Resisting Capitalism through the Capitalist State: Prefigurative Politics as a Strategy

Abstract

Prefigurative organisations that practice democratic, community-oriented and environmentally sustainable ways of organising are a crucial component of any political strategy that aims to transcend capitalism. However, since capitalism is the dominant economic system, prefigurative initiatives often remain limited to marginal spaces of the economy and society and are vulnerable to the encroachment of capitalist values, practices and logics. Therefore, prefigurative practices face a central problem: how to move beyond capitalism from within capitalism? This article presents one potential answer: prefigurative initiatives should strategically use the capitalist state to advance their aims and resist capitalist encroachment, thereby building futures beyond capitalism from inside of capitalism. The argument draws on a case study of the Scottish social enterprise to demonstrate how this can be done in practice. The article theorises three interrelated yet distinct strategies of resistance: a strategy of co-production, a strategy of institutionalisation and a strategy of withdrawal, on which prefigurative initiatives can draw when strategically interacting with the capitalist state. This article goes beyond anarchist and autonomist understandings of prefiguration and contributes to an emerging body of scholarship that highlights the potential of mobilising the resources of the capitalist state for emancipatory ends.

Introduction

Prefigurative initiatives and movements that embody post/beyond-capitalist futures in their everyday activities – such as land occupations, squats, commons and social enterprises – are a crucial element of any political strategy that aims to transcend contemporary capitalism (Monticelli, 2021, 2022a also Raekstad, 2018; Wright, 2010, 2019). By embodying democratic, community-oriented and environmentally sustainable ways of organising economic activity, prefigurative practices show that alternatives to capitalism are possible. However, in the dominant capitalist system, prefigurative initiatives are often limited to marginal spaces of the economy and society and are vulnerable to the encroachment of capitalist values, practices and logics. Therefore, the question arises: how might prefigurative practices increase their influence, without succumbing to capitalist encroachment? Or, differently put, how can we move beyond capitalism from within capitalism?

One potential answer offered by prefigurative theory is that prefigurative practices should avoid forming political demands to capitalist institutions, such as the capitalist state, and instead act ‘as if one is already free’ and build a new world in ‘the shell of the old’ (Graeber, 2011, 2013 also Holloway, 2010; Maeckelbergh, 2011 see Franks, 2018). However, this particular strategic approach – which I call state-avoidant – has been criticised for shaping inward-looking communities, thus failing to realise large-scale transformation, and for making prefigurative practices more vulnerable to capitalist encroachment in the long term, as the outside structures and institutions which create preconditions for prefigurative action would remain unchanged (see Murray, 2014; Reinecke, 2018: 1302; Smucker, 2014; van de Sande, 2022: 160–165; Young and Schwartz, 2012).

This article builds on these critiques and argues that the prefigurative strategy for social change need not – and should not – avoid forming political demands to the capitalist state. To support this point, I draw on the case study of the Scottish social enterprise movement, which provides theoretical and strategic insights for prefigurative scholarship and grassroots movements about how prefigurative practices can strategically interact with the capitalist state to advance their aims, while resisting capitalist encroachment.

More concretely, this article presents three interrelated, yet distinct, strategies of resistance: (1) a strategy of co-production, which suggests that prefigurative initiatives should take a pro-active approach in forming an enabling institutional environment for themselves and seek out opportunities to enter policy co-production spaces with the capitalist state; (2) a strategy of institutionalisation, which aims to integrate prefigurative values and practices into government policy, thereby granting them a level of institutional power, which can be used to resist capitalist encroachment; (3) and a strategy of withdrawal, which refers to the strategic and partial withdrawal from particular practices, organisations and policy processes that threaten to foreclose prefigurative initiatives’ capacity to challenge the capitalist system.

The argument presented here proceeds in three parts. In the first part, I outline a substantive understanding of prefiguration as a strategy of emancipatory social change. I then argue that state-avoidant accounts of prefigurative practice limit prefigurative initiatives’ emancipatory potential (Graeber, 2011, 2013; Holloway, 2010; Maeckelbergh, 2011; see Franks, 2018) and that prefigurative initiatives do, can and should productively interact with the capitalist state.

In the second part, I interpret the Scottish social enterprise – a social economy movement (Hazenberg et al., 2016; Mazzei and Roy, 2017; Pearce, 2003) – as a prefigurative practice and highlight its value as a case study. I then explicate how Scottish social enterprise managed to use the Scottish state to expand the movement across Scotland, while resisting capitalist encroachment to a degree of success.

Finally, in the third section, I draw on this case study and the prefigurative literature to theorise three strategies of resistance that can be used to build prefigurative movements and make them more resistant to capitalist encroachment: (1) a strategy of co-production, (2) a strategy of institutionalisation and (3) a strategy of withdrawal. The argument presented here contributes to the emergent prefigurative scholarship that highlights the potential benefits of using the capitalist state’s resources to advance emancipatory agendas (e.g. Cooper, 2016, 2020; Schiller-Merkens, 2020: 13–15, 2024: 466; van de Sande, 2022: 160–165; Young and Schwartz, 2012). I argue that the theoretical and strategic toolkit provided in this article can be built on to advance various prefigurative initiatives’ own needs and aims – not only those practices that already have expertise and knowledge of how to productively interact with the capitalist state (see Chandra and Teasdale, 2024; Evers, 1995; Gibson-Graham, 2006; Pearce, 2003; Pestoff, 1998) but also more antagonistic prefigurative practices such as occupations, squats and encampments. As such, the article provides theoretical and strategic insights for both practitioners and theorists interested in prefigurative politics, alternative economies, radical social change and post/beyond-capitalist resistance.

Prefigurative Strategy of Social Change and the State

The term ‘prefiguration’ comes from the Latin verb ‘praefigurare’, which is composed of the prefix ‘prae’ that translates to ‘before’ and ‘figurare’ that translates ‘to form’ or ‘to shape’, and it means ‘anticipating or representing something that will happen in the future’ (see Monticelli, 2021: 106). Numerous academic accounts (Monticelli, 2021; Raekstad and Gradin, 2020; Schiller-Merkens, 2024; Swain, 2019; Yates, 2015) trace the contemporary use of the term ‘prefiguration’ to seminal articles by Carl Boggs (1977a, 1977b); who described prefiguration as ‘the embodiment, within the ongoing political practice of a movement, of those forms of social relations, decision-making, culture and human experience that are the ultimate goal’ (Boggs, 1977a: 100). This understanding of prefiguration is sometimes called a formal one, as it defines prefigurative practice as the mere correspondence between ‘means’ and ‘ends’ (Gordon, 2017: 527–528; Raekstad and Gradin, 2020: 36).

This formal understanding of prefiguration ultimately problematises the view that political means and ends are separate, and instead suggests that the ends should be reflected in means – that is be embodied in the immediate practices (Maeckelbergh, 2011; van de Sande, 2013, 2015, 2017; Naegler, 2018; Reinecke, 2018). This does not suggest that there is no distinction at all between the ‘ends’ and ‘means’, but rather that prefigurative practices seek to ensure that their everyday activities generally align with their ideological commitments or, at the very least, do not contradict ‘the final objective of their application’ (van de Sande, 2013: 232; also Reinecke, 2018: 1302). This formal understanding of prefiguration does not explicitly associate prefigurative practices with a specific set of (emancipatory) aims, and therefore, in theory, various liberal or right-wing groups could be considered to be prefigurative, as long as their immediate means correspond with their future ends (Raekstad and Gradin, 2020: 36).

A more substantive understanding of prefiguration, by contrast, ‘is not limited to the mere correspondence between goals and practices, but imbues both with particular value-content’ (Gordon, 2017: 527, my emphasis). While some substantive accounts narrowly associate prefigurative practice with the anarchist tradition (e.g. Boggs, 1977b: 359; Franks, 2018; Graeber, 2011, 2013), others place it within a broader radical left ideological agenda that aims to challenge and transcend the structures and values of ‘contemporary capitalism, the capitalist state and representative democracy’ (Monticelli, 2022a: 18) – by building democratic and environmentally sustainable forms of (economic) organisation, grounded in the values of mutualism and collaboration (see van de Sande, 2022: 154–165; Schiller-Merkens, 2024; also Wright, 2010, 2019). Generally speaking, these substantive accounts see prefiguration as an inherently anti-capitalist and horizontalist approach to social transformation – and, as such, liberal or fascist practices cannot, by definition, be prefigurative (see Franks, 2018).

Substantive accounts of prefiguration ultimately describe a particular approach to emancipatory social transformation. They see capitalism as the dominant system, yet as a system where one can still find and create ‘cracks’ – spaces where alternative practices exist, and where new ones can emerge and expand (e.g. Holloway, 2010; Monticelli, 2021, 2022a; Schiller-Merkens, 2024: 460–461; Wright, 2010, 2019). In these ‘cracks’, prefigurative initiatives experiment with democratic, environmentally sustainable, mutualist ways of being, thereby engaging our creative capacities to think beyond capitalism and practically demonstrating that alternatives to capitalist forms of organisation can exist (Monticelli, 2021, 2022a; Naegler, 2018: 510; Raekstad, 2022).

Prefigurative politics hence approaches social transformation as a decentralised process of ‘continuous learning, experimentation and transformation’ (Reinecke, 2018: 1302; also Monticelli, 2022a). This sets it apart from ‘Old Left’ vanguardist politics, which sees social transformation as a linear process where one follows a set of pre-theorised ‘necessary’ steps (Maeckelbergh, 2011; Reinecke, 2018: 1302; Swain, 2019: 49–52). From a prefigurative perspective, social change cannot simply be theorised and then imposed upon society in a top-down manner. As a result, prefiguration aims not for an abrupt and potentially violent break in the existing system, but rather for the gradual erosion of the dominant values and practices of capitalism, by diffusing prefigurative values and practices across society (Yates, 2015), until an indeterminate future point in which capitalism is no longer dominant is reached (see Monticelli, 2021, 2022a, 2022b; Schiller-Merkens, 2020, 2024; Wright, 2010, 2019).

However, how exactly the diffusion of prefigurative values and practices should take place is a point of debate in prefigurative scholarship. A critical concern for prefigurative practices is how to build post/beyond-capitalist social relations, organisations and institutions, while existing within a capitalist system that shapes key institutions of society – including, and most prominently, the capitalist state – thereby threatening to encroach on prefigurative practice when they engage with these institutions. In short, prefigurative initiatives face a dilemma: how to diffuse their values and practices while avoiding capitalist encroachment? Or, how to build post/beyond-capitalist futures from within capitalism?

Anarchist and autonomist-leaning accounts of prefiguration usually propose to simply avoid making political demands to the capitalist state, and instead act ‘as if one is already free’ and focus on building a new world in ‘the shell of the old’ (Graeber, 2011, 2013 also Holloway, 2010; Maeckelbergh, 2011 see Franks, 2018; van de Sande, 2013, 2015). These accounts, which I call state-avoidant, are deeply sceptical of prefigurative practices engaging with the state, as the state might subject prefigurative initiatives to the centralised and hierarchical ways of doing things, and thus corrupt them (Holloway, 2010: 58–61; also Graeber, 2011, 2013; Maeckelbergh, 2011: 13–14; for discussion see Raekstad and Gradin, 2020: 106–108). Therefore, prefigurative initiatives are encouraged to engage in those forms of mutual aid and democratic self-organisation that can be achieved ‘here and now’, without relying on reforms introduced by the state (Graeber, 2011, 2013; Holloway, 2010; Maeckelbergh, 2011; see Franks, 2018; van de Sande, 2013, 2015). This way, prefigurative practices are said to gradually build ‘a multiplicity of interstitial movements’ that refuse to adhere to the logic of the dominant capitalist system, thereby inspiring alternative ways of living and interacting from which a new – post/beyond-capitalist – society can grow (Holloway, 2010: 11; see Graeber, 2011, 2013; Maeckelbergh, 2011).

However, this dismissive view of the state’s strategic utility has been questioned by an emerging strand of the prefigurative scholarship (e.g. Schiller-Merkens, 2020:13–15; 2024: 466; van de Sande, 2022: 160–165; Young and Schwartz, 2012; see Wright, 2010, 2019). Some worry that, when prefigurative initiatives refuse to form demands to the capitalist state, they risk being restricted to the margins of the economy and society, from where they are unlikely to diffuse their values and practices more broadly (see Reinecke, 2018: 1302; Young and Schwartz, 2012; for discussion see Wright, 2010, 2019). While the state in late capitalist societies is admittedly capitalist – that is it plays a crucial role in maintaining capitalist relations – it functions as ‘a loosely coupled ensemble’ of competing interest groups and ideologies (Wright, 2010: 145), rather than a unitary and coherent force that only represents the interests of the capital (see Cooper, 2016, 2020; Schiller- Merkens, 2020: 13–15; van de Sande, 2022: 160–163; Wright, 2010, 2019; Young and Schwartz, 2012: 233). Many capitalist states already include certain institutions and practices that are more attuned to progressive agendas (see Cooper, 2016: 337–338), which can be used strategically to advance the prefigurative movements’ aims.

Building on this emerging strand of the prefigurative literature, I argue that prefigurative initiatives should take a pro-active role in shaping their institutional environment and enter policy co-production processes, with the aim of diffusing prefigurative practices and strengthening their resilience. As the case study presented in the next section illustrates, these interactions with the state do not inevitably lead to co-option and capitalist encroachment. In fact, the case of Scottish social enterprise shows that prefigurative initiatives can strategically use policy co-production spaces to resist capitalist encroachment.

Scottish Social Enterprise and the State

In this section, I use a case study of Scottish social enterprise – a movement of enterprises that address social and environmental needs and generate communal wealth – to illustrate how prefigurative practices can interact with the capitalist state in a way that helps them to diffuse prefigurative values and practices across the wider society. The case study relies on data collected between 2022 and 2023 and includes 21 semi-structured interviews with social enterprise practitioners and policy-makers, an analysis of relevant policy documents and non-participant observations of eight Scottish social enterprise events. The theoretical claims advanced in this article are generated through a recursive analysis that integrates insights from the existing literature on prefiguration with findings from the case study (see Ackerly et al., 2021). Methodologically, the article thus responds to recent calls for political theorists to ground their conceptual contributions in empirical analyses of social phenomena (see Ackerly et al., 2021).

Scottish social enterprise is typically approached as a social economy movement (e.g. Hazenberg et al., 2016; Mazzei and Roy, 2017; Pearce, 2003) – so the first task of this section is to show why recasting Scottish social enterprise as a prefigurative practice is not only plausible, but also particularly fruitful. In what follows, I will argue that Scottish social enterprise meets the substantive understanding of prefiguration, as it tries to transcend the capitalist economy, by experimenting with alternative – post/beyond-capitalist – forms of economic organisation.

I will further show that, over the years, the Scottish social enterprise movement has benefitted from significant legal, policy, financial and rhetorical support offered by the capitalist state (Hazenberg et al., 2016; Mazzei and Roy, 2017; Roy et al., 2015) – prompting declarations of Scotland as ‘the most supportive environment in the world for social enterprise’ (see Roy et al., 2015) – while resisting repeated attempts of capitalist encroachment. Moreover, even though Scottish social enterprise is more embedded in capitalist institutions than occupations, squats, encampments and the other practices of disruption that the prefigurative scholarship typically focuses on (e.g. Graeber, 2011, 2013; Naegler, 2018; Reinecke, 2018; van de Sande, 2013), it still maintains its prefigurative ethos and practices. This makes Scottish social enterprise a particularly valuable case study for generating strategic insights into how prefigurative practices do, can and should interact with the capitalist state.

Scottish social enterprise is a movement of enterprises whose primary objective is to achieve social and/or environmental benefit, rather than to accumulate private wealth (The Voluntary Code of Practice for Social Enterprise in Scotland (henceforth: the Code), n.d.). The ‘defining characteristic’ of Scottish social enterprise is the ‘asset lock’, which ensures that all social enterprise profits are re-invested in the enterprise or in the beneficiary community, and that, on dissolution, its assets go to ‘another organisation with similar aims’ (the Code, n.d.). Currently, the Scottish social enterprise landscape consists of four broad types of organisations: ‘frontline’ social enterprises; local social enterprise networks; national social enterprise support organisations which provide business, training, learning, leadership, financial and other types of support for social enterprise; and, since July 2022, a single national intermediary organisation – Social Enterprise Scotland – which aims to influence policy and promotes the Scottish social enterprise movement to the public.

This unique social enterprise ecosystem, built with support from the Scottish Government (Sinclair et al., 2018), has helped the movement expand its activities across Scotland. Most recent census data counts 6103 social enterprises operating across the country, employing more than 90,000 people, and contributing £2.89bn gross value added to the Scottish economy (Diffley Partnership and Scottish Government, 2024). Social enterprises provide many crucial services, such as the management of community facilities, creative activities, health and social care services and early learning and childcare, among others – often targeting groups of people deemed to be ‘vulnerable’, such as people experiencing socioeconomic disadvantage, young people, older people and people experiencing mental health issues (Diffley Partnership and Scottish Government, 2024: 10; Social Value Lab, 2021).

I argue that Scottish social enterprise meets a substantive understanding of prefiguration because the movement seeks to transcend the structures of capitalism by experimenting with democratic, horizontalist, mutualist and environmentally sustainable economic organisations that embody post/beyond-capitalist social relations. For example, the Voluntary Code of Practice for Social Enterprise in Scotland (henceforth: the Code) which, in the absence of a legal social enterprise definition, helps Scottish social enterprises to ‘recognise each other’, transcends core capitalist logics by recasting economic activity as a solution to pre-existing social and/or environmental problems (rather than a tool of private wealth accumulation) and ensuring the social (rather than private) ownership of wealth through the ‘asset lock’ (Social Enterprise Scotland, n.d.-a; the Code, n.d.). These defining characteristics of Scottish social enterprise directly correspond with the movement’s emancipatory ‘ends’: shaping an economy and society where ‘social fairness and the protection of the planet’ are ‘preconditions of all economic activity’ and which works ‘for the common good – rather than the unlimited private gain of a few’ (the Code, n.d., my emphasis). In other words, Scottish social enterprise prefigures an alternative mode of economic organising, to challenge and transcend the structures and values of contemporary capitalism.

Beyond promoting needs-driven, asset-locked economic activity, Scottish social enterprise aims to embody post/beyond-capitalist social relations by including other values and behaviours into the Code: social enterprises aim to be democratic by practicing ‘common ownership and democratic governance’; they seek to ‘empower communities’ by finding ‘bottom-up responses to social problems’; they aim to be ‘good employers’ by ‘having flatter pay structures than the private sector’ and paying ‘living wage’ to their employees; and ‘within the common sense of running a competitive business’, social enterprises ‘try to help and support one another – in the spirit of the Open Source IT community’ (see the Code, n.d.).

In addition, some Scottish social enterprise practitioners – particularly those involved in local social enterprise networks – resist the capitalist imperative of growth by purposefully maintaining small-scale organisations (Interview 2, 2022; Interview 3, 2022; Interview 5, 2022; Interview 8, 2022; see Steiner and Teasdale, 2019). According to these practitioners, small-scale organisation helps to root economic activity in a particular community and thus makes an enterprise more attuned to local needs, while also precluding the emergence of rigid and hierarchical corporate structures – which further demonstrates Scottish social enterprise’s alignment with the substantive account of prefigurative politics, in particular its commitments to democratic and horizontalist modes of self-organisation (Interview 2: 2022; Interview 8: 2022; also Interview 3: 2022; Interview 5: 2022):

<. . .> When something is wrong, something is too big <. . .> More than 6, 7, 8 people, they can’t relate as well <. . .> so it’s simple as that. Communication breaks down as it gets bigger (Interview 2: 2022).

And I think the more you grow and scale that <. . .> you’re kind of diluting that engagement and also, you know, a lot of people are more comfortable operating in a less corporate way. You know, the bigger you get, the larger scale you get, you need a whole heap of systems and processes and that can kind of detract from <. . .> needs-based approach (Interview 8: 2022).

Historically, Scottish social enterprise’s commitment to a small-scale, mutualist, community-rooted and democratic economy has been embodied by Social Enterprise Network Scotland, originally Social Entrepreneurs Network Scotland (SENScot). Founded in 1999, SENScot took on the role of national intermediary, and its founding is widely seen as the starting point of the contemporary Scottish social enterprise movement (Campbell and Sacchetti, 2014: 231; SENScot, 2020). ¹ SENScot was founded by community activists as a network that linked community practitioners with each other and provided opportunities to share their experiences (Campbell and Sacchetti, 2014; SENScot, 2020: 1; Interview 3, 2022). Over the years, it played a key role in linking dispersed social enterprise practices into a movement by informing grassroots organisations through a weekly bulletin and facilitating the development of Scottish social enterprise networks and support organisations (see Campbell and Sacchetti, 2014; SENScot, 2020).

In the movement’s early days, community practitioners who got involved in the Scottish social enterprise movement were primarily interested in social enterprise as a ‘means to the end’ of democratising Scottish society, moving beyond exploitative capitalist structures and achieving a level of independence from local and national authorities by generating their own income through trading (Interview 1, 2022; Interview 2, 2022; also Interview 3, 2022; Demarco, 2007, 2022). This illustrates the movement’s commitment to a broad post/beyond-capitalist ideological agenda, as well as an effort to transcend the structures of the capitalist state and representative democracy, at least to some extent (see section I):

<. . .> I’m a community worker, I always worked in communities, community empowerment, community wealth is my kind of thing. So, social enterprise is a kind of a means to an end <. . .> it was really more about the community resilience, community empowerment, <. . .> trying to challenge the power structures within Scottish civic societies, I suppose, and trying to give communities more local authority <. . .> (Interview 1, 2022).

<. . .> so, I’m an anti-capitalist, I believe in a well-being economy, and I believe the third sector is a very important factor of getting there <. . .> during my work with SENScot, we were resisting the gradual encroachment by the private sector, <. . .> ‘<. . .> with the community [social] enterprise, if you say to the people, is it ok if someone gets some private profit from this, they’re gonna look at you as if you were daft. Cause it’s theirs’ (Interview 2, 2022, my emphasis).

In a prefigurative fashion, SENScot activists sought to ensure that the network’s organisational structure and activities embodied their post/beyond-capitalist, democratic and mutualist ethos (see Campbell and Sacchetti, 2014; SENScot, 2020; Interview 3, 2022). Therefore, SENScot adopted a heterarchical organisational structure and practices, aiming to avoid turning into a bureaucratic centralised body: all SENScot’s activities arose ‘from the network itself’; it developed initiatives only in areas with no existing ‘players’; it formed ‘coalitions and partnerships wherever possible’ and offered unrestricted access to SENScot’s materials on open-source principles (Campbell and Sacchetti, 2014; SENScot, 2020; Interview 3, 2022; Pia, 2022). After helping to develop some of the national social enterprise support organisations, SENScot’s staff would remove themselves from their boards, giving up decision-making power as soon as was practically possible (Interview 3, 2022):

<. . .> you quickly become aware [that] some people clearly saw us as two tiers of trustees, those who set up and those who’ve come in since <. . .> does that mean your voice accounts for more than someone else’s voice? <. . .> So it was kind of better <. . .> [that] we were hanging around for a couple of years and then we stepped back (Interview 3, 2022).

While the Scottish social enterprise movement constitutes a prefigurative practice that aims to transcend capitalist structures, it has also benefitted from a close relationship with the Scottish Government over the years (see Hazenberg et al., 2016; Mazzei and Roy, 2017; Roy et al., 2015; SENScot, 2020; Sinclair et al., 2018). The period between 2008 and 2011 was particularly significant for this collaboration, with two major factors contributing to it. First, the Scottish National Party that came into power in 2007 sought to bring their own distinctly ‘Scottish’ approach to social enterprise, building on narratives about long-standing Scottish traditions of mutuality and cooperativism (Mazzei and Roy, 2017: 2453–2454; see Hazenberg et al., 2016; Roy et al., 2015; SENScot, 2020; Sinclair et al., 2018). As a result, the Scottish social enterprise movement benefitted from strong ministerial backing in this period (Interview 1, 2022; Interview 3, 2022; Interview 4, 2022). Current Scottish first minister John Swinney, who was Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth at the time, reflected that his personal interest in social enterprise was grounded in Scottish philosophy and his professional experience at a mutual life assurance society:

<. . .> I was very attracted to the philosophical concept of mutuality. I saw it in practice in the organisation I worked for <. . .> So the concept was of collective endeavour for collective benefit. And, of course, the concept of mutuality is a long standing Scottish philosophical tradition, <. . .> (Interview 20, 2023).

Second, the UK Government’s austerity policies that followed the 2008 financial crisis informed a shift in the Scottish Government’s thinking about public service provision. The pressure to reduce public service demand incentivised the Scottish Government to focus more on a preventive approach that required ‘innovative thinking’ and action (see Christie Commission, 2011; Interview 19, 2023). According to a former senior Scottish Government civil servant, because social enterprises used pre-existing community talents and resources to deliver social services, they became ‘a natural place to look’ for innovative solutions to social issues (Interview 19, 2023; also Christie Commission, 2011). In 2008, the Scottish Government published the Enterprising Third Sector Action Plan 2008–2011 (Scottish Government, 2008) that was developed in consultation with community practitioners and gave space for the Scottish social enterprise movement’s demands, as one of the former leaders of SENScot remembers:

<. . .> because of our relationship with these civil servants, we had big influence in how that Enterprising Third Sector Action Plan looked and we basically were able to give them a bit of a shopping list <. . .> (Interview 3, 2022).

The Scottish Government allocated £93 million for the third sector over the lifetime of the Action Plan, increasing funds by 37% (Roy et al., 2015: 787; Swinney, 2008). In 2011, the Just Enterprise (n.d.) programme was launched, which to this day provides support, training and information for starting, developing, growing and leading a social enterprise. The programme is delivered by a collective of Scottish social enterprise support organisations and received around £13 million from the Scottish Government between 2011 and 2023 (Scottish Government, 2019). All this funding and policy support enabled the Scottish social enterprise movement to develop a bespoke support infrastructure for social enterprises and raise its profile across the country (SENScot, 2020).

The Scottish Government also shaped a supportive legal environment for community-led economic initiatives, including social enterprises (Campbell and Sacchetti, 2014: 222; Steiner and Teasdale, 2019: 146). The Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act (2015) extended the community right to buy land to all of Scotland, now including urban as well rural areas, and introduced a provision allowing community bodies to purchase land which is abandoned, neglected or causing harm to the environmental wellbeing of the community, where the owner is not willing to sell that land (Scottish Government, 2017). The introduction of ‘asset transfer requests’ provided community bodies with ‘a right to request to buy, lease, manage or use land and buildings belonging to local authorities, Scottish public bodies or Scottish Ministers’ that communities could make a better use of (Scottish Government, 2017). In addition, the introduction of ‘community benefit clauses’ – a requirement for government contractors to deliver wider social benefit in addition to the primary purpose of the contract – from 2008 onwards opened new opportunities for social enterprises to enter public procurement, either directly or by being sub-contracted by private companies (Campbell and Sacchetti, 2014; Roy et al., 2015: 788; Steiner and Teasdale, 2019: 146; also Scottish Government, 2015).

While this supportive institutional environment allowed Scottish social enterprise to expand across Scotland, the movement’s development was not a conflict-free process: Scottish social enterprise had to resist processes of capitalist encroachment numerous times. For example, tensions emerged over the social enterprise model practised in England and the one practised in Scotland (Campbell and Sacchetti, 2014; Hazenberg et al., 2016; Mazzei and Roy, 2017 Interview 1, 2022; Interview 2, 2022; Interview 3, 2022; Interview 8, 2022; Interview 9, 2022).

Community interest company (CIC), a legal form for social enterprises introduced by the UK Government in 2005, became a key source of tension because it introduced private profit incentives into the social enterprise movement, by allowing the distribution of dividends to private shareholders (up to 35% of CIC’s profits) (Interview 1, 2022; Interview 2, 2022; Interview 3, 2022; see UK Government, 2025) – to facilitate the private capital investments into social enterprise. While England-based social enterprise support organisations generally accepted such ‘dilution’ (Social Enterprise UK, n.d.; see Campbell and Sacchetti, 2014), many Scottish practitioners saw it as undermining the practice of social wealth ownership, thereby threatening the movement’s integrity (Interview 1, 2022; Interview 2, 2022; Interview 3, 2022; Interview 8, 2022; Interview 9, 2022). For those Scottish practitioners, the asset lock was not simply a technical tool that can be adjusted here and there to increase social enterprise’s attractiveness for private capital, but instead a core characteristic distinguishing Scottish social enterprise from the private sector and the capitalist economy as a whole (Interview 1, 2022; Interview 2, 2022; Interview 3, 2022; Interview 8, 2022; Interview 9, 2022; the Code, n.d.). In other words, social enterprise practitioners in Scotland were concerned with ensuring that the proposed immediate means (i.e. a ‘diluted’ asset lock) did not undermine their ultimate post/beyond-capitalist ends (i.e. an economy which works ‘for the common good – rather than the unlimited private gain of a few’ (the Code, n.d., my emphasis)) – which further illustrates the movement’s prefigurative nature.

Therefore, in the early 2010s, Scottish social enterprise activists began distancing themselves from the social enterprise developments that were taking place in England (SENScot, 2020). In particular, a disagreement emerged around the development of the Social Enterprise Mark – a social enterprise accreditation authority which, after being first launched in England (Lyons, 2024), was now to be developed in Scotland. While SENScot were initially supportive of the idea and intended to shape a Scottish variant of the Mark, they eventually withdrew from the initiative ‘over the principle of dividends to private shareholders’ (SENScot 2020: 12). To specify, the Social Enterprise Mark’s definition of social enterprise included organisations that distributed almost half of their profits to private individuals (Social Enterprise Mark, n.d.), something which many Scottish practitioners stood against (Interview 2, 2022; also Interview 3, 2022; Interview 4, 2022):

<. . .> there was a ‘Scottish’ definition of social enterprise which is different from the ‘English’ one. They were much more private sector-ish [sic], very early on, <. . .> we were jointly with England trying to come up with a Social Enterprise Mark, they wanted to allow a percentage of profit go for private gain, we were not prepared to do that, so we disassociated from that (Interview 2, 2022).

<. . .> so we ended up pulling out of the Social Enterprise Mark, we weren’t signed up to that, and their criteria was 50% reinvestment, 50% you pay to shareholders, let’s say, which we didn’t agree with <. . .> (Interview 3, 2022).

SENScot practitioners formed a steering group to explore the ‘values and behaviours by which social enterprises in Scotland can recognise each other’ (SENScot, 2020: 12). This work led to the creation of the Code, developed in response to what ‘many’ viewed as the ‘potential encroachment of “private profit” organisations into the sector’ (SENScot, 2020: 12).

Since its launch in 2012, the Code has acquired a degree of institutional legitimacy and power (SENScot, 2020). The Code’s criteria not only determine what types of organisations can join the single national social enterprise intermediary as social enterprise members (Social Enterprise Scotland, n.d.-b) but have also been recognised in Scottish Government policy (see Scottish Government, 2016, 2021, 2024). In particular, Scotland’s Social Enterprise Strategy 2016–2026, which was co-produced with the movement, refers to the Code as ‘the benchmark criteria and values by which social enterprises can be identified and recognise each other’ (Scottish Government, 2016: 8).

While the bespoke social enterprise strategy (Scottish Government, 2016), which proposed a 10-year vision for growing and expanding social enterprise in Scotland, was initially seen as a major win by Scottish social enterprise practitioners (SENScot, 2020; Interview 3, 2022; Interview 5, 2022), it also marked the beginning of a more conflictual (rather than collaborative) relationship between the Scottish Government and the movement (Interview 3, 2022; Interview 5, 2022). In particular, as the Scottish Government and some national social enterprise support organisations were becoming more accepting of the ‘diluted’ asset lock (Interview 13, 2023; Interview 12, 2023; Interview 16, 2023; Interview 17, 2023), SENScot, whose practitioners were tied to the ‘full’ asset lock, became increasingly sidelined in various policy debates (Interview 3, 2022; Interview 18, 2023; also Interview 6, 2022; Interview 9, 2022):

<. . .> by the government we were described <. . .> as difficult and awkward for the last few years <. . .> I think our view [SENScot’s] was still clearly overwhelmingly the majority view, but some key folk didn’t like it <. . .> (Interview 3, 2022).

<. . .> SENScot failed to manage that relationship with Scottish Government effectively in later years and it lost that connection as a partner and had become seen as a problem <. . .> (Interview 18: 2023).

This increasing tension culminated in March 2022, when, after numerous unsuccessful efforts between SENScot and Social Enterprise Scotland to reach a merger agreement (SENScot, 2020), the Scottish Government used a competitive bidding process to determine which organisation would become the new single social enterprise intermediary (Social Enterprise Scotland, 2022a). After the government announced that SENScot would be defunded, and Social Enterprise Scotland would become the sole representative of Scottish social enterprise at the national level, the movement’s prefigurative values and practices seemed to be at risk, considering that over the years SENScot played a crucial role in defending the Code (Interview 1, 2022; Interview 2, 2022; Interview 3, 2022).

Despite this threat, Scottish social enterprise was able to protect the movement’s emancipatory potential to a degree of success. SENScot’s ‘ethos’ represented ‘by far the majority of social enterprises in Scotland’ (de Bruin et al., 2023: 1077), so practitioners expressed their discontent about the government’s decision to defund SENScot on social media (Pybus, 2022; also Interview 7, 2022; Interview 8, 2022). This was followed by an open letter initiated by academics from Glasgow and signed by 126 people from 28 countries, which highlighted the need to protect the distinct ‘Scottish’ social enterprise values, as formalised in the Code (Pioneers Post, 2022). Adding to this fact, the Scottish Government’s own policy documents acknowledged the importance of the Code (see Scottish Government, 2016, 2021), prompting the Scottish Government and the new single social enterprise intermediary to mediate concerns over the defining characteristics of Scottish social enterprise. As one practitioner remembers:

<. . .> I think they realised when the proverbial hit the fan that there was a huge amount of unrest in the sector because that wasn’t representation for many organisations, and so there was almost a bit of backpedalling, where the Government were like, oh god, how are we going to sort this out? (Interview 8, 2022).

Following this, a Transition Group – which included practitioners from organisations that were aligned with SENScot’s ethos – was formed to ‘secure’ the ‘long-term future’ of the movement (Social Enterprise Scotland, 2022b). After six meetings, the Transition Group’s final report argued for ‘safeguarding’ Scottish social enterprise values by ‘separating out social profit as the main characteristic of its membership’ in addition to other recommendations to ensure that the new intermediary maintains the movement’s bottom-up and heterarchical ethos, as originally practised by SENScot (Transition Group, 2022: 7, original emphasis). A number of these recommendations have already been implemented by the new national social enterprise intermediary: over the last 2 years, Social Enterprise Scotland underwent significant organisational changes, and the ‘full’ asset lock maintains its role as the defining characteristic of Scottish social enterprise (see Social Enterprise Scotland, 2023).

To summarise, the case of Scottish social enterprise demonstrates how a prefigurative movement can use the resources of the capitalist state to diffuse its practices and values, while also resisting capitalist encroachment. The movement’s close collaboration with the Scottish state led to a unique support infrastructure, which helped social enterprises to expand and grow across the country. Moreover, through its collaborative relationship with the state, SENScot was able to develop into a key national intermediary organisation, which communicated and addressed grassroots’ needs and concerns, played a key role in shaping Scottish social enterprise policy and protected the movement’s prefigurative values by strategically withdrawing from certain initiatives. While the Scottish Government’s defunding of SENScot demonstrates the risk of collaboration with and dependency on the capitalist state (see Chandra and Teasdale, 2024; Dinerstein, 2017; Farr, 2018; Mitlin, 2008), the Scottish social enterprise movement was still capable of challenging the Scottish Government and pressuring the new national intermediary to address the movement’s concerns. As a result, even after SENScot’s defunding, Scottish social enterprise’s prefigurative values and ethos persist within the movement. For that reason, I argue, the case of Scottish social enterprise contains valuable theoretical and strategic lessons on how prefigurative practices should interact with the capitalist state.

Resisting Capitalism through the Capitalist State

This concluding section builds on the case study of Scottish social enterprise to theorise three strategies of resistance that prefigurative initiatives can draw on to diffuse their activities, while resisting capitalist encroachment: (1) the strategy of co-production, (2) the strategy of institutionalisation, (3) the strategy of withdrawal. I collectively refer to these as strategies of resistance since, even though they are in part reliant on maintaining a collaborative relationship with the capitalist state, their ultimate aim is to build prefigurative initiatives’ capacity to build futures beyond capitalism from within capitalism.

The strategy of co-production, first, takes a pro-active approach to forming an enabling institutional environment for prefigurative practice, so that it can diffuse its values across the economy by seeking out policy co-production opportunities with the capitalist state. This strategic approach is grounded in the assumption that, despite being under pressure from a globalised capitalist system, the capitalist state still plays a crucial role in shaping the institutional incentives that can limit or extend the space available for prefigurative initiatives. Therefore, productive interaction with the state is crucial if prefigurative practices are to diffuse their behaviours, values and practices across the economy and society (see Yates, 2015), thus contributing to the gradual erosion of capitalism (see Monticelli, 2021, 2022a; Schiller-Merkens, 2020; Wright, 2010, 2019).

Entering policy co-production spaces does not inherently result in capitalist encroachment and state co-option. Beyond the case of Scottish social enterprise presented here, there is further empirical evidence suggesting that by being embedded in state processes, social economy initiatives gain the capacity to advocate for policy change and structural reforms (see Chandra and Teasdale, 2024; Mitlin, 2008). Co-production of public policy and services can provide grassroots initiatives with political influence and legitimacy that may be used strategically to negotiate with the state and further their own aims (see Chandra and Teasdale, 2024; Mitlin, 2008).

Building on these insights, the strategy of co-production suggests that prefigurative initiatives can and should seek out and negotiate entry into policy co-production spaces. Such spaces tend to open when governments struggle to address social and economic issues and when policy-makers, who hold sympathetic ideological views towards alternative forms of economic organisation, acquire positions of power. Thus, timing is crucial for the strategy of co-production to be effective: moments of crisis, such as the 2008 financial crash, the global pandemic or climate emergencies, often pressure elite political actors to be more open to the alternative forms of organisation (see Schiller- Merkens, 2020: 13–15; Wright, 2010, 2019). While it is true that state actors may be (and often are) interested in alternative organisational forms primarily as means to stabilise the capitalist economy, the policy co-production process does not have to be a zero-sum game (see Schiller- Merkens, 2020: 13–15; Wright, 2010, 2019). The capitalist state might already be predisposed to provide (some) support for community initiatives – to empower them to the degree so that they can take over public service delivery (see Taylor, 2017) – which can be used strategically by prefigurative practices.

However, to exploit policy co-production opportunities effectively, prefigurative initiatives must also limit the capacity of state actors to merely ‘task’ them with solving issues for the state. To achieve this, prefigurative initiatives should seek to acquire so-called ‘countervailing power’, that is ‘a variety of mechanisms that reduce, and perhaps even neutralise, the power-advantages of ordinarily powerful actors’, such as the capitalist state (Fung and Wright, 2003: 260). Countervailing power can help to remedy the power imbalances which emerge when prefigurative initiatives – or citizens more broadly – enter policy co-production spaces of the capitalist state (see Chandra and Teasdale, 2024; Dinerstein, 2017; Farr, 2018; Mitlin, 2008).

As the case of Scottish social enterprise highlights, to achieve a degree of countervailing power, prefigurative movements need to establish a strong and reliable intermediary infrastructure which is linked to the grassroots and is responsible for formalising and maintaining the movements’ values, practices and behaviours (see Fung and Wright, 2003; Taylor, 2017: 21). Therefore, before entering policy co-production spaces, prefigurative initiatives need to ensure that they have a ‘representative’ which, while having the time, skills and resources dedicated to building a relationship with the state, would also be accountable to the grassroots. In the case of Scottish social enterprise, SENScot undertook such a role for many years: it had both grassroots legitimacy and direct links to the government, which enabled it to mediate between the two and ensure that grassroots’ needs were represented at a national level.

Importantly, the strategy of co-production itself has potential to further enhance prefigurative initiatives ability to develop their countervailing power: if policy co-production spaces are used successfully to address certain issues experienced by the capitalist state and achieve (some) demands of prefigurative movements, this not only increases the state’s reliance on prefigurative initiatives (and thus gives the latter strategic leverage) but also develops an enabling institutional environment which allows prefigurative movements to build their capacity and challenge the state when it is needed (see Chandra and Teasdale, 2024; Mitlin, 2008). The strategy of institutionalisation to which I now turn provides more specific strategic insights into how this can be achieved.

The strategy of institutionalisation aims to include core prefigurative values, behaviours and practices into government policy after prefigurative movements negotiate their entry into policy co-production spaces. A degree of institutional power and legitimacy helps prefigurative initiatives to build their public profile, ensure their longevity and turn prefigurative values, behaviours and practices into structural benchmarks. Once institutionalised (even if only partially), prefigurative practices are better placed to resist various forms of capitalist encroachment. Thus, the strategy of institutionalisation not only helps prefigurative practices to become more sustainable in the long term but also maintains prefigurative movements’ integrity.

To elaborate, the strategy of institutionalisation develops the countervailing power of prefigurative initiatives, by turning certain core prefigurative values and practices into structural benchmarks which cannot be easily transgressed, even by the capitalist state. This is achieved through a two-step process: first, it requires prefigurative initiatives to identify and formalise the values, practices and characteristics which distinguish them from the dominant capitalist economy (e.g. the ‘full’ asset lock). An intermediary infrastructure, which is rooted in and has legitimacy among the grassroots, plays a crucial part in facilitating this process. In the case of the Scottish social enterprise, SENScot facilitated the development of the Code in a bottom-up fashion, consulting with the grassroots and ensuring that it genuinely represented their values and ethos, which ultimately earned the Code its legitimacy among social enterprises.

The second step of the strategy of institutionalisation uses policy co-production opportunities to include the formalised prefigurative values and practices into government policy. A degree of institutional legibility and recognition has the potential to build countervailing power of prefigurative movements because it enables them to challenge the capitalist state ‘on its own terms’. If the government includes certain prefigurative values, behaviours and practices into its official policy, then the state can be challenged when it fails to meet – or outright contradicts – its own commitments. For example, the fact that the Code (and with it, the ‘full’ asset lock) was already included in the government’s social enterprise policy (see Scottish Government, 2016, 2021) and therefore possessed a degree of institutional recognition provided practitioners and other interested parties with sufficient countervailing power to put pressure on the Scottish Government and the new social enterprise intermediary.

While the inclusion of the Code into the Scottish Government policy may not have been sufficient to entirely halt the encroachment of private profit incentives into the movement, it provided the Code with a degree of institutional legitimacy and turned its values and ethos into structural benchmarks. The Code then could be employed to raise concerns about the future of the movement, which resulted in the establishment of the Transition Group and the decision to protect social ownership of wealth as the core defining characteristic of Scottish social enterprise. This way, even after SENScot – the organisation which took the leading role in resisting capitalist encroachment over the years and facilitated the development of the Code – was defunded, some of its core values, practices and ethos were preserved within the movement, ensuring their longevity after significant institutional changes.

The strategy of institutionalisation is grounded in the awareness that opportune moments for a productive interaction between prefigurative movement and the capitalist state usually open for a limited amount of time. Therefore, the strategy of institutionalisation aims to help prefigurative initiatives sustain themselves after the moments of crisis that incentivise elite actors to look for alternative forms of organisation (Schiller-Merkens, 2020: 13–15; Wright, 2010, 2019) shift into more stable periods of capitalist development, which often limit, rather than advance, prefigurative initiatives. This way, prefigurative initiatives can achieve a degree of sustainability in a changing socioeconomic and political context and (somewhat) successfully navigate the threat of capitalist encroachment (see De Coster and Zanoni, 2023: 940; Monticelli, 2021: 107–108; 2022a: 19–20; Schiller-Merkens, 2024: 467-468).

While the strategy of institutionalisation builds the countervailing power of prefigurative initiatives, this power develops within the boundaries of what the capitalist state finds legible (see Dinerstein, 2017). While the boundaries of legibility are not set in stone and can be expanded by exploiting contradictions within the capitalist state (see Cooper, 2016, 2020; Schiller-Merkens, 2020; van de Sande, 2022: 160–165; Wright, 2010, 2019; Young and Schwartz, 2012: 233), such a process usually takes time and effort, and therefore, more direct strategic approaches are sometimes necessary. The strategy of withdrawal, to which I now turn, is one such approach.

The strategy of withdrawal refers to the strategic and partial withdrawal from particular practices, organisations and policy processes that threaten to foreclose prefigurative initiatives’ capacity to challenge the capitalist system. It is grounded in a more sceptical view of the capitalist state and seeks to prevent prefigurative initiatives from being ‘translated’ into policy environments in ways that subjugate prefigurative values, ethos and practices under capitalist logics (see Dinerstein, 2017). The strategy of withdrawal is the most effective when prefigurative initiatives have a degree of countervailing power – which is needed to remedy the unequal power dynamics that emerge once social economy initiatives (or citizens more broadly) participate in policy co-production with the capitalist state (for discussion, see Chandra and Teasdale, 2024; Dinerstein, 2017; Farr, 2018; Mitlin, 2008). As already discussed, such countervailing power can be developed through a prefigurative movement, establishing a strong intermediary infrastructure and using the other two strategies of resistance. Importantly, the strategy of withdrawal does not foreclose prefigurative practices’ potential to engage with state institutions at a later stage and is therefore different from the state-avoidant strategies that I critique in Section I.

While acknowledging that a ‘pure’ prefigurative practice – that is a practice that is completely ‘outside’ of the capitalist power relations – cannot be attained (see De Coster and Zanoni, 2023; Monticelli, 2021: 107–108; 2022a: 19–20; Naegler, 2018: 510; Schiller-Merkens, 2024: 467–468; van de Sande, 2022: 940), it is still crucial for prefigurative initiatives to be vigilant and establish certain boundaries that preserve their ethos, ensure that their ‘ends’ are not undermined by the immediate ‘means’ and distinguish them from the dominant capitalist economy (even if in limited and partial ways) (see Schiller-Merkens, 2024: 468). While such boundaries cannot simply be pre-theorised and will, in part, emerge through the experiential knowledge built by prefigurative movements, it is important to acknowledge that certain boundaries are necessary if prefigurative practices’ emancipatory potential is to be actualised. In other words, prefigurative practice will always involve both the creation of an alternative form of organisation and a refusal and negation of certain organising principles of capitalism (Schiller-Merkens, 2024: 463).

Following from this, the strategy of withdrawal consists of two core elements: first, a practice of continuous self-vigilance, which involves prefigurative initiatives reflexively assessing how their practices and behaviours play out ‘on the ground’ and evaluating to what extent they adhere to the movement’s ultimate values and aims. The second step consists of performing a (public) action that separates and distinguishes prefigurative practices from certain initiatives, practices and processes which prefigurative movements deem to undermine their ultimate aims.

In the case of Scottish social enterprise, such a moment of withdrawal took place when SENScot practitioners decided to distance themselves from Social Enterprise Mark and established the Code to resist the ‘dilution’ of the asset lock that was taking place in England. A strong intermediary infrastructure plays a crucial role in the strategy of withdrawal: an intermediary organisation is more likely to have the necessary time and resources to keep an overview of the prefigurative movement as a whole and the capacity and legitimacy to organise collective withdrawal. An intermediary body is also more likely to have a reflexive distance needed to make such critical assessments.

While withdrawing from certain organisations and initiatives which emerge from the prefigurative movement itself might be easier, as the power imbalances are not that significant, a high degree of countervailing power is needed to successfully withdraw from policies and processes initiated by the state. This power can be built through a strong intermediary infrastructure and the other two strategies – co-production and institutionalisation. To elaborate, the capitalist state becomes reliant on prefigurative practices when they are involved in the delivery of public services and in solving various social and environmental issues (see Wright, 2010, 2019). While, of course, the state can always redirect its support to organisations and sectors that are ‘easier’ to collaborate with (i.e. more depoliticised organisations), capitalist state bureaucracies often take time to act and adapt, which can provide prefigurative initiatives with strategic leverage. By publicly withdrawing from certain state-led processes and policies, prefigurative practices can make it more costly for the capitalist state (both materially and reputationally) to proceed without heeding some of the demands of prefigurative movements. Following from this, it could be argued that SENScot made a strategic mistake by entering the competitive bidding process organised by the Scottish Government, instead of using its institutional, historical and grassroots legitimacy to strategically withdraw from it.

To summarise, when combined, the three strategies of resistance provide a pragmatic answer to the central challenge faced by prefigurative initiatives: how to build post/beyond-capitalist futures from within capitalism? While certain particularities of the Scottish context – such as Scotland being a relatively small, democratic country which has a political culture dedicated to bottom-up policy-making and community empowerment (see Mazzei and Roy, 2017: 2453–2456) – likely had an impact on the success of the three strategies, they have the potential to be adopted and adapted in other contexts. For example, some empirical studies show that the strategy of co-production has already been used (to different degrees of success) by (prefigurative) social economy organisations in a variety of other contexts, for example, Kenya, India, Philippines, China (see Chandra and Teasdale, 2024) and different countries across Latin America (Dinerstein, 2017; see Mitlin, 2008).

In general, the three strategies promise to be helpful to those prefigurative initiatives that historically have drawn on the capitalist state’s resources to advance their own aims and already possess some experience and knowledge needed to navigate policy co-production spaces (see Chandra and Teasdale, 2024; Evers, 1995; Gibson-Graham, 2006; Mair and Rathert, 2024; Pearce, 2003; Pestoff, 1998). However, even more antagonistic practices, such as squats, occupations and encampments, I argue, could benefit from entering policy co-production spaces and using them to negotiate their legal status, so that their practices can be institutionalised and thus acquire a degree of sustainability (see Murray, 2014).

Conclusion

Rather than focusing on maintaining prefigurative practices ‘purity’ against the corrupting influence of the state, as state-avoidant accounts of prefiguration tend to do (e.g. see Graeber, 2011, 2013; Holloway, 2010; Maeckelbergh, 2011 for discussion see Raekstad and Gradin, 2020: 106-108), I argue that prefigurative movements do, can and should strategically interact with the capitalist state to build their capacity, diffuse their practices across economy and society and resist the threat of capitalist encroachment, even if they do so imperfectly. To make my argument, I draw on the case study of the Scottish social enterprise movement, which is an example of a prefigurative practice that has benefitted from the rhetorical, legal, policy and financial support of the capitalist state over its years of existence and managed to resist the threat of capitalist encroachment to a degree of success.

As such, my argument therefore builds on, and contributes to, the emerging trend within prefigurative scholarship that points out limitations of state-avoidance (e.g. Schiller-Merkens, 2020: 13–15; 2024: 466; van de Sande, 2022: 160–165; Young and Schwartz, 2012; see Wright, 2010, 2019). Without strategic and productive interaction with the capitalist state, prefigurative movements risk producing inward-looking communities that remain limited to the margins of society and economy and are unlikely to meaningfully change institutions and structures that provide preconditions for prefigurative action. Therefore, a more pragmatic and pro-active engagement with the capitalist state is needed if prefigurative initiatives are to live up to their emancipatory potential.