ABOUT THIS BOOK:
FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF COMMUNIST PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION is the classic exposition of the economics of communism - and, indeed, apart from the first outline sketches given by Marx in his CRITIQUE OF THE GOTHA PROGRAMME, upon which the book is based, the only one ever to have been produced. The first working draft was the work of the well-known German proletarian revolutionary and veteran member of the KAPD, JAN APPEL, (see Subversion) alias MAX HEMPEL. This draft was subsequently revised and completed in Dutch by a collective composed of members of the GROUP OF INTERNATIONAL COMMUNISTS of Holland (GIK) and published in German by the ALLGEMEINE ARBEITERUNION DEUTSCHLANDS (GENERAL WORKERS' UNION OF GERMANY) in 1930. It does for communist society what Marx's CAPITAL did for capitalism and is perhaps the most advanced intellectual achievement of the German Revolution.
The economic preconditions for communism are shown to reside in the abolition of wage-labour, money and all value-determined production and distribution, and their replacement by a system of use-value production regulated through the Average Social Hour of Labour. One of the most remarkable features of the work is the clear and profound treatment given to the process through which the lower stage of communism progressively "abolishes" itself in achieving the transition from the lower to the higher stage of communism.
The collapse of State Socialism in the USSR and Eastern Bloc lends a very considerable significance to this historic document of the German and Dutch revolutionary movement. In its pages, communist, socialists and libertarians today may discover the basic flaws in the economic system laid down for the USSR by Lenin and the Bolshevik Party. Thanks to this work, attention is focused on the apparently so simple but so easily overlooked fact that the Bolshevik system of State Socialism rests upon no objective mode of social regulation whatsoever, and consequently is dependent upon the subjective diktat of an army of major and minor bureaucrats which, as the ruling elite organised in an all-powerful party dictatorship fused in with the State, effectively deprived the mass of the working population of all control over the economic process. It is this which formed the economic foundation for the horrendous tyranny with which the world had for so long been familiar, just as it also revealed the Bolshevik system to be a false model of socialism or communism which misled the world for over 70 years !
In Place of a Preface (original GIK introduction).
With this work the Group of International Communists have put forward for debate, for the first time in the post-war history of the working class movement, the practical possibility of ordering social production and distribution on the basis of a use-value economy. They have brought together all the experience accumulated as a result of earlier attempts, by theoretical representatives of the working class of a previous era, to solve this most ultimate and conclusive of all areas of the revolutionary theory of the proletariat, in order that the root causes which in the final outcome render all those earlier efforts scientifically untenable may be laid bare and so prevented from generating further confusion.
On the other hand, taking as it's starting-point the established principles of scientific communism and combining these with such of the work of previous authors as has been to any degree positive, the work simultaneously reveals new social relations and economic interconnections which in their totality establish the economics of communism upon a firm scientific foundation. It concerns itself not only with the necessity for economic transformation and construction in the sphere of industry, but also reveals the necessary links with the agricultural economy. In this way the authors provide a clear insight into the internal interconnections and the law-given mode of development characteristic of the entire economic organism of the growing communist society.
The simple language and the clear methods of analysis employed, which are understandable to every class-conscious worker, ensure that every revolutionary who diligently studies the following pages can also fully grasp their content. The clarity and disciplined objectivity of the writing likewise open up the possibility of a broad arena of discussion within the working class movement, one which can draw into its orbit all the varied schools of opinion represented within its ranks.
Since we Council Communists also, within our own ranks, must subject the possibilities projected here to the most thoroughgoing discussion, we reserve for a latter date the final expression of our standpoint towards the exposition which follows.
There is one wish, however, which we would like to extend to this text to help it on its way: the work Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution will have proved it's success finally and for all time when all revolutionary workers have consciously read through its pages and brought the accumulated experience contained therein into practical application in the struggle for the victory of the proletarian cause, the victory of communism! The struggle is hard, but the final goal is worthy of it!
Berlin, 1930
FORWARD TO CHAPTER 1, PART 1
FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF COMMUNIST PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION
CHAPTER 1:
State Communism or The Association of Free and Equal Producers
CHAPTER 2:
The Progress Achieved Hitherto in Defining the Problem
CHAPTER 3:
The Reproduction Process in General
CHAPTER 4:
Average Social Production Time as the Basis of Production
CHAPTER 5:
Average Social Production Time as the Basis for Distribution
CHAPTER 6:
General Social Labour
CHAPTER 7:
The Communist Mode of Distribution
CHAPTER 8:
Production on an Extended Scale, or Communist Accumulation
CHAPTER 9:
The System of General Social Accounting as the Model Method of Integrating Economic Processes
CHAPTER 10:
The System of General Social Book-Keeping as a System of Control Over the Economic Process
CHAPTER 11:
The System of Control over the Establishments for General Social Use (G.S.U), or Public Establishments
CHAPTER 12:
Socially Necessary Labour and Average Social Reproduction Time
CHAPTER 13:
The Economic Power of the Proletariat and the System of General Accounting Control
CHAPTER 14:
The Agrarian Question and the Peasants
CHAPTER 15:
The Peasants and the Revolution
CHAPTER 16:
The Agrarian Revolution in Russia and Hungary
CHAPTER 17:
The Agrarian Proletariat and the Small and Middle Peasants in the German Revolution
CHAPTER 18:
The Peasants and the Workers' Councils
CHAPTER 19:
Epilogue
In Place of a Preface
The following work, the fruit of a collective study by the Group of International Communists reveals in its structure such a strongly integrated unity of content that it is possible to speak here of a really positive collective effort. The adoption of the collective method of work in drafting the text, which proves in practice what results can be achieved by a consciously motivated group, is just one of it's qualities which is of such great and enduring value.
GENERAL WORKERS' UNION
REVOLUTIONARY FACTORY ORGANISATION OF GERMANY
Return to Top?
Get your own Free Home Page