[3] Prefigurative politics are sometimes justified based on the premise that the ends a social movement can achieve are "fundamentally shaped by the means it employs.
In the following year Wini Breines, the-then professor of sociology and women's studies in Northeastern University, applied the concept to the US Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)[6].
For example, James Guillaume, a comrade of Mikhail Bakunin, wrote, "How could one want an equalitarian and free society to issue from authoritarian organisation?
"[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.