The prefigurative power of the common(s)

Mathijs van de Sande

Introduction

If we want to grasp how capitalist structures and relations are resisted from and by 'the common' and/or 'commons', we need to ascribe a certain power to it/them. This power, moreover, must be substantially and essentially different from capitalist forms of power. First and foremost, it needs a conceptualisation 'from below'. The objective of this contribution is to provide such a conceptualisation, for which purpose three central concepts are employed: 'prefiguration', 'potentia' and 'power-to'.

First, I define and conceptualise the notion of 'prefiguration'. Prefiguration or 'prefigurative politics' is an experimental political practice in which the ends of one's actions are mirrored in the means applied in their realisation. These ends are thereby conceived as inherent in the practice itself and their immediate realisation is aimed at. In other words, from a prefigurative perspective on political practices, the oppositional relations between means and ends and between a 'future ideal' and the 'here and now' are problematised. However, as I will argue, this concept of prefiguration needs further politicisation outside the context of contemporary anarchist theory. What is more, this concept could also be useful to our endeavour of conceptualising a power from below and offers us a valuable perspective on various conceptualisations of resistance as it occurs today. Second, two closely related yet significantly different concepts of power from below are defined and compared. To begin with, I look at Antonio Negri's notion of 'potentia' or 'constituent power'. Departing from the Spinozist opposition between potentia and potestas, Negri's conceptualisation of the former as a historical and non-dialectical understanding of power will be reconstructed. Then this concept is related to his contemporary work on 'the multitude', and finally reconceptualised as a prefigurative form of power. I describe potentia/constituent power as an active potential that creates an 'outside', but 'inside' the capitalist relations and structures it seeks to confront.

Next, I turn to John Holloway, another contemporary autonomist thinker, who is often related to and compared with Negri but who departs from a significantly different ontological background. His conceptualisation of power from below, which he terms as 'power-to', is also reconstructed. As opposed to 'power-over', power-to is presented as an alienated capacity, a potential that seeks actualisation but is limited by a power 'from above'. Holloway argues that power-to breaks through this alienated form of itself and thus creates spatial-temporal 'cracks' in the texture of capitalist relations and structures. Power to is equally termed as a prefigurative power, which constructs a 'beyond' and sheds light on a future to come.

After that, Holloway's concept of power-to and Negri's potentia are juxtaposed, along the lines of the conceptualisation of prefiguration. In presenting both as prefigurative understandings of power, I investigate the consequences and implications these divergent conceptions have for our understanding of current forms of resistance against capitalist structures. Finally, these differences are further concretised through a comparison between (Hardt and) Negri's concept of 'the common' and Holloway's reference to 'commons'. This also allows us to grasp the prefigurative characteristics of (the production of) the common and/or commons in its/their antagonist relationship to capitalist structures and relations.

Prefigurative politics: mirroring means and ends

Resistance to capital comes in many forms. Diverse and heterogeneous as they may be – from relatively spontaneous expressions of public space occupation and mass street protest to 'direct action' networks and 'civil society' projects seeking to implement alternative forms of cooperation and production – many of these resistances share, to a greater or lesser extent, a form of political action in which means and ends are not strictly divergent, but strongly reflected in each other. This conception of political action, which is commonly referred to as 'prefiguration', is a useful tool that enables us to make intelligible a broad diversity of contemporary political practices.

Prefiguration as a notion is applied in contemporary anarchist literature both as a descriptive term, by means of which the practices of (predominantly anarchist and/or alter-globalist) activist movements are portrayed, and as a normative concept, on the basis of which an ethico-political agenda is defined. Most commonly, these two applications of the term coexist or converge, even completely. The anarchist anthropologist David Graeber, in an interview on 'Occupy Wall Street', in which he took part, describes this 'prefigurative' movement in the following manner:

It's very similar to the globalization movement. You see the same criticisms in the press. It's a bunch of kids who don't know economics and only know what they're against. But there's a reason for that. It's pre-figurative, so to speak. You're creating a vision of the sort of society you want to have in miniature. And it's a way of juxtaposing yourself against these powerful, undemocratic forces you're protesting. If you make demands, you're saying, in a way, that you're asking the people in power and the existing institutions to do something different. And one reason people have been hesitant to do that is they see these institutions as the problem. (Quoted in Klein, 2011)

Hence, 'prefiguration' first of all addresses a methodological problem. One wishes to alter certain political and/or economic structures, but at the same time one may regard the means most commonly applied for this purpose (e.g. the positions of power and the existing institutions) to be a part, or even the cause, of the very problems themselves. The possibility (or necessity) of changing the world by means of the state and other hierarchical structures has long been debated within radical political movements. Can radical...