Chomsky: why is this book still in print?

If I were Chomsky, I’d want to buy up all the unsold copies of At War With Asia and burn them. This guru of the Left is wrong time after time and his errors exist for all to see – and he keeps the book in print. Why?

On page 16 we read, “it is hardly surprising that the world-dominant power [the U.S.] should oppose the resort to state controls by its weaker neighbors or that it should speak of ‘economic liberalism’ and the benefits of unifying the world economy. Nor is it surprising that others see the matter rather differently. Thus a Tanzanian planner comments; ‘A country whose industrial development depends on foreign investments cannot adequately control its own destiny. It might succeed in attaining a successful take-off, but its economy might be likened to an unmanned aircraft whose course and safety are maintained by remote controls. It is a flying economy with no pilot aboard. The foreign investors who control it from a distance might decided to do anything with it.’”

If Chomsky had stopped there, he might have made a plausible impression. Tanzania remains a poor country. However, I wasn’t aware that it had a history of inviting foreign investment from America. I thought it discouraged foreign investment and that is one of the reasons it remained poor. But be that as it may, Chomsky doesn’t leave it with Tanzania. He appends to the above,

“Words that might be spoken as well in South Korea, Canada, even England, and many other countries today.”

Yeah, the economy of Tanzania hasn’t developed well, but South Korea, Canada and England? What was Chomsky thinking? Well, we can guess. Since he favors state controlled Socialism rather than a free economy he probably thought U.S. investment in the economies of South Korea, Canada, and England would be to their detriment. Sorry Chomsky, pointing to these three nations is an argument in favor of free economy rather than the reverse.

The thing about books that view things with alarm, is that they still exist years later. People can go back to them as I am doing now and see, for example, how good a prophet Chomsky was. Did American investment in the economies of South Korea, Canada and England ruin them? Did it even hold them back. No and no. Yes the world economy is in one of its periodic recessions, but none of these three nations is thinking of abandoning their free economy, I venture to assert. It might be interesting to see what the thinking in Laos and Vietnam is about this recession. They have seen that State Controlled Socialism has held them back economically and have been moving toward a free economy. Will they no say, “oh no; a recession! Let’s go back to Stalinist type planning”? I doubt it.