On the Venture Communism in general, I'd like to first point out that when something comes up different times over history, that that is often an indication of an emotional or intuitive problem and an emotional or intuited solution -- for which a real solution may indeed exist but be the work of many generations of evolution.
My view is that the solution continuously exists and is continuously implemented. One observation I'd make is that the truly natural social law only gives to societies a degree of freedom which the society as a whole has earned. So if unjust exploitations or inequities occur in society it is because common social behaviors have not yet evolved sufficiently to establish social structures that present equity in the idealized fashion of Marxists and others. Reflecting on Sartesian's interesting criticisms: >>> 1. The fallacy in this type of proposal, "venture communism," >>> has been examined and exposed many times before you >>> have re-proposed an essentially archaic notion. Marx >>> demolished this notion in many of his works-- and took >>> Proudhon apart in The Poverty of Philosophy. You will need to >>> familiarize yourself with that work if you want to make sense >>> of and in this discussion. You don't summarize here what Proudhon and Marx state, but is it perhaps that competition and evolution are natural law that have to be dealt with in the formulation of any pragmatic social structure that could ever exist in the real world. Perhaps one of the key questions for social policy is "what does fair competition mean?" My sense is that the answer is simple intellectually, but not socially: "the diffusion of individual opportunity and empowermnet." Another question of equal import I suspect may be "how is diffusive responsibility established?" I believe that we are evolving to more cognizantly understand the meanings of these questions, and individually to practice solutions -- but the real revolution will come when understanding and practice are diffused. >>> 2. You propose a false "strategy," of workers either "doing >>> nothing" or engaging in hedge-fund socialism. Rather than >>> pursue self-capitalist alternatives, the real struggles of the >>> class are "what the workers should do." This is a Lilliputian problem of immense, now global, proportion. What have the workers always done? Tried to survive and engage collective efforts in transforming the system. The sentiment of those who would produce alternatives to the current system that are more fair is natural, but often revolutionaries tend to stand in opposition to the whole of tradition rather than just to the excessive part. The question should not be to undo capitalism, but to celebrate what parts of capitalism have diffused individual empowerment and individual responsibility while reworking the parts that oppose this. And the revolution then can be estimated to happen, "one corporation at a time," (by incorporation, "one person at a time" -- pointing to the strength of capitalism/incorporation that must be embraced/transformed.) >>> 3. Yes capital can be purchased. But it's still capital. >>> Purchase is not expropriation. Expropriation means the >>> emancipation of labor and the means of production from >>> the constraints of profit, of private property. No specific comment (I am not sure I understand the paragraph). But I would deconstruct capital, purchasing, expropriation, emancipation, labor, production, profit, and private property in terms of diffusion of empowerment and difussion of responsibility. >>> 4. Oh yeah, it's a trick all right, the sharing of profits "equally," >>> so much of a trick that it doesn't, can't, won't exist in >>> anything other than a Ponzi scheme. Mathematical optimization of product rewards collaboration, especially when uniqueness (the property that drives profit) can be established from the collective efforts, as it often does. In this way, the main push back against anti-globalizers and anti-corporates is that by their looking for uniquely low paid laborers, they may actually be helping those laborers by including them. This is the irony of today's capitalism, is that it does both the greatest good and bad, good because in order to effect profit it must engage and advance those heretofore most excluded. It also points to the advanced country workers as those who have the most to lose in the continuation and extension of the current paradigm of adolesceent capitalism and perhaps they will be those to works towards growing capitalism out of its adolescence. I haven't read enough of Marx to know what he'd think, so maybe someone can opine... >>> 5. How so? Because in order to purchase material from the >>> "non-venture communist" world, the medium of exchange, >>> money, will have to be absorbed into your hedge-fund >>> utopia, and with money, debt, and then production >>> becomes organized necessarily, for the service of money, >>> and the servicing of the debt. The meme of pursuit of privilege is important to think about. The intense pursuit of privilege is the problem and solution again. Privilege is maximized when everyone is privileged -- diffusive empowerment and inclusion. And even in capitalism's adolescence it has probably done a better job of inclusion than other models that neglected including competition in the basic formula (thinking some forms of communism here). The single-system prespective of Sartesian's comment here is critical, and points to a kind of Aikido necessary to resolve the dilemna of a dominant system with oppressive elements. (Google "Aikido Activism" to read some further thoughts on this.) >>> 6. Glad to hear of your religious belief in your venture communist >>> corporations. Let me know when the comet comes. There is no comet. There is reason that is already in each one of us. When it is used more in our choices the continual revolution will be realized, and the current stage of the revolution will be more readily advanced. Just my two cents (or whatever the current time-value-of-money equivalent of that old phrase -- lest my two cents be counted for less than it should!) Burkhart
