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From:
Can Collectives Be Sustainable?
Charting the Path to Sustainability for the Pacific Centre for Alternative Journalists, an Alternative Media Collective
By Maryann Abbs
April 4, 2000
This report is copylefted. Please feel free to copy and distribute, as long as you give credit to the source.
. . . .
COLLECTIVE PROCESS – IS IT SUSTAINABLE?
To start this project, I was interested in whether collectives could be sustainable over the long-term, or whether they invariably dissolve from member burnout and conflict. Some of the collectives I spoke with had operated for more than 20 years (Left Bank Books and Vancouver Women’s Health Collective), and others were established relatively recently (in the last few years). The majority of people that I spoke with had chosen to work in collectives for political reasons – they thought that choosing this structure was more egalitarian, and meshed with their political beliefs. Others, however thought that the collective structure was chosen for practical reasons, in order to distribute work more evenly. I interviewed present and past members of eight different women’s and media collectives in Vancouver using the survey questions in Appendix A. The results of the interviews are tabulated in Table 1, and discussed in more detail in this section.

What is a Collective?
A significant difficulty in my early discussions with organizations was being clear on what I meant by a collective. I was challenged to define the difference between a cooperative and a collective, and a collective and a committee. During the process of interviewing members of collectives, I asked how they defined a collective. My working definition of a collective comes from the combined wisdom of those that I interviewed, along with my own thoughts.

A collective is:
- group of people with a common goal and vision where people make decisions together, usually by consensus
- non-hierarchical structures – everyone has equal decision-making, and equal decision making
- collectives operate by direct democracy, not representative democracy.
- collectives tend to be small organizations
- collectives also tend to be left wing.
- ideally have a sense solidarity amongst the members
- Some co-operatives may also be collectives, but are not necessarily so.
Ackelsberg, in her book Free Women of Spain, notes that collectives that revolve around an economic task, must be as non-hierarchical in structure as possible, but must also distribute the rewards of the work relatively equally. She notes that:
“This was so because economic inequalities are easily converted into social or political power, and more basically, because most human labour is collaborative and it is virtually impossible to assign value to an individual’s contribution to a collective task.” For the purpose of this paper, I will use the following definition of a collective: a group with a common goal, and common vision where having a non-hierarchical structure is one of the goals of the group. A collective strives to ensure that its members have equal decision making, power, and responsibility. All members of the collective have equal decision-making power at all times – thus distinguishing a collective from an organization with a board of directors. Collectives are a form of participatory democracy, not representative democracy. Collectives strive to distribute the economic rewards of their work on an equal basis. Collectives function as a sort of “propaganda of the deed” (Ackelsberg – 33) where: “such activities empower those who engage in them, they also demonstrate to others that non-hierarchical forms of organization can and do exist-and that they can function effectively.”

Structural Stability of Collectives

Structures – Decision Making
All of the groups I spoke used some form of consensus, but it was the most formalized in the Women’s Health Collective. People felt that this decision making process was the best in terms of ensuring that all viewpoints were heard and included. In all of the collectives except for Left Bank books, both volunteers and staff attended the collective meetings, and had equal say in the collective structure. Left Bank books describe its structure as “onion-like” where the staff are the core worker’s collective, and as volunteers become more involved, they have access to greater decision-making. All of the groups that I interviewed felt that the collective structure was still relevant, and felt that: “shared decision-making is empowering since it is an experience that is denied to most people.” (Latin America Connexions interview).

Organization of Work
Mondragon Books and South End Publishing, also go further in terms of the organization of work. Both groups are worker’s collectives, and use a system called the “job complex.”(Albert and Hahnel – 2) In this system, no one worker has all of the interesting or creative tasks – there is a balance between rote and creative tasks to try to avoid the concentration of power in any one individual. Left Bank Books also noted that that tried to ensure that more than one personknows how to perform a task. Problems had arisen on several occasions when the only people who know how to do accounting/bookkeeping tasks were away.

Goals/Vision of the Collective
Groups reported that their major structural challenges were learning how to deal with people who didn’t mesh with the rest of the collective. In her book, Truth or Dare, Starhawk notes that: “for a group to become a place of liberation, its structure and process must foster freedom.” (Starhawk – 257). She also notes that groups work better when they know what their role is: intimate groups, task groups, support groups, or learning groups, and that problems arise when there are conflicting expectations of the groups role. Many of the collectives in Vancouver are women's collectives. In her article, Exploring women workers, jobs in collectives, Oerton (290) notes that women choose to work in collectives for a variety of different reasons including luck or coincidence, but that:
“gender discrimination in hierarchical organizations was openly acknowledged by several women workers as a motive for entry into cooperatives or collectives, …as well as the desire on the part of some women to work autonomously from or independently from men was another motive for setting up and working in all-women cooperatives.”
In her book: Worker Cooperatives in Canada, Constance Mungall, in the chapter about Wild West Organic Harvest Co-operatives notes that women in that cooperative told her that: “In my experience, women put more energy into communication, and so in a collective where communication is important, it makes a big difference.”
Many of the collectives still in existence in Vancouver are women only collectives: Vancouver Rape Relief, Vancouver Women’s Collective, Wild West Organic Harvest Co-operative, and the Vancouver Status of Women. It requires further investigation, however, to determine whether men and women have different experiences in mixed gender collectives.

Rewards
All of those interviewed noted that one of the major rewards of working in a collective structure was the ability to use their voice, and be involved in decisions, as well as the sense that everyone’s opinion is valued. In the interview from Co-op Radio, it was also noted that “there were a lot of social ties, friendships, marriages – community.” There was also a strong sense that the process of forming and sustaining a collective fosters community building and builds solidarity. One interview participant from the Ubyessey also noted that: “my creativity spiked in a way that I really couldn’t have imagined – there was anarchic energy like no where else.”

Challenges
A number of problems with operating in a collective structure were noted, including: follow-though on ideas, dealing with volunteers with different skills, and the problem of having no mechanism for getting rid of collective members. Others noted problems with the formation of informal hierarchies, burnout, and the amount of time that it took to make decisions. As well, most groups noted that they had financial strains, and problems with recruiting new members and the process of revitalization. Many of these problems, however, are common to types of groups, not just those that operate as collectives. Collective members noted, however, that disillusionment with the group was sometimes stronger in collectives when the rhetoric didn’t meet with the reality.

Burnout
Most people laughed when I asked if they felt they had adequately addressed the issue of burnout. In fact, one of the early members of Vancouver Cooperative Radio noted that people often felt guilty when they were forced to get a paid job in order to survive, since that meant they had less time to devote to the station. The Vancouver Women’s Health Collective has dealt with the subject of burnout in some detail, and felt that they had had some success by making sure that everyone set very clear boundaries, and learned how to say no. They have also developed a structure where it is strongly discouraged for one woman to take on a project alone. If there are project proposals, the collective strongly encourages people to work in groups in order to avoid burning out one person. The collective is also careful about allowing a new volunteer to take on too much work.
. . . .
Tools for Sustainability/Tips for a new collective
The Women’s Health Collective had, of any of the collectives that I interviewed, developed the most tools for working collectively. They have published a handbook called working collectively, that addresses meeting process, conflict resolution, and consensus. This handbook would be very useful for new collectives to set up meeting structures and conflict resolution structures. The handbook, however, does not include information on setting up collectives, or philosophy of collectives. As well, Food Not Bombs has published a guide to Consensus Decision Making. It is available for free on the Internet. This guide is very useful to defining what is meant by consensus process and formal process. As well, it is a wealth of tools and techniques for facilitating by consensus, both in large and small groups.

The following is a list of pointers for those setting up new collectives:
1. Evaluate your process on a periodic basis – decide if a collective structure is still relevant (Vancouver Women’s Health Collective).
2. Set up processes for conflict resolution – for tools see the Working Collectively handbook produced by the Vancouver Women’s health collective (Appendix E) As well, the Ubyessey used ombudspeople to resolve conflict. They felt that this would have been quite effective if the ombudspeople had adequate training.
3. Set-up policies for your group (Mungall – 62 – Wheat Song co-operative), so that everyone is clear on what decision that the group has made.
4. Be clear on the goals for your group – (Mungall – 59 – Wheat Song COoperative)
5. Know what you mean by consensus (Appendix F)
6. Know what the purpose/vision of your group/collective is 7. Have a process for asking disruptive collective members to leave (Ubyssey, and Truth or Dare - )
8. Train all collective members in conflict resolution (Appendix E)
9. If you are not all in your office at the same time, use journals to communicate with each other (Left Bank books)
10. Appreciate Staff and Volunteers – make sure you take time to celebrate (Vancouver Women’s Health Collective)
11. Be realistic about what you can accomplish, and don’t treat people like instruments (Latin America Connexions).
12. Be sure to revitalize and renew – either with new members or new ideas (Latin America Connexions).
13. Have each participant set boundaries (Vancouver Women’s Health Collective) 14. Use vibes watcher at meetings to ensure that no one is being shut down (Vancouver Women’s Health Collective).
15. Make sure that more than one person knows how to perform a task (e.g. payroll/accounting) – Left Bank Books
16. Provide Skills training for collective members on management skills, bookkeeping, etc. (Mondragon)
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