Venture Communist Prospectus
Dmytri Kleiner -- DRAFT I
The Venture Communist is a Public Entrepreneur, Venture Communism is not a political model, but rather it is a transitional tactic designed to promote an equitable distribution of wealth via the enterprising initiates of communities, rather than through the central authority of the state.
Venture Communism is an alternative Revolutionary Strategy to Violent Revolution, one that preserves existing social accumulation rather than destroying it.
The basic plan is to literally buy the world back from the Capitalists. The value of the future is far greater than the value of the past, therefore if Venture Communism can do better than Venture Capitalism in it's investment performance it can achieve this goal.
In the growth theory and production functions of economics, Labour (Human Capital) and Capital (Money Capital) can typically replace each other.
This means that to increase production, either increasing labour investment or increasing money investment is possible. The money can increase productivity through the purchase of 'Capital Goods', ie. Machines, where there is sufficient underutilized labour. The labour can directly increase production, especially in situations where the marginal productivity of labour is high and/or existing Capital Goods are underutilized.
Venture Capital is the Capital made available to high risk opportunities, usually to new and expanding enterprises, this Capital can theoretically be invested in terms of Labour or Money.
However, for the Venture Communist, this is an important distinction, since Human Capital, while not perfectly distributed by nature, is still far better distributed than Money Capital is. In other words Human Capital is more equitable than Money Capital.
Since Human Capital is more equitable than Money Capital, investment in a Venture Commune is made by contributing labour, not money, and shares in the commune can not be bought nor sold, only earned by labour contribution.
A Venture Communist is a person who makes such investments. A Venture Commune is a partnership that primarily invests the capital of third party investors in enterprises.
A Venture Commune accumulates it's Capital (Human Capital) by soliciting labour investments and then invests this labour in high risk enterprises that promise high return on investment. The Venture Commune winds up with an ownership stake in the enterprise.
However, the primary distinguishing feature of a Venture Commune from a traditional Venture Capital Fund is that the share of each member is EQUAL. Every investor has an equal vote and an equal dividend. In this way the profitability of the Venture Commune has a progressive distributive effect.
Also, because the Venture Commune must insure that the control of investors of Human Capital always exceeds the control of the investors of Money Capital, the Venture Commune must insist on have a Majority Ownership Share in the enterprises it invests in.
The role of the Venture Commune includes providing labour for high risk, high return ventures, assessing and revising the proposed business models and strategies, and placing key personnel.
Venture Communists must be very selective in deciding what to invest in. Because Labour is their primary Capital investment, the venture must be in areas where the Marginal Productivity of Labour is high and any required Capital Goods are already in place. Also, the nature of the enterprise must be compatible with the general goal of promoting the influence of Human Capital over Money Capital.
The Ventures must be have high growth potential as only ventures with high growth potential are capable of providing the return that Venture Communism requires to keep the value of shares rising and encouraging new investments of labour. The Marginal Productivity of it's Human Capital must outpace the growth of it's Membership or else the per-capita profitability, and thus redistributive effect will decrease.
Also, since Venture Communism is in direct competition with Venture Capitalism for the productivity of the future, high growth areas are of critical strategic importance.
The Venture Commune assigns personnel not only in labour positions, but in management positions as well and also obtains seats on the enterprise's board of directors.
Since the ventures undertaken are high risk, the Venture Commune must try to mitigate this problem through diversification. The risk level of the total portfolio is reduced by investing in different industries and different countries. The successful projects must compensate for the unsuccessful projects.
A Venture Commune is formed by issuing a public offering for a fixed initial share cost, in labour hours, for a limited number of initial shares. Individual Venture Communists pledge labour to the Commune and become the founding members, electing the founding board.
The board then appoints officers from this labour pool who attempt to invest the Human Capital in such a way as to generate the highest ethical return, when the Human Capital is exhausted, a second round of shares is issued and expansion continues in this way until Venture Communists have majority interests in all of the enterprises in the world, then the buy-out of the Capitalists is complete, all existing social accumulation is secure, and the implementation of a post-capitalist society can begin. Venture communism makes no commitments as to what this post-capitalist society will be, choosing instead to develop and entrust these details to a well worked-out democratic practise for the members of the futures to use.
