Dmytri Kleiner writes:

"What is Venture Communism?"
Dmytri Kleiner

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 Suit 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 work 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 Enterprise 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.

[Draft VII. Copyleft 2005, Idiosyntactix. All Rights Detourned.]