Look How Happy Those Communists Are!

Aside from the obvious benefits to quality, the biggest reason to support ending the government monopoly on education is the inevitable statist propaganda factory such a system must turn in to. The latest evidence on that front comes from Des Moines, where a father of a high school student was shocked to find the flier below being promoted in his son’s social studies class (Hat-tip: All American Blogger):

“Communism stands for equal sharing of the work according to the benefits and the ability, but in capitalism an individual is responsible for his works and if he wants to raise the ladder,” the flier stated. “While the profit of any enterprise is equally shared by all in Communism, the profit in the capitalist structure belongs to the owner only.”

The cartoon represented capitalism by featuring an overweight businessman smoking a cigar while his workers were shackled. On the communism side, the cartoon showed happy workers earning loads of cash.

“I’m a businessman,” Travis told Fox News. “I took great offense. I don’t smoke big stogies. I don’t have a big gut. My employees are not shackled. If this was a fair representation, where is the fence around the workers on the communist side? Where is the guy holding a gun to their heads saying either comply or die? Where are the bodies that Stalin and Mao put in the graves.”

He said it as well as I could.

The school naturally tried to defend and deflect:

“Furthermore, the class, 20^th Century History, was studying the Cold War and propaganda, looking at some of the arguments both sides made about why their system was best on a range of topics, including their economies,” the statement read. “The handout simply highlights the differences between capitalism and communism, and some of the arguments made during the period of the Cold War.”

Well no, it doesn’t simply highlight the differences between capitalism and communism. It highlights statist propaganda and lies about capitalism and communism. So far the school has provided no evidence that this was just part of a critical look at Cold War era attitudes, and it certainly has not indicated that the flier was painted as the fictional nonsense which it clearly is.

See, even ignoring the issue of violence, the graphic is laughably false. The product of individual labor under communism did not simply return to the worker. It went to the Party, which then doled it out based on political preferences. This, along with the fact that individuals had little incentive to work harder than necessary to keep from being punished, is why these comrades were all so miserably poor and required men with guns standing on walls to keep them from running away.