https://www.marxists.org/subject/left-wing/gik/1930/index.htm

"Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution" was written in 1930 by Council Communists who were opposed to how the USSR was being run. It explains how a communist economy could be run using objective labor-time as the regulating mechanism and unit of account.

Some quotes :

"Whilst reformist Social Democracy conceived of realising communism through a continuous and gradual process of nationalisation, the revolutionary Bolshevik tendency considered that a revolution was necessary in order to complete the process of nationalisation. Thus the conception of the men from Moscow is based on fundamentally the same theoretical methods as that of the reformists. " TLDR, communism is not nationalizing everything. Communism as nationalization is SocDem revisionism that doesnt understand that the real problem with capitalism is not just who owns what, but that the products themselves dominate the lives of people.

"It was especially after the experience of the Paris Commune that the view began to gain ground with Marx that the organisation of the economy could not be realised through the state but only through a combination of the Free Associations of the Socialist society." Slow down Anarchists, this doesnt mean Marx is anti-statist, he is saying that the new economy is something consciously built and run by the working class, rather than the state running everything. The state has nothing to do with the economy, but it will still exist as the political force used by the working class to dominate all other classes through violence.

"Marx therefore took his stand upon the concept of the "Association of Free and Equal Producers". This Association, however, has nothing in the least to do with the vague concepts of 'mutual aid' which are currently circulating, but has a very material basis. That basis is the computation of the labour-time which is necessary in order to produce use-values. As will be demonstrated in the course of this text, this has nothing to do with value."

"Marx also very clearly indicates the labour-hour as the unit of computation. In his well-known discussion of "Robinson on his Island" he says of this island inhabitant:

"Necessity itself compels him to divide his time with precision between his different functions. Whether one function occupies a greater space of his total activity than another depends on the magnitude of the difficulties to be overcome in attaining the useful effect aimed at. Our friend Robinson Crusoe learns this by experience, and having saved a watch, ledger, ink and pen from the shipwreck, he soon begins, like a good Englishman, to keep a set of books. His stock-book contains a catalogue of the various objects he possesses, of the various operations necessary for their production, and finally, of the labour-time that specific quantities of these products have on average cost him. All the relations between Robinson and these objects that form his self-created wealth are here so simple and transparent that even Mr Sedley Taylor could understand them." We can calculate the exact amount of labor-time required to make anything. Using this data we can plan what and how much to produce. Economic growth is achieved by using new tech that reduces the time to produce things. With modern tech, this kind of accounting and planning is trivial. Communism doesnt need science-fiction level tech or automation to be achieved.

"Let us finally imagine, for a change, an association of free men, working with the means of production held in common, and expending their many different forms of labour-power in full self-awareness as one single social labour force. All the characteristics of Robinson's labour are represented, but with the difference that they are social instead of individual." The beauty of a communist economy is how transparent and objective everything is. There is no exploitation not because people become morally pure, but because the very basis of this economy makes any attempt at exploitation very transparent and hard to conceal.