ABSTRACT
Many on the left argue that states are inherently oppressive: vertically dominating and controlling of society. This chapter seeks to supplement this approach by focusing on what it could mean to prefigure the state as a concept – that is, to act as if the state meant something different to the neoliberal accounts that currently prevail. Central to this discussion is the plural state – taking shape at micro, city, regional, national and global scales. Plural state thinking makes room for divergent kinds of states, but does not necessarily foreground progressive ones. Therefore, to explore in more detail a transformative left conception of the state, the chapter turns to 1980s British municipal radicalism. Taking up this adventurous episode in governing, an imaginary of the state as horizontal, everyday, activist and stewardly emerges. In the final section, the chapter explores what such a prefigurative conception of the state might accomplish.
