Prefigurative politics is the practice of building the social relations you want in the present, rather than deferring them to a future that will be achieved through seizure of state power or institutional reform. The means of political action must embody the ends: if the goal is non-hierarchical social relations, the organization pursuing that goal must itself be non-hierarchical. If the goal is a world without domination, the movement must not reproduce domination internally.
The concept is central to anarchist practice and distinguishes it from Leninist strategy, which accepts hierarchical party organization as a means to the eventual abolition of hierarchy. For anarchists, this deferral is self-defeating: organizations reproduce their internal structure in the world they create. A hierarchical revolution produces hierarchical institutions. The only way to produce non-hierarchical social relations is to practice them.
David Graeber both theorized and practiced prefigurative politics, particularly in the Occupy movement’s general assemblies, consensus decision-making, and mutual aid infrastructure. Mutual aid networks, affinity groups, cooperative housing, community gardens, free schools, and direct action campaigns are all forms of prefiguration — they create the relations they advocate, here and now, without waiting for permission or institutional change.