2 Maeckelbergh Doing Is Believing

Social Movement Studies,
Vol. 10, No. 1, 1–20, January 2011
Doing is Believing: Prefiguration as Strategic

Practice in the Alterglobalization Movement
MARIANNE MAECKELBERGH
Downloaded By: [Maeckelbergh, Marianne][Universiteit Leiden / LUMC] At: 18:37 11 March 2011
Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands
ABSTRACT In most accounts of social movements, prefiguration and strategy are treated as
separate movement practices that are either contradictory or complementary to each other. In this
article I argue that in the case of the alterglobalization movement, we have to understand
prefiguration itself as strategic. When movement goals are multiple and not predetermined, then
prefiguration becomes the best strategy, because it is based in practice. By literally trying out new
political structures in large-scale, inter-cultural decision-making processes in matters ranging from
global politics to daily life, movement actors are learning how to govern the world in a manner that
fundamentally redesigns the way power operates. This process constitutes a prefigurative strategy in
which movement actors pursue the goal of transforming global politics, not by appealing to
multilateral organizations or nation-states, but by actively developing the alternative political
structures needed to transform the way power operates.
KEY WORDS : Prefiguration, alterglobalization movement, horizontality, diversity, strategy
Introduction
We need not conquer the world. It is enough to make it anew.
Subcomandante Marcos, 1996
Ever since the alterglobalization movement made itself visible to the world on the streets
of Seattle by shutting down the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting, many scholars
have tried to understand what holds this highly diverse and divergent movement together.
The coalitions and coordination between movement actors who for all intents and
purposes held different goals, adversaries, and identities baffled many spectators.1 If we
want to understand why these diverse groups came together, and especially how they came
together, then we have to examine not external messages, but internal movement
organizing practices. Multiple threads tie this diverse movement together, and each thread
forms one unity in a series of overlapping unities that form the basic network structure of
this movement. Although certain unities are more prevalent than others (such as disdain
for neoliberal economics and contemporary forms of representative democracy) there is no
singular goal, adversary, or identity that is shared by all movement actors except at the
Correspondence Address: Marianne Maeckelbergh, Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development

Sociology, Leiden University, Wassenaarseweg 52, 2333 AK Leiden, The Netherlands. Email: mmaeckelbergh@
fsw.leidenuniv.nl
1474-2837 Print/1474-2829 Online/11/010001-20 q 2011 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/14742837.2011.545223
2 M. Maeckelbergh
most abstract level of desiring ‘(an)other world(s)’. When we listen to what movement
actors are saying and examine what they are doing, we see that the term ‘process’ saturates
movement discussions, spaces, and practices. The quantity of discussion about process
within movement spaces is already astounding, but even more impressive is the quality of
this discussion: getting the ‘process’ right is a passionate business. Whenever the term
‘process’ is invoked, it comes coupled with passion, anger, hope, and power, so much so
that the term becomes impossible to ignore.
This article takes the quote from Marcos, above, as a starting point to argue that
the veritable obsession with process found within the alterglobalization movement is
indicative of a crucial shift in the way movement actors understand how social change can
be enacted. This movement does not seek to conquer the world; it seeks instead to build the
world anew. ‘Process’ refers simultaneously to this active building of another world and
to the political structures needed to govern that other world. Hence, the reason ‘process’
stirs such deep emotion and so much discussion. What ‘making the world anew’ means for
theories and practices of social change and how these theories are related to visions of
what this new world might look like are the subjects of this article.
I argue that the alterglobalization movement rests upon a practice of social change that
takes prefiguration as the most strategic means for bringing about the social change they
desire. In order to make this argument, I begin with a discussion of the literature on
prefiguration and strategy showing how these two terms are commonly understood to
be either antonyms or complementary to each other, but nearly always as two separate
or contradictory movement practices. I then turn to the role of prefiguration within the
network structures of the alterglobalization movement, drawing on both literature and
ethnography to demonstrate that prefiguration plays a central role in the alterglobalization
movement. I take up the question of ‘goals’ and the strategic pursuit of goals arguing that
given the alterglobalization movement’s affinity for diversity (including as many different
voices and goals as possible) and horizontality (a continuous process of challenging the
centralization of power to attain as much equality as possible between actors) as the basis
for new forms of network democracy; prefiguration is the most effective strategy (perhaps
the only strategy) because it allows for goals to be open and multiple. In the final section,
I briefly explain how prefiguration represents a fundamentally different, but equally
strategic, way to conceptualize processes of social change.
The argument presented here is based on over 10 years of involvement in the
alterglobalization movement and nearly seven years of research into decision-making
practices of the alterglobalization movement. Specifically, I participated actively in the
organizing processes for the anti-G8 mobilizations in 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2008,
followed the process for 2007 very closely from afar, and participated in several other anti-
summit mobilizations from the WTO in Seattle (1999) to the anti-NATO summit in
Strasbourg (2009) and the anti-UNFCCC in Copenhagen (2009). I not only focused on
street protest, but I also participated actively in the alternative villages constructed for the
duration of the anti-summit mobilizations. These villages house the thousands of activists
that come to protest, and they are set up intentionally as a chance to practice, to try out,
various ways to organize a community in a more inclusive, sustainable, and egalitarian
way. These camps are, therefore, a place where many of the values and practices described
in this article come to the fore. I also worked in the offices of the European Social Forum in
2003 and 2004 and the World Social Forum in 2004. I followed the preparatory meetings
Prefiguration as Strategic Practice 3
where decisions are officially taken as well as the implementation of these decisions
through the administrative workings of the office.
My role was, therefore, not only that of someone who was interpreting the practices of
the alterglobalization movement, but also that of someone actively involved in creating
these practices (see Mosse, 2002), a commitment which preceded my decision to do
research. What I offer, therefore, is an ethnography written at least partially from the
‘inside’ and this position allows me to practice what Wood (1998) has called ‘participant
comprehension’ (in Mosse, 2002, p. 6). Although somewhat controversial at the time, the
choice for this type of deep and active involvement in movement activities turned out to be
invaluable.2 I found myself caught up in an interplay between proximity and distance that
was negotiated through doing. The more I did, the more connected I became within the
movement’s network structures, and the more insight I gained into how these structures are
formed and transformed over time. Simply attending a meeting allowed me to see what
topics were discussed and to hear who thought what about the various topics, but when I
facilitated the meetings myself, I gained insight into how the agenda for meetings is put
together as well as the kinds of adjustments movement actors make when they transform
abstract values into context-specific practices. Helping with the implementation of
decisions, taught me much more than observation alone could have about how the power
structures within movement networks function, not in theory, but in practice.
Perhaps, most importantly, however, I realized that the only way to learn how the
practices described in the pages to come actually work is through doing. How
‘horizontality’ and ‘diversity’ work is very hard to explain in words, but it is obvious to
people who experience it. As Graeber (2002, p. 72) writes, ‘It’s one thing to say, “Another
world is possible”. It’s another to experience it, however momentarily.’ Being actively
involved was essential for me to fully understand the key characteristic of prefigurative
politics – namely that prefiguration is something people do. Prefiguration is not a theory of
social change that first analyses the current global political landscape, develops an
alternative model in the form of a predetermined goal, and then sets out a five-year plan for
changing the existing landscape into that predetermined goal. Prefiguration is a different
kind of theory, a ‘direct theory’ (Sturgeon, 1995, p. 36) that theorizes through action,
through doing. As discussed below, what makes the alterglobalization movement different
from previous movements is that the alternative ‘world’ is not predetermined; it is
developed through practice and it is different everywhere. This goal of pursuing ‘(an)other
world(s)’ in an open and explicitly not predetermined way requires practice over time, and
that is what makes prefiguration the most strategic approach.
Prefiguration, the creation of alternatives in the here and now, enacts an interplay between
theory and practice that was reflected in my own experience of distance and proximity.
Theory can be developed from a distance, but practice can only be developed through doing.
Since the movement wants to develop new, more inclusive political practices for governing,
the ‘process’ becomes essential because it is within their own organizing process that they
are experimenting with the best possible way to enact democracy on a global scale. It may
seem overly ambitious, but when these hundreds of thousands of movement actors come
together at the World Social Forum or an anti-summit mobilization, part of what they are
trying to achieve is to set up more inclusive forms of global decision-making that are
capable of replacing contemporary forms of global governance. This article explores how
this goal is best served by prefigurative strategies for social change.
4 M. Maeckelbergh
Prefiguration and Strategy

Practising prefigurative politics means removing the temporal distinction between the
struggle in the present and a goal in the future; instead, the struggle and the goal, the real
and the ideal, become one in the present. Franks (2003, p. 17) argues that direct action
should be considered prefigurative because ‘what is desired must also be involved in
the methods of reaching that aim.’ Fuller (1989) describes the presence of prefigurative
politics in Peace Movement Organizations (PMOs), arguing that ‘in these movements
organizational structures and processes are an “action form”, a method of protest in itself
rather than simply a means to mobilise resources’. And according to Sitrin (2006, p. 4),
prefigurative movements are ‘movements that are creating the future in their present social
relationships [ . . . ] social change isn’t deferred to a later date by demanding reforms from
the state, or by taking state power and eventually instituting these reforms’.
Before embarking on the analysis of prefiguration as strategic, it is necessary to first
examine the common argument that prefiguration is either astrategic or complementary to
strategy, but certainly not itself strategic. In the movements of the 1960s, prefiguration
could not be considered strategic because ‘strategic’ was conflated with ‘organized’ and
definitions of ‘organized’ were still being determined by the traditional left political
parties. Epstein (1991, p. 18), drawing on years of activism and research within women’s
movements, anti-nuclear and non-violent direct action movements, argues that the direct
action movement enacts a ‘rejection of strategy’ in favour of prefiguring a cultural
revolution, in which ‘culture is a substitute for strategy’. Cultural revolution, for Epstein,
is societal change beyond the economic and political realm, ‘a broad redefinition of social
values’ (1991, p. 16). She considers redefining social values to be ‘astrategic’, however,
and concludes that, ‘the postmodernist spirit [ . . . ] reinforces the movement’s most
crippling weaknesses, its avoidance of strategy and its disdain for lasting organizational
structure’ (Epstein, 1991, p. 19). Epstein, therefore, concludes that prefiguration was
astrategic for these movements because it was ‘cultural’ and because they had no ‘lasting
organizational structure’. Strategy in the movement contexts researched by Epstein meant
having explicitly political aims and a lasting organizational structure through which to
pursue those aims and prefiguration meant looking-inward toward the movement itself as a
community to be culturally transformed (Epstein, 2002).
Polletta (2002, p. 6), drawing primarily on the history of movements from the long
1960s (1956 to the mid-1970s) in the US, describes a tension between strategy and
prefiguration as the main dilemma faced by the New Left, for whom ‘to be “strategic” was
to privilege organization over personhood and political reform over radical change’. Here,
two important assumptions emerge: first, the recurring conflation between ‘organization’
and strategy and second, the idea that actions that demand reforms from the state are more
strategic than those geared toward radical change. Prefiguration on the other hand is
associated with personhood, identity, and culture. Despite these considerable divergences
between definitions of prefiguration and strategy, Polletta does not conclude that the
prevalence of prefigurative politics within 1960s movements made them astrategic.
Instead, she argues that these movements were both prefigurative and strategic.
Polletta (2002) and Breines (1989) capture a transition that was occurring in the
movements of ‘the long 1960s’. Polletta (2002, p. 3) emphasizes that ‘participatory
democracy’s potential benefits [ . . . ] cannot be reduced to “personal” or “cultural”
changes. They go to the heart of political impact’. But New Left activists were developing
new practices in a context where the left was dominated by communism, for which
‘centralized, bureaucratic organization with a pyramidal chain of command [was]
efficient, rational, proper, and a sign that the organization [was] mature and effectively
able to mobilize its members and accomplish its objectives’ (Gerlach, 1983, p. 133, cf.
Dalton et al., 1990, p. 13). Polletta’s insight is of crucial importance because it draws our
attention to the question of who defines strategy, and it exposes the link between strategy,
prefiguration, and theories of social change, to which I return below.
Breines (1989) shows how these definitions of strategy stem from traditional left politics.
Breines points out that in PMOs, ‘being realistic was associated with traditional politics,
with instrumentality and organizational strategy’. Here strategy becomes by definition,
only possible only through ‘traditional politics’, ‘instrumentality’ and ‘organization’.
Breines (1989, p. 49) sets up an oppositional relationship between prefiguration and
strategy arguing that ‘the creation of non-violent social structures within PMOs may
be characterized as “prefigurative” politics, as opposed to “strategic” politics’, she
nevertheless sees prefiguration and strategic politics as parallel processes:
alongside the new left’s prefigurative impulse was what I have called strategic
politics, which was committed to building organization in order to achieve major
structural changes in the political, economic and social orders. (Breines, 1989, p. 7)
For Breines, Polletta, and Epstein, ‘strategy’ for movements of the New Left and for anti-
nuclear/peace movements was equated with setting up strong ‘organizational’ structures in
an instrumental pursuit of ‘major structural changes in the political, economic and social
order.’
Breines (1989, p. 50), however, points out that the rise of prefigurative politics came
coupled with and represented a questioning of this instrumental rationality at the heart of
‘strategy’. Between the long 1960s and today, movement practices slowly transformed the
definition of ‘organized’, and consequently of ‘strategic’. For many in the movements of
the long 1960s, Communism with a capital C increasingly fell into discredit (due in part to
the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 and subsequent invasion of Czechoslovakia in
1968) as the New Left and various anarchist and situationist inspired movements gained
in popularity (Eley, 2002, p. 316; Horn, 2007, pp. 131 –152; Hecken & Grzenia, 2008).
Prefigurative politics is associated primarily with the latter tendencies, and has long been
an important practice in anarchist communities, philosophies, and movements (Bakunin,
1984; Grubacic, 2003; Bowen & Purkis, 2004; Graeber & Grubacic, 2004; Morland,
2004). This transition from Communism with a capital C to new and plural forms of
politics was slow, and consequently prefigurative politics gained popularity in a political
context still defined by the structures and actors of the ‘old’ left, for whom organization by
definition entailed hierarchy.
Franks (2003, p. 20) argues that communist theories of social change rest on what is
actually a very limited definition of strategy, that of ‘Leninist-consequentialist’ strategy, in
which ‘actions are judged by whether they assist or hinder the revolutionary goal’, and he
specifically contrasts this approach to both deontologicalism and prefiguration. In so doing
he reinforces the distinction between strategy and prefiguration, allocating the former to
communism and the latter to anarchism, but by doing so he exposes the assumption that
strategy is generally presumed to be the pursuit of a predetermined and singular goal –
‘the revolutionary goal’. With this insight, the link between definitions of strategy and
6 M. Maeckelbergh
particular theories of social change is laid bare, and we can see that the dominant definition
of ‘strategy’ on the left is shaped by communist and socialist theories of social change that
posits a linear march toward a moment in the future, in which both the path and the goal
are predetermined even before the struggle ensues. If we can only speak of strategy when
there is a singular and predetermined goal (see May, 1994, pp. 10 –11; Franks, 2003, p. 29)
then indeed, prefiguration and strategy may more often be enemies than comrades. But this
definition of strategy is not a universal definition; it is a definition generated from a
specific historical context and by a particular political tendency.
This dominant view has assumed that strategy necessarily has to involve hierarchical
and fixed organizational structures in the pursuit of a predetermined and singular political
goal. Prefiguration on the other hand is thought to be cultural, unorganized, and without
any goal beyond the enactment of new cultural relations in the here and now among
movement actors. Even if these definitions of strategy and prefiguration held true for
movements of the long 1960s and into the 1980s, the alterglobalization movement gives us
plenty of reason to question if this is still the case today.
We need to boil strategy back down to the basic definition found within all of this
literature, namely that of ‘building organization in order to achieve major structural
changes in the political, economic and social orders’ (Breines, 1989, p. 7). ‘Organization’
needs to be able to take forms other than hierarchical and fixed and structural change to
political, economic, and social orders needs to encompass more than only demanding
reforms from the state. These definitional shifts can easily be made without losing the
essence of the meaning of strategy as that which ‘orients tactics according to a final goal’
(Derrida, 1982). Although it might be necessary to remove the word ‘final’ from this
definition in order to apply it to the alterglobalization movement, once we reframe
definitions of strategy in this way, we can reject the historically specific (and contentious)
conflations between organization and hierarchy, and between goal and singularity, in order
to reinterpret the relationship between tactics and goals, organization and social change in
such a way that it becomes possible to see how prefiguration within the alterglobalization
movement can be and is strategic.
The Politics of Process: Prefiguration in the Alterglobalization Movement

Several scholars writing on the alterglobalization movement have identified the centrality
of prefiguration in this movement and have stressed the need to understand movement
practice as a reflection of its goals. Smith (2008, p. 203) writes of ‘experiments in global
democracy’, arguing that alterglobalization movement actors ‘model and enact a different
vision of how the world might be organized’. Polletta (2002, p. 199) argues that
participatory democracy has a ‘normative’ aspect in which ‘participatory democratic
decision-making is at once a means and an ends’. Teivainen (2008, p. 155) observes that
‘many of today’s globalization protest movements seem to take more seriously the idea
that democratic change needs to be generated through democratic forms of action’ and
Juris (2008, p. 295) argues that ‘radical anti-corporate globalization activists are not only
seeking to intervene within dominant public spheres; they are also challenging
representative democracy, in part by developing their own directly democratic forms of
organizing and decision making’.
If we examine closely this ‘different vision of how the world might be organized’,
we see that in the alterglobalization movement ‘democratic forms of action’ are indeed
intended to ‘generate democratic change’ that is not directed at ‘dominant public spheres’
but rests upon a ‘rejection of representative democracy’ so fundamental that it requires
movement actors to develop ‘their own directly democratic forms of organizing’ – not to
amuse themselves – but in order to develop more inclusive decision-making structures
with which to replace existing forms of representative democracy (be they multilateral
organizations or nation-states). It is this last step that of understanding the creation of
new political structures as intended to replace existing political structures, that is often
under-explored in the literature and leads to the reinforcement of the strategy/prefiguration
dichotomy. In the rest of this article, I address process, goals, organization, and theories of
social change within the alterglobalization movement in order to show how prefiguration
is strategic for this movement.
In the alterglobalization movement, prefiguration is most often spoken about in terms of
‘process’. In nearly every space of the alterglobalization movement that I researched, the
question of ‘process’ was of crucial importance, though it was certainly not equally
important to all actors and in all spaces. Prefiguration and process were unarguably more
developed within the autonomous sections of the anti-summit mobilizations (see Graeber,
2002, 2009; Lang & Schneider, 2003; Nunes, 2005; Maeckelbergh, 2009) rather than in
Social Forum spaces, and I will, therefore, focus this section on Social Forum organizing
to show that, even when contested, process is far from being a marginal concept within the
alterglobalization movement. The European Social Forum and World Social Forum are
the ultimate examples of the importance of process within the alterglobalization
movement because many of the actors central to the ESF and WSF are members of
political parties, trade unions, or other ends-oriented mainstream organizations, like
ATTAC, or all of the above. It is, therefore, notable that questions of process and
prefiguration (typically associated with anarchism) still define the agenda in Social Forum
spaces.
The discussions about process present in ESF organizing processes reflect a transition
from ‘traditional left’ politics to a more open and decentralized form of politics
characteristic of the alterglobalization movement. Teivainen (2008, p. 169) describes the
‘old-left ideals’ as ‘focusing almost exclusively on some particular contradiction of the
world, defined by a central committee, and leaving everything else to be resolved after
the great transformation’, and writes of the World Social Forum process that ‘there exists a
new conception of the political that transgresses traditional definitions, especially, though
not only, vis-à-vis territorial states and political parties’. He cites Grzybowski, a ‘key’
organizer of the Brazilian WSF, who insists that the WSF ‘must be radically political’ and
engage in a ‘new way of doing politics’ (Teivainen, 2008, p. 160).3 This ‘new way of
doing politics’ is captured in what movement actors call process.
Within Social Forum organizing, ‘process’ is a hotly contested topic. Many of the
interventions at the preparatory meetings for the 2004 ESF were about process, with many
people insisting that the process ought to be more ‘inclusive’ and ‘open’ with more
‘participation’:
The process is as important as the ESF itself and we cannot have a different world
if we don’t force ourselves to practice a different way of working together, based not
on self-appointed representation but on a wider inclusive process in which all the
differences can express themselves and reclaim the right to participate (UK Local
Social Forum Network, 2004, emphasis original).
8 M. Maeckelbergh
In this quote, we explicitly see the link being made between process and prefiguration.
A different world is deemed impossible unless the movement can ‘practice a different way
of working together [ . . . ] based on a wider inclusive process’. This point about process
had to be made explicitly, however, because there were people in key positions within the
2004 ESF coordinating committee who felt process was not important. These movement
actors were from the ‘traditional left’ and they rejected the importance of process in favour
of focusing on ‘politics’. On 11 October 2003, Alex Callinicos of the Socialist Worker’s
Party and Project K wrote the following in an email:
I’ve been reading the debate about the London Social Forum with some
bemusement. Most of the discussions by focusing on process rather than substance,
miss the point. The important question is: What is the politics of the London Social
Forum? (email, Callinicos, 2003).4
Here, we see the classic dichotomy between politics and process emerge, a dichotomy
that the alterglobalization movement explicitly rejects. Although this dichotomy is most
common among members of the ‘old left’, it is not only anarchists and autonomists that
reject the dichotomy between politics and process; many of the interventions about the
importance of process come from the members of communist parties and trade unions, and
process is even enshrined in the Social Forum Charter of Principles, where it is written
that ‘from now on’ the WSF ‘becomes a permanent process of seeking and building
alternatives, which cannot be reduced to the events supporting it’ (WSF BOC & IC, 2001).
Those who advocate process, therefore, are also understood to have power of the Charter
of Principles behind them and they can claim that the basic principles of the Social Forum
have been violated whenever the process is undervalued. Many of the replies to Callinicos’
email did just that:
What Alex doesn’t seem to understand is that for many people, this movement is
PRECISELY and primarily about process. The movement towards another world
must be democratic, transparent and accessible, lest we become what we are fighting
against (email, Sellwood, 2003, capitals original).
Here again we see the assumption of prefiguration expressed in terms of process. The
association made by Sellwood between means and ends of movement organizing is
expressed as fears that the movement will become what they are fighting against unless
they practice a very different form of politics, one in which the process is central.
The process of organizing has consequences for their ability to change the world.
The important point here is that the means are valued not in and of themselves, but
because they have consequences (and because they are consequences). In this sense,
prefiguration is not even a rejection of consequence-oriented action, though it is a rejection
of consequentialism which privileges the ends to the complete exclusion of the means.
Prefiguration is a practice that assumes the ends and the means to be inextricably linked,
where the means are the result of past ends and result in future ends, and therefore
prefiguration rejects a focus on either means or ends to the exclusion of the other. These
‘consequences’ of the process are important not because otherwise the process will not
match some cultural ideal, but because movement actors believe that the process they
develop now is the one with which they will replace liberal representative democracy. It is,
therefore, of the utmost strategic importance to get it right.
When movement actors make the appeal to prefiguration more explicitly, the link to
strategy becomes clearer. Julie Boéri and Stuart Hodkinson, two coordinators from
BABELS, the international network of volunteer interpreters and translators who do
translation and interpretation for the ESF and WSF argue that:
the real story of Babels lies in its embodiment of the innovatory but difficult process of
‘pre-figurative politics’. By attempting to put into practice the principles of solidarity,
pluralism, equality, and horizontality, Babels is creating not only alternative systems
and practices to free-market capitalist society, but also the social counter-power
needed to defend and embed them permanently (Boéri & Hodkinson, 2005).
In this quote, we see that for movement actors, the creation of alternatives to free-market
capitalism rests on a process of prefigurative politics that involves putting into practice
principles of solidarity, pluralism, equality, and horizontality and that this process is
understood to constitute a counter-power that can challenge free-market capitalism. But
how? In order to understand how, we have to understand the politics of multiple goals.
The Politics of Multiple Goals: Practising Horizontality

Strategy has to be understood vis-à-vis goals, though not necessarily in a linear way.
Organization, depending on how it is defined, does not necessarily have to play a key role
in strategy,5 but in the case of the alterglobalization movement organization certainly
plays an important role. Organization, however, has to be understood very differently
than it has been in the past, it cannot be assumed to refer to hierarchical and fixed
organizations. In the case of the alterglobalization movement, organization does not refer
to any bounded group, but to a network structure that relies on practices of horizontality
and diversity – or, in other words – process. Process is precisely about getting organized.
It is about creating forms of democratic organization that do not take recourse to structures
of hierarchy or centralized control. Graeber (2002, p. 70) captures this point best when
he writes:
This is a movement about reinventing democracy. It is not opposed to organization.

It is about creating new forms of organization. It is not lacking in ideology. Those new
forms of organization are its ideology. It is about creating and enacting horizontal
networks instead of top-down structures like states, parties, or corporations; networks
based on principles of decentralized, nonhierarchical consensus democracy.
Ultimately, it [ . . . ] aspires to reinvent daily life as a whole.
This definition of organization is, of course, quite different from that of a ‘centralized,
bureaucratic organization with a pyramidal chain of command’ (Gerlach, 1983, p. 133).
The organization of the alterglobalization movement is based on decentralized network
structures that are organized through the practices of ‘horizontality’ and ‘diversity’. These
networked practices of horizontality and diversity form the basis of the alternative form
of democracy that the movement intends to develop into a viable alternative to liberal
representative democracy.
10 M. Maeckelbergh
Movement approaches to horizontality are fluid and diverse, but in its most basic form,
horizontality refers to a non-hierarchical social organization. Horizontality is both a value
and a practice.6 The practice of horizontality is believed by many movement actors to be
the best way to create equality, because horizontality means actively creating practices
that continuously challenge inequalities – both structural and inter-personal. Rather than
assuming that equality can be declared or created through a centralized authority that is
legitimated to rule by the people, movement practices of horizontality rest on the
assumption that inequality will always permeate every social interaction. It, therefore,
becomes imperative to acknowledge that these inequalities exist and to set up structures
that hold each person responsible for continuously challenging inequalities at every step of
a democratic decision-making process. The assumption about power that is built into
practices of horizontality is that power always centralizes, and so structures and

procedures are needed to continuously challenge this centralization. Horizontality is the
process of continuously decentralizing power.7
This assumption about power is of the utmost importance to understanding why
prefiguration is strategic. If the goal is to create more inclusive political structures, and
power is assumed to always exist and to perpetually centralize and lead to hierarchy, then
any strategy for achieving the goal of more horizontality has to be aimed at creating
structures that continuously limit this centralization. The aim can no longer be to create a
moment in the future after which power and inequality will disappear. Nor can it be to
demand reforms from those who are currently responsible for centralized power (i.e. the
state). Movements of the 1960s genuinely seem to have believed that if they just found the
‘right’ way to make decisions inclusively, often referred to as ‘participatory democracy’,
then inequalities between people would effectively disappear (Vaneigem, 2006). Although
the specific ‘goal’ was starting to become vague and open, the process was still conceived
of as linear.
The transition from participatory democracy as a goal to horizontality as a practice and
goal is not yet complete.8 Horizontality is far more developed in the autonomous strands of
the alterglobalization movement than in the Social Forum spaces, but the pervasive
discussion about process in the London European Social Forum of 2004, which developed
into a division between a group that called themselves the ‘horizontals’ and another they
dubbed the ‘verticals’, shows that although the whole alterglobalization movement cannot
be characterized by horizontality, the collective spaces of decision-making certainly can
be. Even when horizontality is not advocated by all the actors involved, it nevertheless sets
the parameters of discussion.
Movement actors spend a considerable amount of time discussing how to make their
networks more horizontal. After the 2005 G8 summit in the UK, the Dissent! network held
a meeting to see how they would proceed and one of the main concerns was avoiding the
centralization of power, by becoming a ‘vanguard’, a ‘central’ network through which all
protest had to flow. This had to be avoided at all costs, it was argued, and so structures had
to be clearly set up in order to have as horizontal a process as possible. The network agreed
to set up a ‘consulta’ or ‘reconvergence’, the rationale for which was described as follows:
The aim of this consultation is to achieve a more horizontally based network that is
representative of the politics and activity of the autonomous groups and individuals
who are involved, that will facilitate those groups and individuals to work with
others on specific activity/actions and network this with a larger body of people
(email, Dissent Reconvergence Working Group, 2005a).
But this reconvergence was slow to take off, and movement actors started to raise
concerns, again in terms of the need for horizontality:
the consulta[reconvergence] hasnt reached people. so how is any feeling of

belonging going to develop? and without that, where is horizontality? (email,
Slowcode, 2006).
Here, we see a slightly different interpretation of horizontality, for Slowcode there is no

horizontality without a ‘feeling of belonging’. This framing has to be put into context in
order to understand what is meant by ‘belonging’. The discussion revolved around the idea
that those who are participating in the network should not only be present and involved, but
they should feel that they have influence in determining not only the means of movement
organizing but also the goal(s). The discussion thus came to conclusion. In the end:
It was agreed that the aim of the reconvergence process was not to arrive at ‘a’ or
‘the’ ‘strategy’ for anticapitalism – just to renew the Dissent! network and have
more space for strategic discussion (email, Dissent Reconvergence Working Group,
2005b).
A discussion about making the network more horizontal ended in the conclusion that being
‘strategic’ could not and should not rest on the creation on ‘a’ singular, and definitely not
‘the’ strategy for anti-capitalism. In order to understand this conclusion we need to
examine the second, and even more widely held value/practice within the alterglobaliza-
tion movement – diversity.
The Politics of Multiple Goals: Creating Diversity

Underlying horizontality is the desire for diversity. To say that there can be no center of
power that dictates or controls, does not mean having no power; for the alterglobalization
movement it means having many such loci of power. As such, horizontality becomes a
mode through which diversity lives. I have witnessed no space of this movement where
diversity was not valued, at least in principle. Diversity stands in defiance to discourses
of uniformity. For many movement actors, the idea of imposing unity onto a diverse
movement or a diverse world is equal to subordination. Hardt & Negri (2004, p. 86) argue
that ‘the party, the people’s army, the modern guerrilla force all appear bankrupt from their
perspective because of the tendency of these structures to impose unity, to deny their
differences and subordinate them to the interests of others’ and Juris (2004) points out that
‘horizontalism means always remaining open and flexible to diversity and difference –
within certain limits’.9
Horizontality is not just a theory of ideal power relations through which everyone
should be treated; it is primarily a practice. As such it is always embedded in a context and
has to take a slightly different form in each context. Nunes (2005, p. 310), an activist
involved in both anti-summit mobilizations and Social Forum organizing, says it best
when he points out that ‘there are many horizontalities’ and reminds us that:
12 M. Maeckelbergh
horizontality is not a model (or a property that can be predicated of things) but a
practice. And as a practice, it remains permanently open to the future and to
difference. As soon as one says ‘this is what it looks like’, one is closing the door to
all future and different things that might come under that name. The point here is
not that horizontality is problematic, but that democracy as such is problematic.
And problematic means just that: permanently open.
If the goal is to create a permanently open process, in which participants have the ability to
influence not only the means but also the ends of movement organizing then there can
be no singular predetermined goal (Nunes, 2005, p. 314). This is a bit of a logical catch
twenty-two, because the predetermined goal then becomes to have no predetermined goal,
but in practice this creates only minimal problems because this goal is never singular.10 In
general, this diversity tends to be productive rather than destructive.11

If the door is to remain open to many possible future needs/goals, then the strategy
employed by movement actors also has to change. Strategy can no longer be geared toward
reaching the future moment when power can be seized and the ‘goal’ can be implemented.
Instead, strategy has to focus on developing practices through which these multiple goals
can come to fruition – hence the importance of process and horizontality: to allow
equality and diversity in the expression and pursuit of goals. When the Dissent! network
was looking for a new focus after the G8 Gleneagles summit in 2005, it did this by setting
up the following process to foster the expression of multiple goals from the bottom up:
Until we know what the local groups that want to be a part of this group are actually
prioritizing, than we can’t decide what to take on. Having a process of discussion,
well-publicized, fluid discussion that all groups are invited to, a process of
consultation about what sort of network we want and what issues. Create some
common analysis from that, it will be much more rooted and much more sustainable
than the way we have been working (National Dissent! Gathering, Sheffield, 15
October, 2005).
Here, we see an explicitly strategic rationale for letting the local groups determine the
goals: to make the network ‘more rooted and much more sustainable’, which is the network
equivalent of ‘good organization’. Later on in the same meeting, another person stated the
need for multiple goals even more clearly, arguing that this openness to multiplicity is the
only reason the network ‘works’:
the reason Dissent! works is because it doesn’t force one particular line, it has a
diversity of options, there is no unifying programme. We don’t have a Das Kapital to
sell people. Some groups have that and want that and that is fine, but I don’t think
Dissent! should go down that line (National Dissent! Gathering, Sheffield, 15
October 2005).
Networks need this diversity in order to function. If there was only one ‘line’ the network
would consist of perhaps a few clusters and hubs, but it would not be able to expand much
beyond this. The fact that Dissent! had many different goals, and was open to new
goals, made it more accessible and more ‘useful’ as a linking and organizing mechanism.
This ‘networking logic’ (Juris, 2008) is distinct from organizations and parties, and
therefore, requires a different definition of ‘organized’ and consequently of strategy.
In the above quote, diversity and the pursuit of multiple goals are set up in direct
contrast to Marxist theories of social change that focus on a singular goal and consequently
devalue the importance of process as a unifying element among people whose specific
goals may differ, as is also visible in the Callinicos quote above. What is important to
understand from the point of view of prefiguration as strategy is that as the diversity of
goals goes up, so does the importance of process. When goals are multiple and not
predetermined, then prefiguration becomes not only strategic, but the best strategy because
it is based in practice, in doing, which allows the people who are ‘doing’ to participate in
determining the goals. If the goal is to create a world in which people are empowered to
collectively set their own agendas and pursue their own aims, then the process of creating
political structures that make that possible is a necessary step in achieving the goal. To add
another layer of complication, the political structures required to make it possible for
people to pursue their own goals will be different in each context and also over time as
circumstances change. The goal, therefore, is not only to develop a new political process,
but to develop continuous processes that are slightly different everywhere, and are
perpetually improved upon even once fully established.12 With such a goal, the practice of
social change shifts and consequently so does the definition of strategy.
The Politics of Multiple Goals: Practices of Social Change

The intentional pursuit of political structures that allow for multiple goals through the
construction of horizontal decision-making processes redefines the very meaning of
struggle. The goal of the alterglobalization movement actors is not to eliminate power (as
it has been for some movements since the 1960s) or to relocate power with themselves
(as it was for communist revolutionary and colonial struggles). Instead, the goal is to
redesign the way power operates.
Given the history of post-colonial states and the fall of the Soviet empire, movement
actors today have many examples readily available to argue that seizing state power and
putting new people in power is not the most strategic way to achieve positive ‘structural
changes in the political, economic and social orders’ (Breines, 1989, p. 7). Through many
years of movement organizing in the aftermath of Soviet decline and post-colonial
disillusionment, many movement actors started to identify the centralization of power
itself as the problem.13
Movement actors do not intend to redesign the way power operates by developing a new
theory of power and writing up a treatise on how power would work in an ideal world, but
to transform the way power operates by designing new structures of decision-making that
are learned through practice. The latter process is prefigurative: the movement develops
the political structures needed to transform the way power operates in the very process of
struggle. They organize their actions and events through vast networks that span nations,
languages, political ideals, priorities, interests, and identities. With each event they
experiment with the most inclusive ways to communicate and coordinate interests,
priorities, decisions, goals, and actions within such a diverse polity.
Redesigning power is not a demand one can make from the state. By definition, a goal
such as ‘decentralize power!’ is not one that can be requested from the centralized power
of state or multilateral institutions. Even if the state were to respond 100%, it would be
14 M. Maeckelbergh
doing so by exercising centralized power. The alterglobalization movement, therefore,

does not apply a strategy of demanding reforms from the state. Instead, they apply a
prefigurative strategy that ‘orients tactics [directly] according to a final goal’ (Derrida,
1982). The tactics they use, horizontal decision-making that allows for diverse outcomes,
is organized based on the goal of replacing contemporary political structures with
horizontal and diverse political structures that are more inclusive. The aim of developing
these new structures is to slowly make the state and multilateral organizations obsolete.
In practice, this prefigurative strategy requires at least two steps that are carried out
simultaneously. One is the step of challenging and confronting current political structures
and the other is constructing alternative structures to take their place. If both are not done
simultaneously then neither is of any use. Confrontation opens up the space necessary for
experiments in horizontal democracy and it safeguards these spaces from cooptation.
Physical confrontation on the streets not only forms part of the raison d’être for the
alternative villages, but it also often literally defends these spaces. Confrontation and
conflict within the alternative spaces of horizontal decision-making are also common, and
it ensures that as power centralizes – whether in people, groups, or institutions – it is
continuously confronted and decentralized. Although it could certainly be argued that
prefiguration is not a necessary strategy for the removal of existing political structures, it is
a necessary strategy for the construction of viable alternatives. If the current political
structures were ever to be successfully removed, prefiguration ensures that the movement
would be ready with alternative governing structures that have been tried and tested.14
The existence of a viable alternative also undermines the hegemony of existing
structures. This aspect of the movement’s strategy is captured by the contrast between the
movement slogan ‘(an)other world(s) is possible’ and Margaret Thatcher’s slogan ‘there is
no alternative’. Prefiguration in the alterglobalization movement is not ‘cultural’ or inward-
looking toward the movement. It is not motivated by a cultural ideal of building their
own community. Prefiguration is outward-looking with the political goal of transforming
governing structures on a global scale, and showing people through doing that this is
possible. According to one activist involved in many of the anti-summit mobilizations,
‘we do not just prefigure, but we hope that “exemplaric practice” works in the sense of other
people being convinced or taking these practices over’.15 A prefigurative strategy,
therefore, does not posit a distinction between the ‘activists’ and the public, in which the
activists are responsible for first bringing major structural change, and then ‘the people’ get
to benefit. Instead, the artificial demarcation between ‘activist’ and society is actively
challenged (see Trott, 2005). There is no privileged agent of social change; everyone has to
take responsibility for bringing about the change they desire, and for helping others
to achieve what they desire, whether they desire the same things or not. This deep and
open inclusion is achieved through connectivity, where connectivity is communication
characterized by reciprocal contamination. Reciprocal contamination means:
not only that we interchange ideas and actions, but that in the process of doing so
we begin to look at the world with each other [sic] eyes and begin to develop
corresponding ideas and actions (De Angelis, 2003).
Connectivity is how the network expands – by making more and more links between
everyone who has a grievance and who wants their voice to be heard. Connectivity
between different approaches and goals is a crucial part of the alterglobalization
movement’s strategy for creating structural changes in the political, economic, and social
orders. Within a network structure internal coherence and expansion are achieved not
through conversion to a single goal, but through links between goals. Networks expand
outward through connectivity between different hubs, clusters, groups, and individuals
(read different goals, tactics, ideologies, beliefs, identities), while organizations or parties
aim to ‘bring people in’ through adherence to a single goal, tactic, identity, or ideology. As
Nunes argues, ‘if horizontality means putting connectivity above accumulation, there is
one answer to the age-old “what is to be done”: connect’ (Nunes, 2005, p. 317).
Connectivity is the glue that holds the alterglobalization movement together in the
absence of a nation-state, unitary ideology, or other political structure. Connectivity is the
difference between linear approaches to social change and networked approaches. Nunes
(2005, p. 314) argues that ‘the difference between networked politics and previous forms
of political organisation is that it places non-linear connection above linear

accumulation’. Linear accumulation is based on bringing more and more people to the
‘cause’ until a moment is reached when ‘there are enough of them to storm the Winter
Palace’ (Nunes, 2005, p. 314). Nunes (2005, p. 314) argues that the linear accumulation
vision of social change has been abandoned in favour of non-linear connection:
What was given up with the idea of linear accumulation was the idea that there is a
goal. Once you have a goal that can be identified with achieving an action – taking the
state apparatus and using it to promote the ‘transition to communism’ – and this goal is
identified as the completion of the entire process, you enter into the realm of linearity:
history marches towards an end, and the role of the ‘revolutionary’ is to speed it up.
The linear view of social change as a march forward toward an end in the future is
incompatible with prefigurative politics and with the alterglobalization movement.
Prefiguration posits a cyclical process of social change, in which the means become ends,
which in turn become the means to other ends, and so on. When power is assumed to
always play a role in human interaction, political structures that increase equality need
to be continuously reinvented, and they need to be reinvented in a way that is catered to
specific contexts, specific inequalities, and specific goals. There is no one size that fits all
form of equality. Social change is a continuous process for which everyone is responsible.
Conclusion
I have argued that prefiguration is strategic because it is the best means to achieve the goal
of creating new, diverse, and horizontal structures of democratic decision-making in order
to replace existing structures of global governance. I argue that a prefigurative strategy
involves two crucial practices: that of confrontation with existing political structures and that
of developing alternatives, neither of which could achieve the desired structural changes
without the other. I have focused on the latter in this article because the goal of developing
alternatives is one for which prefiguration is not only strategic, but given the need to keep
goals multiple, open and context-specific, perhaps even the only viable strategy
Through practice – by literally trying out new political structures in large-scale, inter-
cultural decision-making processes in matters ranging from global politics to daily life –
movement actors are learning how to govern the world in a manner that fundamentally
redesigns the way power operates. They challenge and confront hierarchical and
16 M. Maeckelbergh
centralized power at every turn and they patiently and diligently construct political
processes and structures that limit the negative externalities of the inevitable power
inequalities. This process is a conflictive, fluid, and ongoing activity of transformation.
Strategy in a social movement, however it is defined, is about how to create a desired
effect; it is a process employed to achieve a certain goal and the prefiguration this
movement practices is grounded entirely in questions of how. This prefigurative strategy is
no longer cloaked in the language of consequentialist revolutionary strategy. Instead it is a
strategy that is more concerned with creating than predicting, practising over theorizing.
Prefiguration is a strategy that considers the means and the ends of movement organizing
to be intricately linked to each other. The assumption underlying prefiguration is that
the means are important because they have consequences. The democratic practices that
constitute the how of movement organizing are important to movement actors because
they constitute the movement’s alternative to market-driven, neoliberal, representative,

homogenizing politics.
If strategy is the creation of organization to achieve ‘structural changes in the political,
economic and social orders’, then there can be no question that prefiguration in the
alterglobalization movement is strategic. Four key assumptions behind ‘strategy’,
however, need to be reconsidered in order to make this shift in analysis. First, the idea that
movement goals have to be predetermined and singular. Within a network structure it is far
more advantageous for both the internal dynamics of the network and for the expansion of
the network to allow for open and multiple goals. Second, the word ‘organization’ must be
purged of its hierarchical and fixed connotations. The alterglobalization movement has a
highly developed and structured organizing process that is neither hierarchical nor fixed.
Although hierarchies certainly exist within the networks, the organizing principles are
those of horizontality and flexibility/fluidity. Third, the assumption that strategy entails the
application of tactics now that will bring about the desired structural change only after a
power seizure, has to be understood as resting upon a very particular theory of social
change that is a historical product of a political tendency. Within the alterglobalization
movement, many reject this linear theory of social change in favour of practices of social
change that bring new political structures into existence bit by bit, improving those
structures as they go along. Finally, the notion that strategy needs to be directed at and
impact a sphere that is somehow external to the movement, be it the ‘state’ or the ‘public’,
needs to be discarded. Appealing to the state for reform would be anything but strategic
when the goal is to decentralize power. The public, for most movement actors, is not
considered to be a separate category. The public are just more people who are also
politically disenfranchised and suffering the consequences of neoliberal economic policy
that are not yet linked into the networks of the alterglobalization movement, and
connectivity is the process through which people become linked.
In order to fully understand the relationship between prefiguration and strategy we have
to ask, ‘what are movement actors trying to achieve?’ An ideal form of horizontal and
diverse democracy or an actual form? A universal democratic theory or a democratic
practice? I have argued that they are attempting to achieve the latter and that in order to
achieve a radically different democratic practice they need a strategy for social change
that rests on doing. Theirs is a strategy that transforms existing power relations not by
pointing out what is wrong with the existing structures and demanding that these be
changed, nor by verbally convincing others that alternatives are possible, but by actively
setting up alternative structures so that people can experience for themselves what is
possible and get actively involved in ensuring through practice and continuous
transformation that these new structures are and will remain more inclusive. For many
people involved in the alterglobalization movement:
The issue is no longer to express a common way of struggle, nor a unified picture
or one-dimensional solidarity, neither an ostentatious unity nor a secretly unifying
sub-culture, but the profound understanding and the absolute will, to recognise the
internal differences and create flexible groups, where different approaches connect
with each other reasonably and for mutual benefit (Lang & Schneider, 2003).
Prefiguration, I have argued, is the most strategic approach for making this open, diverse,
and flexible world possible.
Notes
1. I use the term ‘movement actors’ because it is more inclusive than alternatives like ‘activists’. I have met
many people who reject the title of ‘activist’ because they feel it represents a division and a privileged
category similar to that of a ‘vanguard’. Also, the global movement networks include many people who do
not self identify as activists and whose engagement with the movement is temporary. These people get
involved, for example, because the G8 comes to their home town and they do not agree with what the G8
does, but they do not always think that this makes them ‘activists’. At times, however, when I am sure the
label is appropriate, I do use the term ‘activist’.
2. See the discussion on engaged anthropology in Current Anthropology 36(3), especially Scheper-Hughes
(1995) and Kuper (1995).
3. Teivainen, however, does not incorporate this ‘new way of doing politics’ into his analysis, arguing that
‘the widely held idea that in order to be an “open space”, the WSF cannot be considered an “organization” or
“institution” also contributes to its internal depoliticization’, in which he implicitly equates organizations,
institutions, and politics (much in the same way movements pre-1960s did). This elision leads him to
conclude that the movement, by focusing on process, is somehow avoiding ‘political questions’ by which he
seems to mean ‘strategy’, arguing that the movement ‘should have a realistic analysis of what is possible
and what is not, and then make strategic prioritizations based on that analysis’. For him this would include
addressing ‘explicitly political questions’, by which he seems to mean reforms carried out by the state. This
confusion in his argument is on the one hand likely to be due to his focus on only the WSF, which is arguably
the space of movement activity that follows this new political logic the least consistently, and on the other
hand the result of his use of analytical categories derived from past movements to apply them to this
movement.
4. He is referring not to the London ESF, but to the local London Social Forum which had recently been
launched and which his political party boycotted.
5. There is for instance a considerable difference between having a plan and having an organization, and a plan,
if it is in some way goal-oriented, might suffice to be considered strategic.
6. For an excellent description of ‘horizontality’ in the Argentinean uprisings, see Sitrin (2006).
7. Decentralizing power is often cited as an anarchist strategy for dealing with power (see Proudhon, 1923;
Kropotkin, 1927; Dolgoff, 1970), but a confusion arises between decentralization of power and the
redistribution of power. In the latter, power is considered to be the property of individuals (rather than a
relation), ‘a kind of stuff that can be possessed by individuals in greater or lesser amounts’ (Young, 1990,
p. 31), and the redistribution thereof to be the key to equality. But movement actors are aware that
decentralized hierarchy exists, and this type of decentralization would not be horizontality, which requires
that the decentralization of power be combined with the de-hierarchalization and de-individuation of power
through the construction of collective processes in which groups and processes, not individuals, have power.
8. Participatory democracy, when popularized by Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), was intended to be
a goal and not a practice, but in reality, the moment the idea took hold people were already demanding that it
also be an internal movement practice and the transition from participatory democracy as a goal to
horizontality as a goal and a practice was in reality underway from more or less the moment the term was
mobilized (see Miller, 1994, pp. 141–153).
18 M. Maeckelbergh
9. These limits being acts of hierarchy and prejudice, when movement actors intentionally create hierarchies or
exhibit prejudice they are confronted.
10. Communist and socialist parties, for example, do not like this approach because it precludes them from
convincing everyone of the primacy of the communist revolution.
11. This fact that diversity is rarely destructive does not mean that it does not lead to conflict; often it does; but
conflict is generally embraced by these movements (see Maeckelbergh, 2009, pp. 99 –108; Caruso, 2004).
12. This shift toward valuing diversity must also be understood as an act of resistance to the homogenization
of 500 years of colonial history, representative democracy, the mass media, and even consumerism (see
Holloway, 2004; de Sousa Santos, 2004).
13. This shift began to take root during the 1960s. For a description of this transition within social movements of
the 1960s in Western Europe, see Horn (2007). For a description of these practices in 1960s movements in the
USA, see Polletta (2002).
14. This point requires me to make an important distinction between ‘strategy’ and ‘success’. The aims of the
alterglobalization movement are intensely ambitious, and it is not clear that they will succeed any time soon
in bringing about these goals. The lack of immediate success in transforming all of society does not mean that
it is by definition astrategic to attempt to do so.
15. Personal email exchange with the author, 4 January 2007. The activist wishes to remain anonymous.
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movements for many years and in summit protest mobilizations since 1999.

2 Maeckelbergh Doing Is Believing

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Social Movement Studies,

Vol. 10, No. 1, 1–20, January 2011

Doing is Believing: Prefiguration as Strategic

Correspondence Address: Marianne Maeckelbergh, Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development

Prefiguration and Strategy

The Politics of Process: Prefiguration in the Alterglobalization Movement

The Politics of Multiple Goals: Practising Horizontality

This is a movement about reinventing democracy. It is not opposed to organization.

practices of horizontality is that power always centralizes, and so structures and

the consulta[reconvergence] hasnt reached people. so how is any feeling of

Here, we see a slightly different interpretation of horizontality, for Slowcode there is no

The Politics of Multiple Goals: Creating Diversity

general, this diversity tends to be productive rather than destructive.11

The Politics of Multiple Goals: Practices of Social Change

doing so by exercising centralized power. The alterglobalization movement, therefore,

of political organisation is that it places non-linear connection above linear

they constitute the movement’s alternative to market-driven, neoliberal, representative,

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