ABSTRACT
Like other spheres of life, the family in the still-incomplete transformation from C- to M- forms has experienced both a practical and a theoretical move away from the "thusness" or necessity of its C-cluster origins. Modern critiques of the family are multifarious in their ideology, in their prescriptions for change, in the seriousness and the success of the attempts to implement them. The world for the modern communalists is not hopelessly flawed; only the family is, and with the abolition and replacement of the family, the world can be brought much closer to its real potential. Some degree of sexual division of labor has been at the basis of all family systems up to and including the C-cluster, and while material modernization has opened up the possibility of severely reducing or eliminating gender roles in procuring and processing, evidence shows that such roles remain.
