In 1930, the Group of International Communists (Holland) published the now legendary „Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution“. The critique of the various theories and practices expounded therein, which invoked Marxism, anarchism or socialism in general, pointed out the flaw in the labor movement’s goal of bringing the means of production into common ownership, failing to recognize that the transition to „common ownership“ only posed the problem of a new mode of production.
Their critique was coupled with an effort to encourage wage earners to replace the government over the people with their own independent administration and management of the production process. The Group of International Communists continued these efforts throughout the decade-from 1934 to 1937 in its theoretical organ for the council movement, the „International Council Correspondence“, and then from 1938 to 1940 in the Dutch-language Marxist monthly „Radencommunisme“.
The texts collected in this book-including those on the party and the working class, state capitalism and communism, anarcho-syndicalism and the council movement-have lost none of their relevance today. The arguments they present will be of crucial importance in the coming social revolution when it comes to encouraging the wage-earning class to take over the management and administration of production and distribution by establishing individual working hours as the measure of the share of the product of social labor.