The Pilgrims Were the First Socialists

This Thanksgiving will be the 402nd in our history, counting back to when the Pilgrims, near the end of their first full year in the New World, shared a three-day feast with the Wampanoag Indians.

In The First Thanksgiving 1621, J.L.G. Ferris, a popular 19th-century painter who specialized in dramatizing famous historical events, gives us “history” with a happy face. We see prosperous, black-clad Pilgrims sharing a sumptuous dinner with bare-chested Indians in feathered war bonnets. The “thanks” here are for a bountiful harvest — and the early realization of America as a land of milk and honey and of peace and harmony.

Maybe that sounds a little too good to be true. In fact, it is. As Paul Harvey, the gravelly voiced broadcaster, liked to say, “Here’s the rest of the story.” (READ MORE: How to Enjoy a Horrible Thanksgiving Day)

No, it wasn’t easy to carve a life out of the wilderness in a cold and unknown land. Beyond fortitude, it took something else — something of long-lasting importance. It took abandoning socialism and embracing freedom.

Early Struggles of the Pilgrims

There were 102 passengers on the Mayflower who arrived at Plymouth, New England, in December 1620. Disease, malnutrition, or disease killed 51 within a few months. William Bradford, author of the classic Of Plymouth Plantation, was one of the bereaved: His wife, Dorothy May, fell tragically to her death before setting foot ashore. Bradford went on to govern the colony for many years.

Donna Curtin, historian and executive director of the Pilgrim Hall Museum, points out that a dozen or more earlier colonies set up by the Spanish, French, and English in North and South America had failed miserably.  The original English settlement in Jamestown, Virginia, set up in 1607, had all but collapsed after three years, with 80–90 percent of its inhabitants lost to starvation and disease. “They had murder, cannibalism, you name it — horrific, brutal conditions,” Curtain says.

Pilgrim leaders were well aware of this string of colonial disasters, as we know from Bradford’s journal. Now they faced major problems of their own. Many of them camped out in miserably cramped quarters aboard the Mayflower during the winter months. Then came a long drought in the spring and early summer. As Bradford wrote, “Famine began to pinch them sore.”

A Foundational Moment in Our History

The investors who paid the Pilgrims’ passage insisted upon “a common course and conditions” over the first seven years. During this time, members were not granted individual property rights but were allowed an equal share of total output.

Bradford clearly recognized the futility of this approach. The most productive would not be awarded more than the least productive in the division of “victuals and clothes”; thus, rather than being a community of harmony, growth, and widely shared prosperity, Pilgrims were prone to laziness, envy, thievery, and poverty.

Sound familiar? That’s exactly the record of socialism in the 20th century.

Bradford and the other leaders decided to try a better way. In 1623, they assigned to every family “a parcel of ground” for its own use. “This led to a very good result,” Bradford wrote, “for it made all hands very industrious.” Corn production increased, and the community as a whole grew more “content.”

The introduction of private property and individual freedom and responsibility in colonial America came exactly 100 years before the birth of Adam Smith (1723–1790) and 400 years ago on today’s calendar. It saved the Pilgrims and was truly a foundational moment in our country’s history.

Who will make better use of “a parcel of land” than the man and woman who own it, work it, and count on it to feed themselves and their children — and also to provide the additional income they need to go on farming from one year to the next? Who will be more motivated to save and invest, driven by a strong desire to create a better life for themselves, their families, and their communities? Who will be more entrepreneurial, more ready to engage in voluntary exchange for mutual benefit?

What happened in Plymouth was the acorn that grew into a mighty oak, as the United States became the world’s strongest economy and a beacon of hope and freedom to people in other countries around the globe.

Then and Now

Today our society is not on the edge of starvation, or “pinched sore” by famine as were the Pilgrims 400 years ago, but we are spread dangerously thin, and we are speeding in the wrong direction.

What has been the greatest “achievement” of the current administration? You could say it’s the all-time-high national indebtedness. Federal debt held by the public rose to 119 percent of GDP at the conclusion of World War II. Today it stands at 123 percent, and we aren’t fighting a world war. In fact, even though we are living in an exceedingly dangerous time, the administration has allowed defense spending to decline as a percentage of GDP while at the same time invading every nook and cranny of American life with new federal entitlements and mandates costing in the trillions of dollars.

You can blame that on foolish or downright crazy policymaking in the nation’s capital combined with the uncritical and enthusiastic support that these same policies routinely receive from self-anointed elites — that is to say, pundits in the news media, teachers at all levels of education, the entertainment industry, and wherever else (including board rooms of some the country’s biggest companies) you find a preponderance of thought leaders who have embraced progressive thinking, which we regard as regressive thinking in  undermining individual freedom, hard work, and common sense.

But the views of the elites and the vox populi — the voice of the people — are two very different things. As the Pew Research Center pointed out in a recent survey, “Americans take a dim view of the nation’s future [and] look more positively at the past.”

“The past is never dead,” William Faulkner wrote. “It’s not even past.” In reflecting on the Pilgrims and the matchless record of long-sustained freedom and prosperity over the last 400 years, we have a lot to build on in making a better future for ourselves and our children.

Rex Sinquefield is the president and co-founder of the Show-Me Institute. Andrew B. Wilson is the institute’s senior writer and fellow and a longtime contributor to The American Spectator.

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