Study topic: Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution

Comrades, given the recent spat in the Cuba and "left communism" threads, it's high time that labour-time economics be looked into more seriously (and for good measure, this is double-posted in the Left-Communist forum as a non-sectarian gesture):



http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Aegean/6579/

As the following translators introduction makes clear, the text represents an advance on the theory of the post-capitalist economy as posited by Marx. One of the many strengths of the text is the insistence throughout that for any non-exploitative system to actually work all participants must understand its economic foundations.

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To ask the workers of the world to vanquish capitalism into the historical realm of barbaric societies, there must be at least an idea of the new society worth fighting for.

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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.

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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.

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Aegean/6579/origins.htm

Reality has taught us :-

First, that it is possible to abolish private property in the means of production without abolishing exploitation;

Secondly, that it is possible to abolish the wages system without abolishing exploitation.

If this is so, the problem of the proletarian revolution is posed in the following terms :-

What are the economic conditions that allow the abolition of exploitation ?

What are the economic conditions that allow the proletariat to maintain power once the latter is won, and to lay the axe to the economic roots of the counter revolution ?

While the 'Principles' study the economic foundations of communism, the point of departure is more political than economic. For the workers it is not easy to seize political power, but it is still more difficult to maintain it. The present day conceptions of socialism and communism tend to concentrate (in fact if not in theory) all powers of administration either in the State or in certain social offices. But, according to the 'Principles', the communist economy is the extension of the revolution and not some desirable state of affairs that may be realised in a hundred or a thousand years. It seeks to define at the level of principles the measures to be taken, not by some party or organisation but by THE WORKING CLASS ITSELF AND ITS IMMEDIATE ORGANS OF STRUGGLE : THE WORKERS COUNCILS. The realisation of communism is not the business of a party, but that of the whole working class, acting and deliberating through its councils.