Prefiguring the Realm of Freedom at Occupy Oakland

Abstract

In recent decades a powerful discourse has taken hold, celebrating the struggle of civil society against the state, and many have attempted to read the Occupy movement through that lens. This essay draws on Marx's critique of liberalism in “On the Jewish Question” to denaturalize the neoliberal imaginary implicit in such readings and to suggest an alternative account that foregrounds the prefigurative nature of the movement as an attempt to create freedom in community with others.