Council for Mutual Economic Assistance

1959 Soviet COMECON poster. Text: "Long live the People’s Republic of Albania!"

The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, or COMECON, was a global socialist organization, which, after Stalin's death, became a Soviet social-imperialist one.

History

Background and Establishment

COMECON was created as a Soviet anti-imperialist organization in 1949, but after the murder of Stalin, Soviet revisionists took power and headed the capitalist restoration of the Soviet Union. They succesfully turned the Soviet Union into a social-imperialist state, and around the world, socialists in power of socialist states were replaced by revisionists. COMECON was converted into a major social-imperialist tool of the Soviet bourgeoisie, which helped the USSR run their social-imperialist bloc. Among the countries that remained in COMECON after its revisionst turn were Albania and China.

Specialization

An example of the social-imperialist nature of the Soviet revisionists was Khrushchev's "specialization" policy, or the "international socialist division of labour", which weaponized COMECON. The central idea of this policy was to regulate the industrial output of COMECON members, having different countries specialize in specific products, most of which were sent to the Soviet Union. This, of course, is an example of the export of capital, which at the same time also functioned as a way to increase the dependence of COMECON countries on the Soviet Union. An example of this in practice is the conversion of Cuba into a Soviet sugar colony.

See Also

• Warsaw Pact
• Soviet revisionism
• Socialism
• Social-imperialism