Quirk writes:

"Venture Communism"

Dmytri Kleiner

Venture Communism is a revolutionary investment strategy, a form of workers struggle designed to enclose labour into an anarcho-syndicalist economy which, in the endgame, literally buys the world from the Capitalists.

The Bluffer's Guide to the Political Economy

Wealth and Poverty describe the extremes of entitlement to the productivity of the economy, if your share is large, you are wealthy, if your share is small, you are poor.

All productive capacity of the economy is the result of the application of the three factors of production: Land, Labour and Capital.Likewise, the product of these three factors is divided up into Rents, Wages, and Capital Yield, owners of land earn income from rent, labour earns income from wages, owners of capital earn income from capital yield.

Exploitation, or Surplus Value, can be understood as a difference between the contribution of a given factor of production and the share of production it receives. Simply put, if you contribute more than you receive in return, you are contributing to someone else's wealth, possibly at the consequences of your own poverty.

Land is more than just the surface area of the planet, although this is certainly a major component of it. Land is the entirety of the natural world, the planet and it natural resources, the air and its electcro-magnetic frequencies, the light of the sun and everything else which human society received jointly as a gift of providence.

''To Venture Communism Land is 'Natural Capital'.''

Labour is the productive capicity of people, both there own natural capiticity and the investments made by themeselves and society into their knowledege, skill, education and training.

''To Venture Communism Labour is 'Human Capital'."

Capital is goods used for production, tools, machines, factories, Capital is a mixture of Human Capital and Natural Capital, because in order to produce a tool you need some land and labour.

''In order to distinguish it from the other types of Capital, Venture Communism calls Capital 'Capital Goods'."

It is in the mutualization strategy of these factors of production where the different schools of political economy can be understood, using the Capital Mutualization Matrix, we can define four sterotypes of Political Economic Models; Capitalism, Communism, Liberalism and Anarchism.

Capitalism, founded in the classical liberal idea of self ownership, proposes that since you own yourself you must therefor must own all the product your labour, and since all Capital is a result of surplus past productivty invested in future productive capacity that therefor all the factors of production must be privately owned.

Under a Capitalist system all three types of Capital, Natural Capital, Human Capital and Capital Goods are private property.

However, Natural Capital is a ''gift of providence'', it is not the product of any person's productivity, the concept of self ownership can thus not be applied to Natural Capital. Capitalism is burdened by the need to take something that is inherently mutual, Natural Capital, and make it private.

This burden manifests itself as a large share of the productive output of the Capitalist market being spent to protect the entitlements of Capitalists. The costs incurred include security, police, prisons and the economic consequences of monopolies enforced by these entitlements.

Communism, founded in the Marxist ideas that a ''Dictatorship of the Proletariat'' must enforce the Worker's ownership of the Means of Production and distribute wealth ''From each according to his ability, to each according to his need'', proposes that all three factors of of production must be mutually owned.

Under a Communist system all three types of Capital, Natural Capital, Human Capital and Capital Goods are mutual property.

However since you own yourself, your labour is clearly your own property. People do not produce according to their ability, people produce according to their ''desire'', by replacing market incentives with centrally planed production and direction of labour, communism is burdened by the need to take something that is inherently private, Human Capital, and make it mutal.

This burden manifests itself as a large share of the productive output of the Communist planned economy being spent to enforce the conduct of workers. The costs incurred include security, police, prisons and the economic consequences of unmotivated workers and discouraged entreprenours.

The burdens faced by both Capitalism and Communism as a result of theire incorrect mutualization of Capital reduce the amount of toal wealth within the economy, thus increasing poverty.

Liberalism and Anarchism are both mixed approaches to the mutualization of Capital, which promise less burden than the Capitalist and Communist extremes.

Liberalism, either indirectly through market regulations and redistribution, or directly through land value taxation, admits that Natural Capital is mutual property and that access to the natural world is a prerequisite of liberty. Anarchism agrees, although it insists on direct ownership of natural capital by the community.

Liberalism and Anarchism also agree that Human Capital is private, that each of us own our own productive capicity.

Where Liberalism and Anarchism part company is over the issue of Capital Goods.

Since Capital Goods represent a ''mixture'' of Human Capital and Natural Capital, the way to determine whether this mixed Capital should be private or mutual depends on the unmixing logic.

Liberalism proposes that because the producer of Capital Goods has ''paid'' for the Natural Capital, therefore the Natural Capital has been mixed out and all that remains is Human Capital, it is therefore a private good that may be bought and sold.

However, since no one is the producer of Natural Capital, you can only buy it from someone who has taken it by force, a thief. Therefore Liberalism allows the defacto ownership of Natural Capital by the accumulation of it in its refined form, and thus Liberalism always degrades into Capitalism, and winds up with all of the same burdens.

Anarchism proposes that producers of Capital Goods be paid wages, like all workers, and as a result of having sold the contributed Human Capital for wages, the Human Capital is thus unmixed from the Capital Goods and all that remains is Natural Capital, and therefore Capital Goods are mutual property. Anarchism therefore builds on the socially accumulated productivity gifted by providence, by refining into Capital Goods, increasing the communities wealth.

Vernture Communism is a form of Anarchist Struggle that seeks to create an economy where Natural Capital and Capital goods are shared by the community, and everyone's Human Capital is their own private property.

Forms of Revolutionary Struggle

However, an analysis of how the factors of production should rightly be owned is one thing, changing the system is another.

How do we take the privately owned Natural Capital and Capital goods from the Ruling Elite that control them and make them into the mutual property of workers communities?

There are three forms of revolutionary struggle; Military Revolution, Political Participation and Syndicalism.

Military Revolution seeks to overthrow the ruling elite with a violent revolution and seize the factors of production. The trouble is that violent revolutions put violent people in charge. The aftermath of violent revolutions is invariably the rule of the military elite. A violent revolution also destroys all existing social accumulation acheived through the other forms (political participation and syndicalism). Therefore without existing social accuulation, the post revolutionary workers are even less able to resist the tyrany of the new military elite and have no leverage to ensure that the new distribution of wealth and mutualization of capital is any more equitable than it was in the old system. Military Revolution can therefore only achive a bourgious revolution, replacing the current elite with a new elite, and can never accomplish a true worker's revolution.

Political Participation seeks to change the system by participating in its institutions, parties, lobby groups, etc, and while this is import work and does frequently achieve marginal improvements in certain areas it can never achieve fundimental change because these institutions are captures organs of the elite and ultimatle depend on the them for sustance, they will therefore never support fundimental change that directly threatens the elite, only provide some relief to the victims of the elite.

Syndicalism seeks not to change, but to replace the system by enclosing the productivity of labour into "labour syndicates", the french word for unions, and use access this human capital in order to aquire a better share from the owners of natural capital and capital goods. Ultimatly the goal of syndicalism is to have the owners directly own the factors production by trading the enclosed human capital for the other forms, until the syndicates own all the natural capital and capital goods they need to independendly sustain their communities.

Venture Communism is an investment strategy to create sustainable, equitable and economicaly efficient anarcho-syndicates called Venture Communes.

Properties of a Venture Commune

A Venture Commune is a joint stock corporation, much like its capitalist competitor, the Venture Capital Fund, however, it is designed as an anarcho-syndicalist revolutionary entity and therefore has three distinct properties.

Like a Venture Capital Fund, a Venture Commune invests in Enterprises in order to provide income for its shareholders. Both of them are essentialy mutualization structures. However they embody fundamentally different concepts in how wealth should be shared and how capital should be controlled.

When a Venture Capital Fund invests in an enterise, in return it commands a percentage of the profit of the Enterprise. Since profit represents a composit of the surplus values from all three forms of Capital, the Venture Capital Fund makes the typical Capitalistic mistake of treating all three forms of Capital in the same way.

The first distinct property is that A Venture Commune takes no profits form the enterprises in which it invests. Instead, it seeks to use only Natural Capital and Capital Goods as the basis of its mutualization. All Natural Capital and Capital Goods acquired by the Enterprises are purchased by the Venture Commune and in turn rented back to the Enterprises. Thus the basis for return on investment is not profit but rent. As a result the Enerprise are entitled to the entire income derived from their Human Capital, but the income from Natural Capital and Capital Goods is shared by the entire Venture Comune.

Ownership in a Venture Capital Fund is variable depending on how many shares one has puchaced and every shareholder have have a different share of the profits and different input into the decision making depending on the share position.

The second distinct property of a Venture Commune is that every shareholder is equal, one member one share, one share one vote.

Shares in a Venture Capital Fund are purchased with Money. Money is a dept instrument invented and controlled by the ruling elite. Money is used as store of value, wether thaz value was fairly acquired or stolen can not be determined. Therere any investment system based upon money will propegate the injustices of the past into the future.

The third distinct property of a Venture Commune is that its shared are not acquired with money, but instead by contributing labour. The share price of a Venture Commune are denominated in hours.

By eliminating the burden of enforcing the priviledge of the elite, these three distinct properties combine to make the collective mesoeconomy of the Venture Communes and their enterprise far more productive, equitable and efficient than the competition. As a result Venture Communists will eventualy buy the world from the Capitalists.

[Draft IV by Dmytri Kleiner (UserPageQuirk)
Copyleft Idiosyntactix, all rights detourned.]