Posted on 11/22/2012 7:56:33 AM PST by VitacoreVision
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.**
Agreed.
If anything the article reinforces the notion that the only way to get the new arrivals to participate at their fullest effort was to allow them to work for themselves and not the common good.
While the original colonists were motivated by a deep, internal set of values, the later group were not. Herein lies the fundamental problem with socialism: it will only work if everyone is a person of high character and self-sacrifice. Add a few people who are not motivated by the same spirit and the system falls apart.
and we complain because we can’t buy Twinkies these days
“Agreed
If anything the article reinforces the notion that the only way to get the new arrivals to participate at their fullest effort was to allow them to work for themselves and not the common good.”
Glad I’m not the only one who saw it. The article just reinforces what we already knew. So ..ummmm...Thanks author!
Very interesting read, but it does not invalidate the inefficiencies of collectivism vs. the industry of private ownership.
My Mayflower ancestor was John Howland.
http://www.livinglakecountry.com/blogs/communityblogs/134348908.html
What had created the earlier famine and then the bountiful crops? The story is told in the diary of Governor Bradford, who was one of the elders of that early Puritan colony.
At first, they decided to turn their back on all the institutions of the England that had been their home. This included the institution of private property, which they declared to be the basis of greed, averse, and selfishness. Instead, they were determined to live the “Platonic ideal” of collectivism, in which all work would be done in common, with the rewards of their collective efforts evenly divided among the colonists. Farming was done in common, as well as housekeeping and child raising. This was supposed to lead to prosperity and brotherly love.
But their experiment in collectivism did not lead to prosperity or brotherly love. Rather, it created poverty and envy and slothfulness among most of the members of this little society. (Hmmmm...sound familiar?)
Here is Bradford’s description of what socialism created among the Pilgrims:
“The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato’s and other ancients applauded by some of later times; that the taking away of property and bringing in community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God. For this community was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For the young men, that were most able and fit for labor and service, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense. The strong… had no more in division of victuals and clothes than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice. The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalized in labors everything else, thought it some indignity and disrespect unto them.
“And for men’s wives to be commanded to do service for other men, as dressing their meat, washing their clothes, etc., they deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could many husbands well brook it. Upon the point all being to have alike, and all to do alike, they thought themselves in the like condition, and one as good as another; and so, if it did not cut off those relations that God hath set amongst men, yet it did at least much diminish and take off the mutual respects that should be preserved amongst them… Let none object this is men’s corruption, and nothing to the course itself. I answer, seeing all men have this corruption in them, God in His wisdom saw another course fitter for them.”
For two years the harvest time failed to bring forth enough to feed the people. Indeed, many starved and many died of famine. Faced with this disaster, the elders of the colony gathered, Governor Bradford tells us, and decided that another year, and they would surely all die and disappear in the wilderness.
Instead, they decided to divide the property and fields of the colony, and gave each family a piece as their own. Whatever they did not use for their own consumption, they had the right to trade away to their neighbors for something they desired instead.
Now, instead of sloth, envy, resentment, and anger among the colonists, there was a great turnaround in their activities. Industry, effort, and joy were now seen in practically all that the men, women and children did. Bradford writes:
“They had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression…By this time harvest was come, and instead of famine, now God gave them plenty, and the faces of things were changed, to the rejoicing of the hearts of many, for which they blessed God.”
Indeed, their bounty was so great, that they had enough to not only trade among themselves but also with the neighboring Indians in the forest. In November 1623, they had a great feast to which they also invited the Indians. They prepared turkey and corn, and much more, and thanked God for bringing them a bountiful crop. They, therefore, set aside a day of “Thanksgiving.”
The Jim Jones cult were led to a socialist utopia and look how they ended up.
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.
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