AWOL

In lots of ways families are natural groups that people form to care and support each other. But there’s another, more sinister dimension to “The Family” that oppresses people (especially when those people are women, queer or children).

The Family isn’t just a natural social unit based on caring anymore. It is a rigid economic grouping of people into cramped lodgings and restrictive economic relationships. The Family ceases to be natural the moment that it becomes economically necessary.

The Family subverts the individual. Women are devalued in by an economic system that doesn’t pay them for any housework or child raising labour. Children are totally dependent on their parents for housing and food, and they are totally subject to their parents’ will. The most authoritarian relationship within society is that between parent and child. Some parents invert this relationship and become servants of their children, but they have the quick-release of adulthood – at any time they can regain their authoritative power. When you can no longer choose an alternative, then your individuality is no longer valued. You become “a wife” and “a mother”, and no longer have a name but “honey” or “mum!”.

Individuals who don’t fit within The Family structure find themselves: suffering under the dictatorial yoke of parents and patriarchs; cast into reactive youth cultures; or stoically struggling to maintain a single-parent family on the dole. The Family is the basis of society and to not fit in the family is to be different.

The Family benefits big capital because when individual workers group together, pooling their resources to survive. Wages only need to increase in line with the cost of providing a survival allowance to groups, not in line with the cost of supporting individuals in society. Only 80 years ago, the controllers of wages in Australia would calculate what a woman’s wage was worth by assuming that she lived with a husband and child who would each work – a woman’s wage was 70% of a man’s; a child’s wage about 60%. The Family in Australia has its roots in an economic unit where each party was bound to group together by the need to pool their wages to provide food and shelter for themselves as a group. The man, woman and child were all stuck - but women and children more so.

The Family takes on the cost of child raising and education. Choosing which school your kids goes to is an economic choice – what can you afford? If you sacrifice now, will your child become Prime Minister some day?

Today, little changes. The nature of family is still gendered.

Lifted from The Tyrrany of Structurlessness by Jo Freeman

PRINCIPLES OF DEMOCRATIC STRUCTURING

Once the movement no longer clings tenaciously to the ideology of “structurelessness,” it is free to develop those forms of organization best suited to its healthy functioning. This does not mean that we should go to the other extreme and blindly imitate the traditional forms of organization. But neither should we blindly reject them all. Some of the traditional techniques will prove useful, albeit not perfect; some will give us insights into what we should and should not do to obtain certain ends with minimal costs to the individuals in the movement. Mostly, we will have to experiment with different kinds of structuring and develop a variety of techniques to use for different situations. The Lot System is one such idea which has emerged from the movement. It is not applicable to all situations, but is useful in some. Other ideas for structuring are needed. But before we can proceed to experiment intelligently, we must accept the idea that there is nothing inherently bad about structure itself — only its excess use.

While engaging in this trial-and-error process, there are some principles we can keep in mind that are essential to democratic structuring and are also politically effective:

1. Delegation of specific authority to specific individuals for specific tasks by democratic procedures. Letting people assume jobs or tasks only by default means they are not dependably done. If people are selected to do a task, preferably after expressing an interest or willingness to do it, they have made a commitment which cannot so easily be ignored.
2. Requiring all those to whom authority has been delegated to be responsible to those who selected them. This is how the group has control over people in positions of authority. Individuals may exercise power,but it is the group that has ultimate say over how the power is exercised.
3. Distribution of authority among as many people as is reasonably possible. This prevents monopoly of power and requires those in positions of authority to consult with many others in the process of exercising it. It also gives many people the opportunity to have responsibility for specific tasks and thereby to learn different skills.
4. Rotation of tasks among individuals. Responsibilities which are held too long by one person, formally or informally, come to be seen as that person’s “property” and are not easily relinquished or controlled by the group. Conversely, if tasks are rotated too frequently the individual does not have time to learn her job well and acquire the sense of satisfaction of doing a good job.
5. Allocation of tasks along rational criteria. Selecting someone for a position because they are liked by the group or giving them hard work because they are disliked serves neither the group nor the person in the long run. Ability, interest, and responsibility have got to be the major concerns in such selection. People should be given an opportunity to learn skills they do not have, but this is best done through some sort of “apprenticeship” program rather than the “sink or swim” method. Having a responsibility one can’t handle well is demoralizing. Conversely, being blacklisted from doing what one can do well does not encourage one to develop one’s skills. Women have been punished for being competent throughout most of human history; the movement does not need to repeat this process.
6. Diffusion of information to everyone as frequently as possible. Information is power. Access to information enhances one’s power. When an informal network spreads new ideas and information among themselves outside the group, they are already engaged in the process of forming an opinion — without the group participating. The more one knows about how things work and what is happening, the more politically effective one can be.
7. Equal access to resources needed by the group. This is not always perfectly possible, but should be striven for. A member who maintains a monopoly over a needed resource (like a printing press owned by a husband, or a darkroom) can unduly influence the use of that resource. Skills and information are also resources. Members’ skills can be equitably available only when members are willing to teach what they know to others.

When these principles are applied, they insure that whatever structures are developed by different movement groups will be controlled by and responsible to the group. The group of people in positions of authority will be diffuse, flexible, open, and temporary. They will not be in such an easy position to institutionalize their power because ultimate decisions will be made by the group at large, The group will have the power to determine who shall exercise authority within it.