and human experience that are the ultimate goal". - Prefigurative politics - Wikipedia
Basically, prefigurative politics is the direct living out of the implications of the premise that the means and ends of political practice ought to be profoundly harmonized, integrated, and matching. In prefigurative politics the means and the ends are essentially the same. If the aim ('end') is to have a non-violent society, then only non-violent means to this end are embraced. If the aim is to put an end to inappropriate and harmful kinds of hierarchical relationships, non-hierarchical social relations are embodied in the social change practice (political practice). If a culture of ecological wisdom is the aim, ecological wisdom is embedded in the social / political practices of the movement.
So prefigurative forms of direct action are the expression in direct action of the full integration of means and ends, tactics and aims, strategy and purpose.
An example would be Mohandas' Gandhi's Salt March, in which Gandhi and his fellow-travelers walked to the sea and 'made salt,' in defiance of the British Raj salt laws. Gandhi's belief was that the salt laws were unjust. He believed Indians who had always been free to 'make salt' before these laws should continue to be free to do so. In defying the salt laws, Gandhi was not merely seeking to get attention from the government. He had not intended to be merely disruptive. Nor was he simply making a point. He aligned his political action with his aim, which was to embody the freedom which Indians had before the salt laws. After Gandhi had done this, "it sparked large scale acts of civil disobedience against the salt laws by millions of Indians," (Wikipedia, Salt March) who themselves simply enacted the freedom they had prior to the salt laws.
By no means are all expressions of prefigurative direct action a form of civil disobedience, as Gandhi's act of making salt was. Most forms of prefigurative direct action do not attract media or public attention. They are not protests. And they don't seek to alter government policies. Examples include creating community gardens and community food forests (in which the food grown there is shared freely into the community and not sold as a market commodity) and riding a bicycle to work instead of driving a car. These are examples of seeking to create a culture in which fossil fuels are less used and less necessary and in which food access is directly tied to food production without turning food into a market commodity. The examples of prefigurative politics as direct action of this kind are innumerable, and seldom are they talked about in public -- or even among mainstream political 'activists'. (I put the word 'activists' in scare quotes because it's a word we should gradually render obsolete by replacing that word with 'citizen' or 'participant' (etc.) -- but this is a topic for another essay.)
I think we ought to talk about prefigurative direct action a great deal more than we do, as I think it has potentially revolutionary potential as political practice. And what we need to actualize this potentially revolutionary potential is to begin to hold many conversations -- everywhere -- about prefigurative direct action in a systems context. But to do this we need to understand what systems are and how they function. Most importantly, we need to understand how physical / material systems are intertwined with social and cultural systems, and how we simply cannot shift one of these kinds without shifting the other.
Most of us here in Deep Transformation Network are somewhat knowledgeable about systems. But let me quickly describe what a system is, anyway. The Wikipedia article on systems says,
A system is a group of interacting or interrelated elements that act according to a set of rules to form a unified whole. -- System - Wikipedia
'Rules' is not the best word here. Systems do sometimes function according to 'rules," (especially when they are social or cultural systems) but more generally they tend to function according to laws and principles -- or what is sometimes referred to as 'the habits of nature' (to avoid the word 'laws', which can be misleading, sometimes). Some of the habits of nature are so utterly and dependably reliable and predictable that early modern scientists took to calling them 'laws of nature'. I only mention this because the word 'laws' feels to me less than a perfectly apt term for what we mean by 'nature's laws' (also the subject for another possible future essay).
Also, 'elements' are often referred to as 'parts', and systems are comprised of 'parts' which often (at least) are yet other systems.
Sometimes systems are so complex (or complicated) that they boggle the mind. So it's helpful to identify relatively simple systems, or systems which can be understood in relatively simple terms -- even though these are inevitably intertwined with yet other complex systems. It can't hurt to explore systems at the most basic level of simplicity while acknowledging that it always gets more complex (or complicated) when we examine systems more fully and carefully. So I offer this video for a very basic introduction: Thinking in Systems - Level 1 - Parts Working Together - YouTube
Systems only function when they are whole -- which is to say when they are not broken. That is, a system functions as a system when all of the parts or 'elements' are working together as a whole.
There will be a part two of this essay, so I'll conclude for now by saying just a few words about why, as I see it, the revolutionary potential of prefigurative direct action tends not to be realized in practice.
We fail to make the most of the revolutionary potential of prefigurative direct action (PDA) mostly because we tend not to understand prefigurative direct action in systems terms. And when we don't understand PDA in systems terms we tend to neglect crucially important 'elements' of the system we are engaging with. This is usually the case when we don't understand how systems interconnect with yet other systems -- such as how social and cultural systems interconnect with physical and biological systems. Or how various social and cultural systems are intertwined.
The result is that we have little shared know-how about how to have (unfold) a revolutionary movement which makes the best use of the revolutionary potential of PDA. Note, for example, that I just now switched from have to unfold. The first term is about the possession of something. The second is about engaging in a process. Systems are not things, ultimately, but processes. To understand effective social movements we need to understand systemic processes.
Mostly, in my view, our various movements are making a giant blunder in not taking a very thorough look at how media and educational institutions function in cultural systems, as cultural and social systems. We wonder why we are not growing our movements to an adequate level of informed participation, but we don't tend to lift the hood and look under it to see how this engine works. And we do not sufficiently address the problem of how to create media which isn't mostly simply propaganda for ... well, the Megamachine, or The Life-consuming machinery of the cultural mainstream. We need to understand why a shift of perception and understanding (through education and media) is necessary for a flourishing Constructive direct action movement.
For this reason, we do not think in terms of Instructive direct action as a crucially necessary component (part, element) of a whole system which has Constructive direct action as its necessary compliment.
To address the whole we need to lift the hood and look at the parts under it. We need to see how the parts fit together to form a system.
If we are to have an adequate Constructive direct action movement, we'll need to have an adequate Instructive direct action movement. Only then will we begin to realize the revolutionary potential of a whole movement. (I'll try and make this all more clear in part 2.)
In part two of this essay, I'll explain why little things matter far, far more than we tend to realize. Little actions. Little projects. Little local engagements with only a very few people. So I'll begin to explain micro-eutopian theory and praxis as a systems perspective on why small is beautiful ... and crucially necessary.
Prefigurative Politics
Beautiful Trouble
https://beautifultrouble.org/toolbox/tool/prefigurative-politics/