Comecon socialisms entered a double crisis in the 1960s hidden by Third World revolutions

Evidence

The enormous revolutionary upheavals in Cuba, Indochina and Southern Africa, not to speak of vibrant communist movements in a dozen other countries, served to conceal the fact that it was precisely in the 1960s that the ‘existing socialisms’ of the Comecon countries entered their doubleedged crisis, in both the political and economic domains. This crisis was brought about by the failures of the reform movements on the one hand and, on the other, by the onset of a secular decline in the overall rates of growth and their eventual inability to make a transition from extensive industrialization, which had marked the years immediately following the war, to an intensive technological revolution in the means of production, of the kind advanced capitalism was already embarked upon. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 119

Categorization

• XREF: Furnishes the material/historical backdrop the reader needs to evaluate whether the strategic-essentialism bind (studied mostly via discourse) can be loosened — Ahmad insists the 1960s socialist crisis was economic/systemic, not primarily ideological. — connects to: Comecon collapse threatened to replace Three Worlds Theory with eclectic difference-play — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 361; Soviet military spending enabled Third World revolutions while strangling Soviet society — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 618; 1956’s twin crises drove postcolonials to deconstruct Marxism’s Eurocentrism. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 14
• SHARE: The counterintuitive timing — existing socialist economies already in crisis in the 1960s, camouflaged by Cuba/Indochina/Southern Africa upheavals — would interest a friend who tracks actually-existing socialism economics.

Broader Connections

• Soviet military spending enabled Third World revolutions while strangling Soviet society #corroborates (0.75) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 618
• 1956’s twin crises drove postcolonials to deconstruct Marxism’s Eurocentrism. #complicates (0.70) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 14