In this recent article Hermann Lueer, situates the book ‘The Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution‘, which was written by German council communist Jan Appel in order to outline how a communist mode of production would be organised, in its historical context.
A summary of the article can be found below:
“One hundred years ago, at Christmas in 1925, Jan Appel was released from prison carrying with him a manuscript he had written behind bars: The Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution. Composed in the wake of the defeat of the workers’ councils in Germany and Russia, the text sought to recover what its authors regarded as the essential insights of Marx and Engels into a communist mode of production. At the same time, the text incorporated the experiences and lessons learned from earlier attempts by the workers’ movement to build an alternative to capitalism. Rather than offering a doctrinal restatement, the text attempted to retrieve the practical and theoretical logic of communism at a moment when that logic had been eclipsed. This allowed the authors to point out new paths based on a critique of these failed attempts.”
You can read the article in English here.
It is also available in German here.