WHAT IS VENTURE COMMUNISM?
DRAFT VII
By Dmytri Kleiner
Copyleft 2005, Idiosyntactix. All Rights Detourned
Venture Communism is an investment model designed to be a form of
revolutionary worker's struggle. The Venture Commune is a type of
voluntary worker's association, designed to enclose the productivity
of labour and enable the possibility of the collective accumulation of
Land and Capital, which, in the endgame, will eventually allow the
workers to buy the entire world from the Capitalists.
"The State is a condition, a certain relationship between human
beings, a mode of human behavior; we destroy it by contracting
other relationships, by behaving differently." -- Gustav Landauer
WHY DO WE NEED VENTURE COMMUNISM?
We need Venture Communism to win the age-old battle of Labour against
Property, to end the exploitation of the worker.
All wealth results from the productive process, and in this process
there are two kinds of Productive inputs; Labour, which is work done
by people, and Property, which is land, natural resources, Capital,
and other material inputs to production.
In any productive process you have a "mode of production." To figure
out which mode of production is taking place, we need to ask the
question: Who owns the Product? At at the end of the productive
process, whose Product is it? Who takes possession of the output?
In each mode of production, the Provider of the Dominant Input, the
one which in the end owns the product, retains as their own income
that which is left over after it has paid the price of the
Subordinate Inputs.
Competition among providers of the Subordinate Inputs drives the price
of these inputs towards its cost.
In the Capitalist mode of production, the provider of Property owns
the product, therefore the Dominant input is Property, and the price
of Labour is driven towards its cost, which is its subsistence, while
the provider of Property takes a share of the product that is greater
than its costs. As a result, owners of property are able to accumulate
wealth, while workers can only earn a subsistence income by continuing
to work, and are unable to accumulate wealth.
Control and influence of the institutions of power within a society,
those that create and enforce the rules, require the application of
wealth. Political power is an extension of economic power.
Therefore a mode of production where the worker earns only
subsistence, while property earns the remainder of the productive
output will be a society where the interests of the Property owner
will be reflected in the social institutions and the interests of the
worker subjugated.
How can workers change society to better suite the interests of
workers?
As long as they operate within the Capitalist mode of production, they
can not change society politically, because whatever wealth they can
apply to influencing social institutions must come from the share of
the product that they retain, and thus will always be smaller then the
share of the product that can be applied by Property to prevent this
change.
Any political change is dependent on a prior change in the mode of
production which increases the share of wealth retained by the worker.
The change in the mode of production must come first, this change can
not be achieved politically, not by vote, nor by lobby, nor by
advocacy, nor by revolutionary violence.
Not as long as the owners of property have more wealth to apply to
prevent any change, by funding their own candidates, their own
lobbyists, their own advocates, and building up a greater capacity
for counter-revolutionary violence.
Society can not be changed by a strike, not as long as owners of
Property have more accumulated wealth to sustain themselves during
production interruptions.
Not even collective bargaining can work, for so long as the owners of
Property own the product, they set the price of the product, thus any
gains in wages are lost to rising prices.
So how can workers change society to better suite the interests of
workers if neither political means, nor strike, nor collective
bargaining is possible?
By refusing to apply their labour to property that they do not own,
and instead, acquiring their own mutual property.
This means enclosing their labour in Venture Communes, taking control
of their own productive process, retaining the entire product of their
labour, forming their own Capital, and expanding until they have
collectively accumulated enough wealth to achieve a greater social
influence than the owners of property, making real social change
possible.
WHAT IS A VENTURE COMMUNE?
A Venture Commune is a joint stock corporation, much like the Venture
Capital Funds of the Capitalist class, however it has four distinct
properties which transform it into an effective vehicle for
revolutionary worker's struggle.
1- A Share In The Venture Commune Can Only Be Acquired By
Contributions Of Labour, And Not Property.
In other words only by working is ownership earned, not by
contributing Land, Capital or even Money. Only Labour.
It is this contributed labour which represents the initial Investment
capacity of the Commune.
The Commune Issues its own currency, based on the value of the labour
pledges it has.
It then invests this currency into the private enterprises which it
intends to purchase or fund, these Enterprises thus become owned by
the Commune, in the same way that Enterprises which receive Venture
Capital become owned by a Venture Capital Fund.
2- The Venture Commune's Return On Investment From Its Enterprises Is
Derived From Rent And Not Income.
As condition of investment, the Enterprise agrees to not own its own
property, neither Land nor Capital, but rather to rent Land and
Capital from the Commune.
The Commune, unlike a Venture Capital Fund, never takes a share of the
income of the Enterprise nor of any of its workers.
The Commune finances the acquisition of Land and Capital by issuing
Bonds, and then Rents the Land and Capital to its Enterprises, or an
Enterprise can sell whatever Land and Capital it acquires through
other means to the Commune, and in turn Rent it.
In this way Property is always owned Mutually by all the members of
the Commune, however all workers and the Enterprises that employ them
retain the entire product of their labour.
3- The Venture Commune Is Owned Equally By All Its Members.
Each member can have one share, and only one share. Thus although each
worker is able to earn different prices for their labour from the
Enterprises, based on the demand for their labour, each worker may
never earn any more than one share in the ownership of the Commune
itself, and therefore can never accumulate a disproportionate share of
the proceeds of Property.
Ownership of Property can therefore never be concentrated in fewer and
fewer hands and used to exploit the worker as in Capitalist
corporations.
4- All Those Who Apply Their Labour To The Property Of The Commune
Must Be Eligible For Membership In The Commune.
The Commune may not refuse membership to any Labour employed by any of
its enterprises that works with the Land and Capital controlled by the
commune. In this way commune members can not exploit outside wage
earners, and the labour needs of the Enterprises will ensure that each
Commune continues to grow and accept new members.
THE VENTURE COMMUNIST MODE OF PRODUCTION
These four properties combine to establish an alternative mode of
production, the Venture Communist Mode of Production. With Property
owned mutually by the workers who apply their Labour to it. Labour
becomes the Dominant Input to production. As a result the price of
Property is reduced to its costs and Labour retains the full value of
its contribution to production.
Can comment on articles and discussions
why do we have to buy all this stuff back from the capitalists? and doing so using the tools & structures that were set up by capitalists in the first place (joint stock companies, issuing bonds etc.)?
sounds barmy