Prefigurative politics
The concept of prefiguration was further applied by Sheila Rowbotham to the women's movement of the 1960s and 1970s,[5] by Wini Breines to the US Students for a Democratic Society (SDS),[6] and by John L. Hammond to the Portuguese Revolution."[10] One of the greatest examples during the 20th century in this regard is the comunismo libertario (libertarian communism) society organized by anarcho-syndicalists such as the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), or in English the National Confederation of Labour, for a few months during the Spanish Civil War.Workers took collective control of the means of production on a decentralized level and used mass-self communication as a counter-power in order to give useful information on a wide range of options going from vegetarian cooking to the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases.In the best tradition of direct action, they not only confronted a certain form of power, exposing its mechanisms and attempting literally to stop it in its tracks: they did it in a way which demonstrated why the kind of social relations on which it is based were unnecessary.[17]They argue that prefigurative politics is essential for developing agents with the powers, drives, and consciousness to reach a free, equal, and democratic future society.