You're reading this as an apologetic for Soviet communism, when it isn't. Here is the totality of the argument: comparing the immediate postwar economic outcom

You're reading this as an apologetic for Soviet communism, when it isn't. Here is the totality of the argument: comparing the immediate postwar economic outcomes of the US and USSR is intellectually embarrassing, because everybody here understands that they aren't comparable. If your goal is to demonstrate that capitalism produces prosperity, you can point to literally any other period after the postwar one.