Prefigurative Practice, Politics, and the State
Once again digging into my thesis in bite-size chunks!
Prefigurative Politics and Prefigurative Political Space
The concept of prefigurative political space is key to understanding blockchain from a social and political perspective. It is a concept that is somewhat politically flexible, having emerged out of revolutionary movements in Europe on the left, especially amongst anarchists and anarcho-communists, but the concept and technique has also been employed by libertarians on the right, and has also been adapted to support forms of participatory democracy. It has been theorized by Leach to be an alternative to revolutionary or structural-reformist change, and often involves a movement toward more participatory forms of governance (2013). Graeber and Maeckelbergh also discuss the concept of prefigurative politics as a new form of anarchism or libertarianism, though it appeals to many across the political spectrum (2009; 2011). It has also been often associated most closely with what Maeckelbergh terms “alterglobalization” movements (2011).
The combination of the Actor-Network Theory (ANT) concept of multiplicity with prefigurative political spaces forms the core of my political-sociological theoretical approach to the communities evolving around blockchain. As described by Srnicek and Williams in Inventing the Future:
Rather than wait for a purported revolution, prefigurative politics attempts to instantiate a new world immediately — again relying on an implicit sense that immediacy is inherently superior to more mediated approaches… Direct democracy, prefigurative politics and direct action are not … intrinsically flawed. Rather than being denounced in themselves, their utility needs to be judged relative to particular historical situations and particular strategic objectives — in terms of their ability to exert real power to create genuine lasting transformation. The reality of complex, globalized capitalism is that small interventions consisting of relatively non-scalable actions are highly unlikely to ever be able to reorganise our socioeconomic system” (Srnicek and Williams 2016: 28–9).
Continuing from various concepts of scalability of successful social projects and the need for global solutions discussed in Inventing the Future, the globalized and borderless attributes of blockchain technology seems to embody this concept. If we are also able to understand the proliferation of different blockchains purpose built for a number of utilities as enactments of possibilities for prefigurative politics, this opens up many doors for social theorists in much the same way that examinations of the internet have opened up areas of social analysis in that realm. I do not include a lot of internet research here for issues of space, but referencing the existence of two research bodies in the area, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) as well as the Pew Research Center’s Internet and Technology division, gives a sense of the research opportunities that could open up as this technology becomes more widely adopted and integrated.
Boltanski and Chiapello discuss ideology itself in a way that quite closely resembles the idea of prefigurative politics (2018). They cite Louis Dumont’s idea of ideology as “a set of shared beliefs, inscribed in institutions, bound up with actions, and hence anchored in reality” (Boltanski and Chiapello 2018: 3). Though the concept of prefigurative politics excludes the passage “inscribed in institutions”, the concept of multiplicity is reflected here where shared beliefs become, or already are, a part of reality as a result of being taken up in the actions of the ideologue. It is perhaps important too, that in this passage, ideology is discussed in this way for the stated purpose of exploring and understanding the ways in which ideologies associated with economic activity shift over time and can be explored using historical examples.
Drawing upon all of these theories together brings us to the attempted task of exploring politics and potential ideology in new technology as it is shifting, through lived experience and a combined ethnographic, content analysis, and survey guided approach. Using this multiple methodological approach also allows us to take more broad aspects of capitalism, the current hegemonic economic system that is at play, into account and also discuss where aspects of software or platform development may coincide with trends within the economic system and where they are divergent from status quo capitalist development.
Gradual State Function Absorption and Transcendence
In The Structure of World History, Kojin Karatani (2014), attempts to study the progression of world history and development of nation and state in terms of modes of exchange, to give another perspective to study society that differs from Marx’s lens of modes of production. Throughout the book, Karatani argues that there are 4 distinct modes of exchange, which he refers to as modes A, B, C, and D, that characterize different levels in the development of the modern state. Another key aspect of Karatani’s (2014) argument throughout the book is that there are three current structures that are arranged in a Borromean knot in modern society: Nation, State, and Capital. The argument posed by the Borromean knot is that none of these structures can be brought down alone without strengthening aspects of the other two structures.
Karatani (2014) describes necessary preconditions for the creation of the bureaucratic system as well as several defining characteristics of modern bureaucracy. Before the bureaucracy could fully form, there was the required downfall of the absolute monarchy system. As well, fully developed modes of communication and trade were required, though these had been developing for some time and were realized with capitalism and the bureaucracy, what Karatani (2014) calls the modern state — a military power, and a standard and compulsory education (212). The defining characteristics of the system are described as “jurisdictions clearly defined by regulations, a hierarchical system of official ranks, appointment by contracts entered into voluntarily, promotion determined by a regularized system of rules, specialized training, and salaries paid in cash” (Karatani 2014:180). This in some ways builds on the Weberian understanding of the boundaries of democratic politics: “Weber’s counterarguments are personified in the image of the political hero or statesman, who must define a new political yet who can never fully overcome or transcend bureaucracy’s limitations in the process of transformation. Bureaucracy is thus the boundary condition of all modern democratic politics as well as a challenge to be overcome” (Maley 2011:32).
Combining the concept of the Borromean knot with the preconditions for the emergence of the bureaucratic system according to Karatani (2014), a Weberian understanding of the bureaucracy as a boundary to overcome, as well as the varied ideological involvement between both Gabriela Coleman and Boltanski and Chiapello (2018) brings us probably closest to Everard when he describes states as cultural artefacts that are most visible at its moments of challenge, or at its boundaries (Karatani 2014; Boltanski and Chiapello 2018; Everard 2000). At this moment, blockchain is on its way to absorbing at least some state function in the forms of governance and identification, is potentially becoming both the means of production by machines with the resulting capital being more horizontally distributed through decentralization, and supersedes the nation in some ways by the borderless aspect of the technology (Bratton 2014). It seems then that blockchain technology could be poised to move society into Karatani’s conceptual mode of exchange D, which we might already understand in some ways as the sharing economy. However, the sharing economy has already been around for a while, and in no way transcended either state, nation, or capital — but it has laid the groundwork for mainstream adoption of decentralized principles in local economies through gradual adoption of services such as Uber and Airbnb.
Blockchain technology has emerged from outside of traditional capitalist logic and development, and has been ushered into existence by coders who understand the technology as one built upon and embodying their ideology (and can be shaped to fit many ideologies in the future through open source code adaptation). This leads me to the concept that blockchain systems, at least in some instances and platforms, are an authentic politics of technology, and were created to meet ideological aims of coders involved with the projects as well as those that continue to engage with the space and move it forward. It is for this reason in particular that I find it absolutely imperative that we in the social sciences come to grips with the social and ideological aspects and implications of the technology, especially as it moves toward more mainstream and capitalist adoption and adaptation.
References from this section:
Boltanski, Luc, and Eve Chiapello. 2018. The New Spirit of Capitalism: New Updated Edition. Brooklyn, NY: Verso.
Everard, Jerry. 2000. Virtual States: The Internet and the Boundaries of the Nation-State. New York, NY: Routledge.
Graeber, David. 2002. “The New Anarchists.” New Left Review 13(1): 61–73.
Karatani, Kojin. 2014. The Structure of World History: From Modes of Production to Modes of Exchange. Translated by Michael K. Bourdaghs. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Leach, Darcy K. 2013. “prefigurative politics” n.p. in The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements edited by D. Snow, D. della Porta, B. Klandermans, and D. McAdam. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing.
Maeckelbergh, Marianne. 2011. “Doing is Believing: Prefiguration as Strategic Practice in the Alterglobalization Movement.” Social Movement Studies 10(1): 1–20.
Maley, Terry. 2011. Democracy and the Political in Max Weber’s Thought. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press. Retrieved October 20th, 2016 (http://books2.scholarsportal.info/viewdoc.html?id=/ebooks/ebooks2/utpress/2013-08-26/1/9781442695948).
Srnicek, Nick and Alex Williams. 2016. Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work. Brooklyn, NY: Verso.
My thesis in its entirety, of which this is a snippet, is available in full at: https://qspace.library.queensu.ca/handle/1974/24924
