Aligning Means with the Vision of Liberation
Aligning Means with the Vision of Liberation
Having rejected hierarchical power, the question becomes: what do movements build in its place? How do they create structures of collective self-governance that embody liberation? This is where theory becomes practice through what political theorist Carl Boggs termed “prefigurative politics” in 1977.
Boggs defined prefigurative politics as the embodiment “within the ongoing political practice of a movement… those forms of social relations, decision-making, culture, and human experience that are the ultimate goal.” Put simply, we create the world we want to see through how we organize today. The future society isn’t something we build after winning; it’s something we practice in the present through the structures and relationships we create as we struggle for liberation.
Radicals recognize that the tactics used to build a liberated society must reflect the values of that future world. This is central to prefigurative politics: the organizing principle that our actions today must mirror the just, liberated world we aim to create. Every step taken toward liberation is consistent with principles of autonomy, mutual aid, and collective care.
Prefigurative politics is a practical framework for ensuring that movements do not replicate the hierarchies or oppressive structures they seek to dismantle. Organizing based on prefiguration means rejecting tactics rooted in oppression, hierarchy, or coercion, as they contradict the goal of creating a society free from domination and exploitation. Instead, radical movements prioritize building systems of solidarity and cooperation in which power is distributed throughout the community.
This isn’t utopian dreaming. Prefigurative politics recognizes that movements exist within capitalism and face real material constraints. The point isn’t to create perfect liberated spaces immune to oppression (an impossibility under current conditions). Rather, it’s to deliberately practice and model liberatory relations as much as possible while struggling to transform the broader society. As political theorist Paul Raekstad argues, prefigurative organizing serves three functions: it develops people’s capacities for democratic self-governance through practice, it transforms participants’ desires through experiencing alternative social relations, and it builds the political consciousness necessary for revolutionary change.
A key aspect of this approach is horizontal decision-making, ensuring that decisions are made collectively rather than through centralized power structures. Mutual aid networks and cooperative economies are vital elements of this model, providing communities with immediate relief while laying the foundation for long-term liberation.
How Means Align with Vision: Prefigurative Politics in Action
To understand how prefigurative politics aligns with liberation, we must first be clear about the vision itself and then examine how specific organizing practices embody that vision in the present.
Radical movements envision a society fundamentally different from our current one: a world without hierarchical domination where people collectively control the conditions of their lives. This means workers control production democratically rather than being controlled by bosses and owners. Communities govern land, housing, and resources collectively rather than through private property and markets. Decisions are made by those affected through participatory processes rather than by distant elites. People relate through mutual aid and cooperation rather than competition and exploitation. Production respects ecological limits rather than pursuing endless growth. Knowledge and skills are shared broadly rather than hoarded as sources of power.
Prefigurative politics asks: if this is the world we want, what would it look like to organize that way now? The alignment becomes concrete when we examine how specific practices embody these principles in the present.
Consider worker cooperatives. Instead of waiting to “seize the means of production” after revolution, workers collectively own and democratically manage workplaces today. Every decision made in assembly, every profit shared equally, every responsibility rotated develops the capacity for worker self-management. The cooperative doesn’t just advocate for a future without bosses; it operates without bosses now, embodying worker control of production in practice. Similarly, community land trusts practice collective ownership in the present rather than demanding land reform from the government. Communities hold land collectively and democratically decide its use, developing the relationships and decision-making processes needed for a society based on the commons rather than private property.
The alignment continues through how movements make decisions. Consensus processes and assemblies embody direct democracy by ensuring everyone affected by decisions participates in making them, rather than delegating power upward through representative structures. Each assembly builds participants’ capacity to engage democratically, to listen and be heard, to find collective solutions. This practice develops the skills and culture needed for a self-governing society. When movements share skills broadly through political education and training, they embody distributed knowledge rather than concentrating expertise in specialists who then hold power over others. When everyone can facilitate meetings, repair equipment, understand political economy, or provide first aid, knowledge stops being a source of hierarchy.
Mutual aid networks demonstrate cooperation over competition. Instead of relying on charity (which is hierarchical) or markets (which are competitive), communities organize to meet each other’s needs through reciprocal solidarity. Food distributions, community fridges, care networks, and disaster response organized by and for communities prove that people can provision for each other without bosses, profits, or state control. The MST’s choice of sustainable agricultural methods embodies ecological balance by regenerating rather than extracting, considering long-term consequences rather than short-term profit, and practicing the relationship with land and resources that a liberated society requires.
This alignment between means and vision isn’t metaphorical or symbolic. As we established in Section 2.1, means actively shape ends through four mechanisms that work together. You cannot build a self-governing society with people who have only experienced being governed by others. Worker cooperatives develop the actual skills (facilitation, conflict resolution, financial management, collective problem-solving) needed to run society democratically, while hierarchical organizing develops only the capacity to follow or command. Experiencing cooperation changes how people understand what’s possible. Working in a cooperative where you make decisions collectively, where solidarity replaces competition, and where meeting needs matters more than maximizing profit fundamentally alters your sense of how society could function. This isn’t just believing in an alternative; it’s living it.
Every functioning worker cooperative, community land trust, or mutual aid network creates precedent by proving the viability of alternatives to capitalism. They’re not utopian proposals but working realities. When worker cooperatives successfully coordinate complex production, when community land trusts effectively manage housing, when mutual aid networks meet real needs, they demonstrate that hierarchical capitalist organization isn’t necessary. These prefigurative institutions also build material bases for struggle by providing actual resources and infrastructure. A network of worker cooperatives can support striking workers. Community land trusts provide housing security that enables organizing. Mutual aid networks offer material support that reduces dependence on capitalist employment or state services.
This is why prefigurative politics is the practical application of means-ends alignment. It doesn’t just advocate for a liberated future while using hierarchical methods in the present. It builds the future society through the actual relationships, skills, institutions, and practices that will constitute that society. When the Landless Workers’ Movement occupies unused land and establishes cooperative farms, they’re not just demanding land reform; they’re demonstrating agrarian democracy now. When Cooperation Jackson builds worker cooperatives and community land trusts, they’re not just arguing for economic alternatives; they’re creating a cooperative economy in practice. When workers occupy factories and run them as recuperated enterprises, they’re not just protesting capitalism; they’re proving that production can be democratically organized.
The means align with the vision because the means are the vision, practiced now under current conditions. This is what distinguishes prefigurative politics from other forms of organizing: the future isn’t postponed until after victory; it’s actively constructed in the struggle itself.
Prefigurative Politics in Practice: Building Alternatives Now
A vivid example of prefigurative politics is Cooperation Jackson in Mississippi, which builds a cooperative economy rooted in self-determination and ecological sustainability. Founded on May 1, 2014, Cooperation Jackson’s creation of autonomous, worker-owned cooperatives, community land trusts, and sustainable production models challenges capitalist and white supremacist systems. This work embodies prefigurative politics: it advocates for reforms while also creating alternatives that reflect the values of mutual aid and democratic decision-making.
At the heart of their work is the Fannie Lou Hamer Community Land Trust, designed to prevent gentrification and keep land in the hands of the community. This model reflects collective autonomy by ensuring the community retains control over housing and public spaces, prioritizing people’s needs over profit. Similarly, their worker-owned cooperatives provide spaces where workers collectively make decisions, embodying horizontal governance and economic justice.
Cooperation Jackson’s Green New Deal Initiative further demonstrates how movements can align their means with their vision of liberation by integrating environmental sustainability into local economies. Through urban farming and renewable energy projects, they prioritize the community’s needs and ecological sustainability, offering a model for how movements can operate within and resist capitalist constraints.
Brazil’s Movimento Sem Terra (Landless Workers’ Movement) provides another powerful illustration of prefigurative politics. This movement occupies unused land to challenge unequal land distribution and establishes cooperative farms and schools within these occupied territories. These communities practice collective decision-making and prioritize sustainable agriculture, demonstrating how land reform can be tied to broader social and environmental justice goals.
When Alternatives Threaten Power: Resistance from Above
When prefigurative politics works (when worker cooperatives function, when mutual aid networks meet real needs, when horizontal organizing proves viable) it poses a direct threat to those invested in maintaining capitalist systems. The existence of functioning alternatives challenges the capitalist narrative that hierarchical organization is necessary, that bosses are needed for productivity, that collective ownership is impractical. As such, movements building alternatives often face active resistance from state and economic elites who recognize the threat these alternatives represent.
Argentina’s empresas recuperadas provide a powerful current example of this dynamic. Following the catastrophic economic collapse of 2001 (which saw unemployment reach 25% and poverty spike dramatically), workers refused to accept factory closures and instead occupied abandoned facilities. Under the principle “occupy, resist, produce,” they transformed these spaces into democratically run cooperatives. These reclaimed workplaces, known as “empresas recuperadas” (recovered enterprises), operate on principles of worker self-management and democratic decision-making.
By the early 2020s, over 400 recuperated enterprises employed approximately 16,000 workers across Argentina. Workers in these factories don’t just own their workplaces collectively; they make all decisions about production, wages, work conditions, and company direction through assemblies. For over two decades, they demonstrated that factories can run without bosses, that workers can coordinate complex production democratically, and that workplaces can prioritize worker wellbeing over profit maximization. The cooperatives proved prefigurative politics works in practice.
However, these cooperatives now face severe challenges under Argentina’s current government, which took power in December 2023 under President Javier Milei. A 2025 University of Buenos Aires report documents the hostile environment: since the new administration began, only three new cooperatives have formed (employing just 21 workers), while 12,000 to 16,000 small and medium businesses have closed. In March 2024, the government suspended 300 worker cooperatives, publicly questioning their legitimacy and falsely claiming they misused public funds. Workers in cooperatives increasingly take second jobs to survive amid austerity policies that have pushed poverty from 42% to over 53% of the population. The cooperative movement has declined from its 2021 peak of 430 enterprises to 398, with employment dropping from approximately 16,000 to 14,000 workers.
Milei’s attacks on worker cooperatives are particularly revealing given that he identifies as an “anarcho-capitalist.” This label appropriates anarchist language while serving fundamentally anti-anarchist ends. Where anarchism opposes all hierarchy and domination, seeking collective liberation and mutual aid, “anarcho-capitalism” champions the freedom of capital to dominate workers. Where anarchism rejects concentrated power (whether state or economic), “anarcho-capitalism” enthusiastically defends corporate power and private property. Where anarchism builds horizontal, cooperative alternatives, Milei’s government actively dismantles them.
The term “anarcho-capitalism” itself reveals a fundamental contradiction. Anarchism has always opposed capitalism as a system of economic hierarchy where owners exercise “power over” workers. Capitalism requires enforcement of property relations, which historically has required state power (police, courts, military) to protect owners from workers who might claim the fruits of their labor. “Anarcho-capitalism” imagines removing the state while maintaining capitalist property relations, but this simply replaces state hierarchy with corporate hierarchy, state police with private security forces.
Milei’s presidency exposes this clearly. He claims to oppose state power while using emergency decrees to concentrate authority, expanding intelligence agency powers to surveil opposition, and threatening to outlaw protests. He attacks worker cooperatives (genuinely non-hierarchical, bottom-up organizations) while defending corporate hierarchy and private property. His “anarchism” extends only to removing regulations on capital and destroying social programs; it vanishes when workers organize collective alternatives to capitalism.
Throughout history, when working people build genuine alternatives to capitalism (worker cooperatives, mutual aid networks, collective land ownership) those holding economic and political power respond with repression. The Paris Commune was crushed by the French army. Spanish anarchist collectives were destroyed by fascist and Stalinist forces. Worker organizing has been met with police violence, legal restrictions, and propaganda campaigns painting alternatives as impractical or dangerous.
The United States under the Trump administration (which began its second term in January 2025) provides another contemporary example. Through executive orders issued in March and August 2025, the administration stripped collective bargaining rights from over one million federal workers, representing 84% of the unionized federal workforce. Georgetown University labor historian Joseph McCartin called this “by far the largest single action of union-busting in American history.” The administration canceled signed union contracts at numerous agencies, forced 175,000 federal workers into paid leave that ended in job termination, and took the unprecedented step of firing Democratic members of the National Labor Relations Board without cause. AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler declared the president “the biggest union-buster in U.S. history.” Like Milei’s attacks on Argentine cooperatives, these actions reveal how those benefiting from capitalism respond when worker organizing threatens their power, using state authority to dismantle collective alternatives to hierarchical control.
What This Teaches About Prefigurative Politics
Argentina’s current situation illustrates several points about prefigurative politics:
First, building alternatives works. The empresas recuperadas operated for over 20 years, proving that worker self-management is viable at scale. The attacks they face now don’t disprove prefigurative politics; they prove it threatens established power enough to provoke a response.
Second, prefigurative politics exists within broader power struggles. Building alternatives doesn’t mean you can avoid conflict with capitalism and the state. The better your alternatives work, the more threatened elites become, and the more resistance you face. The cooperatives’ success made them a target.
Third, defense requires more than good organizing practices. While the cooperatives’ horizontal structure and solidarity are strengths, they also need strategy for resisting state power, building broader alliances, and protecting what they’ve built. Section 2.4 will explore transparency and accountability practices that help movements maintain solidarity under pressure. Section 2.5 will examine how movements distinguish necessary strategic adaptation from compromising principles when facing repression.
Fourth, ideological struggle matters. Milei’s appropriation of “anarchist” language to attack actual anarchist practices shows how capitalism co-opts radical vocabulary. Movements must be clear about the difference between genuine liberation (collective power, horizontal organizing, mutual aid) and capitalist freedom (freedom for capital to exploit, for property owners to dominate).
The report on Argentina’s cooperatives describes an “evident crisis” for the movement, noting the “unfavorable political and economic context for self-managed work.” Yet it also notes the movement remains “still far from the end.” Nearly 400 cooperatives continue to operate, employing nearly 14,000 workers, while thousands of traditional capitalist businesses have closed. Workers committed to collective ownership persist despite severe government hostility. This persistence demonstrates both the viability of worker-organized alternatives and the necessity of building broader strategies to defend them.
Prefigurative politics isn’t naive. It recognizes that building alternatives within capitalism means swimming in hostile waters. But it also recognizes that those alternatives (functioning examples of non-hierarchical, collectively owned, democratically managed institutions) are essential. They prove that liberation isn’t just a distant dream but a practical possibility. They provide material bases of support during struggles. They develop people’s capacities for self-governance. And precisely because they work, they face resistance from those who benefit from current systems. Understanding both the power and the vulnerability of prefigurative organizing is essential for radical movements.
Movements like Cooperation Jackson and the Landless Workers’ Movement in Brazil must continuously navigate real challenges within the broader capitalist system. How do you maintain non-hierarchical structures while interfacing with state bureaucracies that demand official representatives? How do you compete economically with capitalist enterprises without adopting their exploitative practices? How do you balance the immediate survival needs of members with long-term revolutionary goals?
For example, Cooperation Jackson must decide whether to accept foundation grants that come with restrictions on political activity. The MST must balance immediate food production needs with long-term soil regeneration practices. These aren’t abstract dilemmas; they’re daily decisions where movements must distinguish necessary strategic adaptation from compromising core principles.
Section 5 will explore how movements can distinguish necessary strategic flexibility from unprincipled pragmatism. For now, what’s important is recognizing that these movements navigate real constraints while maintaining core commitments to horizontal organizing, collective decision-making, and building alternatives that embody their values. The work shows that prefigurative practices can be powerful tools for building communities grounded in mutual aid and justice, even while operating within systems designed to prevent exactly such alternatives.
By embracing prefigurative politics, radical movements create immediate living examples of the future they envision. Mutual aid networks, cooperative economies, and community governance structures show that liberation is not a distant goal but is being actively built here and now. The relationship between means and ends in radical organizing is foundational: the systems of domination we oppose (capitalism, patriarchy, and the state) cannot be dismantled with their tools. Instead, radical movements embody the values of mutual aid, collective governance, and solidarity to create the liberated world they seek.
Prefigurative politics requires more than good intentions or inspiring vision. It demands concrete practices that prevent movements from reproducing the hierarchies they oppose. This is where transparency and accountability become essential. Without openness about decision-making and mutual accountability to shared principles, movements risk developing informal hierarchies and power dynamics that contradict their liberatory goals. The next section explores how radical movements build and maintain these practices.