The Pilgrims' failed experiment with communism

Goldwater Institute ^ | Nov. 23, 2011 | Byron Schlomach

[inkling]

When the Pilgrims arrived on the Mayflower, they set up a society in which no one could own property and everyone shared equally, no matter how much work they did. The result was misery and hunger. But when the governor allowed each man to plant and raise crops for his own household, something amazing happened.

William Bradford recorded the experiences of the Separatists who came to the New World on the Mayflower and later voyages some years after the events actually occurred. His memory was evidently aided by personal letters that had been retained as well as his own contemporary writings. The following occurred around 1622 and 1623, three years after the establishment of Plymouth colony. It involved not more than probably two-dozen families. For some time, the “Pilgrims” had raised meager crops, running short of food stores every winter. Infusions of new mouths to feed on ships from England did not help, but that, it turns out, was not the source of their problem. Mr. Bradford can speak for himself:

[Jack Hydrazine]

Why didn’t they ever teach this to us in public skrools?

[hinckley buzzard]

Rush has recounted this history every Thanksgiving for many years now.

[allmendream]

“that the taking away of private property, and the possession of it in community, by a commonwealth, would make a state happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God.”

[SENTINEL]

You can read about it in greater detail in Cleon Skousen’s excellent classic book “The Naked Communist”.

[GeronL]

Young men were hunting for treasure rather than work in the communal fields. Why not, they’d still get an equal share.

[GeronL]

publik skoolz are too busy teaching condom mastery (Massataxes) and finding the nearest abortion clinic (NYC) and other things.

[from occupied ga]

Duno about y’all, but I’ve known about this for a long time. I did a paper on it for my high school history class, and got an “F’ for “Inappropriate topic” (or something like that - it was 50+ years ago) in a catholic high school. Even then, the Catholic church didn’t like criticism of communism.

[JerseyanExile]

The truth is a bit more complex then that. It always is, when dealing from something from the pages of history. It just goes to show that you got be careful when trying to writing an indictment of something. Make Haste From Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World Pg 250. From the outset, the colony was a commercial project, as well as a mission inspired by religous ideals. Weston wished to make money, as the contract put it, from "trade, traffic, trucking, working, fishing" on the American coast. Far from being a commune, the Mayflower was a common stock: the very words employed in it's contract. All the land in the Plymouth Colony, its houses, its tools, and its trading profits (if the appeard) were to belong to a joint-stock company, owned by the shareholders as a whole. When the final value of the assets was determined after seven years, the investors and the colonists would divide them up: that was the plan. All of the participants, those who stayed in England and those who had come to America, would recieve a dividend in proportion to the amount of shares they woned. Those who had no capital, but simply came on the boat, were deemed to have a single share. If any investors injected more cash, he or she would recieve extra shares accordingly. It was not the same thing as a modern corporation, but a likeness existed. See what I mean? Someone could just as easily turn the intent of the article on its head, say that this is proof of the inherent failures of the economic model of corporations. It's never good to give your enemy ammunition they can toss right back at you.

[waterhill]

Send this to a libtard you know. Maybe she will post it on DU.

Ever noticed DU also stands for dirty underwear?

[Secret Agent Man]

Also consider that these people were used to working hard to live. If even from these kinds of people you got slackers and those who wouldn’t pull their weight waiting for others to augment their poor outcomes, and the experiment failed,

think about the average person in the USA today, and ask yourself if we’d have more, or less, chance of this succeeding.

I would suggest that the problems we find ourselves in today are the result of failed socialist programs. Too many wanting others to take care of them no matter what they have or haven’t done.

[ixtl]

Why would you want to post this on Ducks Unlimited??

[samtheman]

It’s a great story and I’ve read it before.

My only question is regarding the one-acre parcel of land “given” to each person.

Weren’t they perched on the edge of a fairly empty continent of immense size?

I wonder how they settled on a one-acre limit?

[SandRat]

I learned about it in elementary school. Of course Ike was the President then and the NEA hadn’t corrupted the schools yet.

[Dick Bachert]

· 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.

OBOZO will teach us the next round of such lessons. If he persists in driving America into the ground, I suspect those lessons will be some of the MOST BITTER we have ever experienced.

Have a wonderful day.

[marty60]

Funny, while I was doing Genealogy research, I found that on my Mother’s side (French), that after migrating from Virginia they had gone to the New Harmony,Indiana “communist” settlement.

They only stayed for 2 years and settled further west.

When are people going to learn Commie/Socialist/Marxist/Progressive BS DOESN’T WORK. It goes AGAINST Human Nature.

[JerseyanExile]

The continent wasn’t empty, there were Indian tribes - friendly or hostile - living in the surrounding area. The early settlement was tightly clustered around the fort on Burial Hill for defensive purposes. Despite their decimation by illness, the local tribes still had significant numbers, and it was only as successive waves of migrants boosted the population of the colony that the settlement began to grow outward.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

After allowing for tilling of private property "...The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to plant corn, while before they would allege weakness and inability; and to have compelled them would have been thought great tyranny and oppression."

Human nature is certainly fixed and immutable.

[Jack Hydrazine]

She was an Owenite?

[marty60]

It was my Great-Great Grandfather. Early 1800’s.