The Pilgrims tried Socialism. It didn't work. The lazy were lazy, and the hard workers were resentful. It all led to low harvest and starvation. It finally led to PRIVATE PROPERTY and families worked SEPARATELY. It led to higher production. MAN is not meant to be in a COLLECTIVE.
The Pilgrims figured it out, Mamdani hasn't ... YET.
We knew Socialism didn't work before the first THANKSGIVING!!!
The First Thanksgiving’s Forgotten Lesson: How Private Property Saved a Colony and Forged a Nation
As families across America gather this Thanksgiving, they will partake in a tradition rooted in a harvest feast shared between the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony and the Wampanoag people in 1621. The story of perseverance, divine providement, and cross-cultural cooperation is rightly celebrated. But often lost in the familiar narrative of buckled hats and shared venison is a profound, foundational lesson in economics and human nature—a lesson the Pilgrims learned through bitter failure and near-starvation. It is a lesson that conservatives understand in their bones: that the impulse toward collectivism runs contrary to the God-given drive for self-determination, and that the institution of private property is not a mere legal construct, but a cornerstone of prosperity and freedom.
The popular memory of the Pilgrims often begins with the Mayflower Compact, a remarkable document establishing self-government, and ends with the first Thanksgiving. What is glossed over is the calamitous experiment in socialism that nearly doomed the colony before it could ever celebrate its first bounty.
Upon their arrival, the Pilgrims were bound by the terms of their financing from the London-based Merchant Adventurers. Their charter mandated that all colonists would work the land in common, and all the fruits of their labor would be deposited into a common storehouse. From this common store, each person would then receive an equal allotment of food and supplies, regardless of their individual contribution. This was, in practice, an early form of socialism: from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
The results were catastrophic. As Governor William Bradford’s own account, *Of Plymouth Plantation*, meticulously documents, this system bred what conservatives today would immediately recognize as the inevitable consequences of divorcing effort from reward. The most hardworking and able-bodied men resented that they were forced to labor for the benefit of others who did not pull their weight. Why should they work themselves to exhaustion when their rations would be no different from those who idled away the day?
Conversely, the “lazy” and less capable, as Bradford termed them, had no incentive to improve their efforts. They could rely on the toil of their more diligent neighbors with no personal cost. This “communality,” Bradford wrote, was found to “breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort.” The collective farm, far from fostering unity, bred resentment, sloth, and a profound sense of injustice. The human spirit, when stripped of the right to enjoy the fruits of its own labor, withers.
The consequence of this failed experiment was not merely discontent, but starvation. The harvests were meager, failing to produce enough to sustain the colony. Sickness and death swept through Plymouth. Within the first winter, nearly half of the colonists perished. The community was on the brink of collapse, not because the land was barren, but because their economic system was.
Facing extinction, the Pilgrims’ leadership made a radical decision. In the spring of 1623, Bradford and his advisors abandoned the communal model. They assigned every family a private plot of land, entrusting them to work it for their own direct benefit. What they grew would be theirs to keep, to trade, or to use to provide for their families. The link between effort and reward was restored overnight.
The transformation was immediate and dramatic. Bradford recorded that the women, who had previously been excused from field work under the communal system, now went “willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn.” The men, now working for their own wives and children, labored with an energy and ingenuity that had been utterly absent before. No longer was it a question of working for an abstract “common good”; it was now a matter of providing for one’s own hearth and home.
The result was an abundance that the colony had never known. As Bradford triumphantly wrote, “Instead of famine, now God gave them plenty,” and the colony “had no want.” The harvest was so bountiful that they were able to trade their surplus with the Native Americans. This success, born of individual enterprise and private property, provided the actual plenty that was celebrated in the harvest feasts that became the origin of our Thanksgiving tradition.
This historical episode is not a quaint anecdote; it is a powerful allegory for the conservative worldview. It affirms several core principles that stand in stark opposition to the modern progressive agenda.
First, it affirms that human nature is immutable. We are not blank slates to be molded by social engineers. We are endowed by our Creator with a drive for self-preservation, a desire to provide for our families, and a fundamental understanding of justice that recoils at being forced to carry the load for those who will not carry their own. Any system that ignores this reality is doomed to fail, no matter how noble its intentions may sound.
Second, it demonstrates that private property is the bedrock of both prosperity and liberty. The right to own, to control, and to benefit from one’s property is not greed; it is the material manifestation of personal responsibility and freedom. It is what allows a family to be secure, a community to be stable, and a nation to be strong. The Pilgrims did not become prosperous because the government redistributed resources; they flourished when government got out of the way and empowered individuals.
Finally, the Pilgrims’ story underscores that true compassion is not achieved through forced collectivization. The common store led to shared misery. It was the shift to a system of individual responsibility that created such a surplus that the colonists could then be genuinely charitable, helping the truly needy from a position of strength, rather than mandated poverty.
Today, as we hear calls for a radical restructuring of our economy, for the Green New Deal, for the expansion of the state into every facet of our lives, we would do well to remember the lesson of Plymouth Rock. The Pilgrims “figured it out” over 400 years ago. They discovered that the path to abundance is not through the collective, but through the industry of free individuals, bound by faith and family, working on their own property, for their own benefit, and in doing so, building a commonwealth that benefits all. This Thanksgiving, let us give thanks not only for the plenty on our tables, but for the system of liberty that made it possible—a system whose first seeds in American soil were sown by Pilgrims who learned the hard way that man was not meant to be in a collective.
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