It's not straightforward, at all.

# (v3.3rc1) /home/pas/wololo/pip-1.1$ python setup.py install

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "setup.py", line 3, in <module>
    from setuptools import setup
ImportError: No module named 'setuptools'


Then, of course one can try installing setuptools, but it won't work.

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "setup.py", line 7, in <module>
    execfile(convert_path('setuptools/command/__init__.py'), d)
NameError: name 'execfile' is not defined

So, yes, venv is available. Great. But Python is not so great without those batteries, which are allegedly included.