The core innovation of Copyleft was to turn the copyright system against itself. The chief vehicle of asserting control under copyright is the license the work is released under, this establishes the terms under which other are permitted to use the copyrighted material, thus copyleft uses the authority of the license to prescribe freedom, using the authority granted by copyright to guarantee that access for all and require that this freedom is passed on. This is consistent with the copyright laws, and dependent on them, as without copyright and the institutions that protect it, their could be no copyleft. Copyleft effectively hijacks the apparatus that exists to enforce intellectual privilege and instead instrumentalizes it to guarantee intellectual freedom. Venture Communism requires that this same freedom be extended to material productive assets, as such it seeks to prescribe this freedom to property, not intellectual property, and the chief vehicle of asserting control of productive assets is the firm. Thus Venture Communism is not based on a license, but rather on a corporate form: The Venture Commune. Employing a Venture Commune to share material property hijacks the apparatus that exists to enforce privilege to instead protect a common stock, available for use by independent producers.
Legally, a Venture Commune is a firm, much like the Venture Capital Funds of the Capitalist class, however it has distinct properties which transform it into an effective vehicle for revolutionary worker's struggle. The Venture Commune holds ownership of all productive assets that make up the common-stock employed by a diverse, and geographically distributed network of collective and independent peer producers. The Venture Commune does not co-ordinate production, the peer producers produce according to their own needs and desires, the role of the Commune is only to manage the common-stock, making property available to the peer producers as they require. The Venture Commune is the federation of these workers collectives and individuals workers and is itself owned by each of them. In the case that the worker's are working in a collective or co-operative, ownership is held by the individuals that make up the collective or co-operative individually. Ownership in a Venture Commune can only be acquired by contributions of labour, not property. Only by working is ownership earned, not by contributing land, capital or even money: Only labour. Through the commune, Property is always held in common by all the members of the Commune. The Venture Commune Is owned equally by all its members. Each member can only have one share. Thus, each member may never never accumulate a disproportionate share of the proceeds of Property. Property can never be concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.
The function of the Venture Commune is to acquire property and allocate it to it's members. The commune acquires property when requested to do so. The members interested in having this property offer a rental agreement giving the terms they wish to have for possession of this property, the Commune issues a series of Bonds which are backed with the demanded property-itself as collateral and the offered rental agreement as guarantee. This series of Bonds are sold with a public auction setting the interest rate. If the Bond sale clears, the property is acquired and the rental agreement is executed. The property returns to the commune whenever those renting it no longer want to or are unable to meet the agreed terms, at which point the Commune offers it, once again at auction, to it's members, who bid on new rental terms. If there is no more demand for the asset, it is liquidated. After the Bonds that where issued to acquire an asset are fully redeemed it becomes fully owned by the Commune. The remaining rental income the property earns is from then on divided up equally among all members of the commune and paid out to them, proceeds from liquidated property is likewise divided. In this way, members using exactly their per-capita share of the commune's fully owned property neither pay nor receive any payment, since what the pay in rent for that property will equal what the receive as their share of this income. Member's using more than their per-capita share will pay more, and presumably be choosing to pay because they are employing the property as a productive asset, and thus earning enough to pay. Conversely, member's using less than their per-capita share receive more in payment then they pay in rent, thus being rewarded for not hording property. The main activities of the Venture Commune, managing bond s and rental agreements do not impose a high level of co-ordination and, just like the computer networks that manage the allocation of immaterial goods, are activities that are well suited for computerized automation. Many Venture Communes could be exist and as they become interrelated, merge together forming larger, and more stable and sustainable, communities of commons-based producers.
Proposing a form of class conflict that employs a joint stock corporation, bonds, rental agreements and retains market exchange of the products of labour will be shocking to many revolutionaries. It must be noted that Venture Communism is a only means of class conflict, it is not an ideal. It is intended as a means of organizing production towards the end of building the economic capacity required to engage in class conflict. In the words of the IWW, "not only for everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old" Capitalism, a mode of production where the worker earns only subsistence while property owners retain the remainder of the productive output can only create a society in which the interests of the property owner will be reflected in the social institutions and the interests of the producers subjugated. As long as producers 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 owners to prevent this change.
Any change that can produce a more equitable society 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 cannot 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 ultimately building up a greater capacity for counter-revolutionary violence. Society cannot 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 and thus any gains in wages are lost to rising prices. Venture Communism should not be understood as a proposal for a new kind of society, it is an organizational form with which to engage in social struggle. Venture Communes are not intended to replace labour unions, political parties, NGOs and other potential vehicles of class conflict,, but to compliment them, to tilt the economic balance of power in the favour of the representatives of worker's class interest. Without Venture Communism, these other organized forms are always forced to work against opposition with much deeper pockets, and are thus doomed to endless co-option, failure and retreat. Without Venture Communism, we can not change society to better represent the interests of producers. Not by political means, nor by strike, nor by collective bargaining. The only way is to stop applying our labour to property owned by non-producers and instead form a common stock of productive assets. This means taking control of our own productive process, retaining the entire product of our labour, forming our own Capital, and expanding until we have collectively accumulated enough wealth to achieve a greater social influence than those that defend exploitation, making real social change possible, change that is far greater than the modest goals of Venture Communism. A truly free society would have no need for copyleft, copyfarleft or venture communism, these are only practices around which workers can unite towards the the realization of their historic role, building a classless society, a society of equals. Workers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains. You have a world to win.
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