I’m descended from that Winslow.
Actually I would call it required socialism or forced socialism. Simply calling it socialism and declaring it a failure on those grounds, wildly oversimplifies the situation they were in.
This was a settlement that was nearly as remote as the surface of the moon and anyone thinking they could simply open up Ye Olde Hardware Shoppe and become free marketeers deserves the absolute failure they would get. The simple fact is that any small remote settlement has little choice other than communal living until it begins to grow and produce more than can be used.
They could have gotten away from the communal living sooner if there had been a steady stream of new settlers binging new goods for trade. The indians simply weren’t great trading partners. The natives had extremely valuable knowledge but the settlers didn’t have a great deal to trade for it.
Thank you for that excellent history of the Pilgrims. I am especially happy that some survived, or I would not be here today. My eighth great grandfather was Wm. Bradford, and I have friends who are also still here, Robert Cushman and a woman named Hopkins. Amazing that we all lived in the same town here in Wisconsin!
My reaction to reading this “article” twice is that the author is on drugs. He could also title an article:
“2+2 does not equal 4
blah blah blah, leaking boat, blah blah blah, head on a stick,........and now the part ignorant right wingers often misinterpret:
“and as thouest can seeith- if thou haveth 2 apples and addith 2 more you haveth 4 apples”
• In 1978, we took the RV and the kids up to Plymouth to see my wife’s sister who lived there at the time. We visited Plymouth Plantation. During the tour, I was struck by the presence of fortified guard shacks in the town square and asked the guide if they were a last line of defense for the citizens there if trouble with the natives spilled into the compound. He told us that they were for the control of the FOOD RIOTS which broke out those first few winters — BEFORE they wisely abandoned their clearly failed experiment with collectivism — before Marx was even born.
Seems each generation or so we must relearn the hard lessons of history.
OBOWMA will teach us the next round of such lessons. I suspect they will be BITTER ones indeed.
Have a wonderful day and next 4 years.
**The original contract the Pilgrims had entered into with their merchant sponsors in London called for everything they produced to go into a common store, and each member of the community was entitled to one common share. All of the land that they cleared and the houses they built belonged to the community as well. Now, they were going to distribute it equally; all the land they cleared, all the houses they built belonged to the community. Nobody owned anything. They just had a share in it. It was a commune.**
and we complain because we can’t buy Twinkies these days
Very interesting read, but it does not invalidate the inefficiencies of collectivism vs. the industry of private ownership.
As a descendant of Rev. Brewster, I’ll say this:
Putting everything into a common store for the “common wealth” isn’t socialistic? OK, what is it then?
that post was so long, did you plan on publishing it? The pilgrims held everything in common and to each according to their needs and from each according to their ability...1/2 of them starved to death the first year.....definately socialists as were the first christian churchs....
It isn’t a bad article, but it seems a travesty that we live in an age where very few are ever required to endure such hardship to survive the physical elements, but are unwilling to better understand Church History to grasp the meanings of the documents these settlers produced and their significance in American politics.
The Pilgrims were hardly uneducated. They were Puritan Separatists and Harvard was founded by the Puritans in 1636.
Worse....they were Yankees