The start of a new semester at public High School gives us ample opportunity to laugh at the nonsense spouted in Social Studies text. My AP “Comparative Government” class uses the text “Comparative Politics: Domestic Responses to Global Challenges“, by Charles Hauss. I flipped to the chapter on communism and (unsurprisingly) found some real gems.
“Early on, central planning helped produce rather rapid growth. By the 1950s, some of the communist countries were among the world leaders in the production of steel, ships, and other heavy industrial goods. Major improvements were made in the average person’s standard of living. Homelessness was eliminated in Eastern Europe, starvation in China.”
Interesting, I had always thought that China’s “Great Leap Forward” was the greatest famine in history. I don’t know where they got the idea that standard’s of living improved, but they should certainly read Rothbard’s critique of the great emphasis on “growth” in MES.
The entire chapter basically repeats every single myth that Rothbard obliterated in “Karl Marx: Communist as Religious Eschatologist“
