On October 27, we will give a lecture in Freiburg at the invitation of the group “La Banda Vaga.” We are excited for what will be the southernmost lecture on labor time accounting so far and are sharing with you the invitation text from Kosmoprolet:

“Lecture on October 27, 2023, at 8:00 PM at KTS in Freiburg with Harry and Jordi from the ‘Initiative for Democratic Labor Time Calculation’”

In 1930, when the repressive and exploitative tendencies in the Soviet Union were becoming increasingly apparent, the workers’ movement was divided into two hostile wings, and fascist movements across Europe were gaining momentum, a small group of dissident communists from Germany and the Netherlands wrote the pamphlet BASIC PRINCIPLES OF COMMUNIST PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION.

It was motivated by a relentless critique of the Leninist model of party- and state-socialism, as well as its moderate social-democratic variant, which had been the subject of the so-called “socialization debate” in the 1920s. Their critique was rooted in the idea of workers’ self-management and the experience of the council experiment during the revolutionary waves at the end of World War I.

But how can a socialist planned economy be organized without central state control and without money? This was the question that the Group of International Communists (Holland) tried to answer — and their solution was a decentralized planned economy based on labor time accounting. The lecture will introduce both the historical context of the debate at the time and the nearly forgotten core idea of the council communists.

Harry and Jordi are members of the association “Initiative for Democratic Labor Time Calculation,” founded in 2021. Their goal is to contribute to a deeper reflection on the economy of a new society and to help the political left move out of a defensive position. They see great potential in a decentralized planned economy based on labor time accounting.

Date & Time:
October 27, 2023
8:00 PM

Location:
KTS, Basler Straße 103, Freiburg