HISTORIC FAILURES (of socialism)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/2kk3uooy90fcij9/VOA-Historic-Failures-%28of_Socialism%29.PNG?dl=0
Jamestown Colony, Virginia, was started in 1607, on the communist plan of public ownership. Under that system the colony passed through the “Starving Time.” It did not thrive until the lands were divided among the settlers. Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts, was founded in 1620, also on the communist plan. The colonists suffered as they did in Jamestown until Governor William Bradford, a wise and practical administrator, gave to each colonist a lot of land to till and to hold in severalty. Then the colony prospered. Under the public ownership plan, if we may credit the statement of Governor Bradford, the colonists would not work industriously. They “let George do it,” and there “were no bones in the boneyard.” After the lands were divided, practical individual ownership succeeded where theoretical comradeship and brotherhood had failed. “What is everybody’s business is nobody’s concern.”
The Founders of the Republic were familiar with the history of Jamestown and of Plymouth. Is it not probable that a prescience of statesmanship enabled them to discern the basic reasons for the failure of communism when they framed our Constitution and defended private ownership.
At least fifty communist colonies have been attempted in America, and many in other parts of the world. Not one of them has survived. Communists all over the world came to admit that “Utopian Socialism,” as these failures are now called, can never be made to succeed. But they insisted that communism on a national scale could succeed, and that it would solve the economic problems of the ages.
When Lenin and Trotsky seized the reins of government in Russia and established the “Soviet Union of Socialist Republics,” the event was hailed with delight by communists everywhere. Now, for the first time, communism was to be tried on a national scale! A tremendously large national scale! Now, at last, communism was to vindicate the claims of its disciples!
As starvation, desolation and despair settled upon Russia, and her industries refused to revive under communism its deluded followers proclaimed the doctrine that communism could only succeed on an international scale—that all the world must be “socialized.”
They admit that they were mistaken when they thought “Utopian Socialism” could succeed, and that they were mistaken when they thought that national communism could succeed. They are equally mistaken in the belief that international communism can ever feed and clothe and house the world. The same reasons for the failure of communism on a small scale apply with multiplied force to communism on a world-wide scale. Enlarging the pest house does not cure the disease. It only exposes more people to its ravages. It were better far to keep it isolated in the already stricken country of Russia, where America and other unaffected countries can send relief.
-GW Cartwright 1925, California 2 term Democrat State Senator. https://remnantshighway.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/voiceofamerica-hilite4.pdf#historic-failures
