At the first Thanksgiving in 1621, the Pilgrims celebrated their first harvest after leaving England a year earlier in search of religious freedom in the New World. As bountiful as their crops had been, the Plymouth Colony would begin to see true success a few years later, after it dispensed with communal living in favor of private property rights.
Author, historian and chairman of the Plymouth Rock Foundation John Eidsmoe recently joined “1819 News: The Podcast” to tell the story of the First Thanksgiving and explain how the Pilgrims learned the folly of socialism after they were forced into it by their investors.
“The Merchant Adventurers were going to finance the colony. The colony in return would be producing furs and lumber and crops and fish and other things like this, and would supply these back to the Merchant Adventurers, so they'd make a profit out of this,” Eidsmoe explained. “…They decided, well, if we're going to make the colony profitable, they can't have their own homes and their own farms and so on. They've got to work in a communal setting so that all the profits are pooled, and a substantial portion of those profits come back to us. The Pilgrims didn't like this idea at all. They knew it was contrary to human nature. But if they didn't accept it, they would have to forgo the trip until the following year.”
“[Governor William] Bradford talks about this, and he says that it didn't work because socialism never works,” he continued. “He writes in ‘History of Plymouth Plantation,’ ‘The experience that was had in this common course and condition tried sundry years among godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato's and other ancients, but plotted by some of later times, that the taking away of property and bringing it into community and a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing as if they were wiser than God.’ What Bradford is recognizing here is that God never designed socialism. God knew socialism wouldn't work.”
Eidsmoe added, “In other words, these are people who have a work ethic and a Christian ethos, but it isn't even working among them, let alone among others. What he's saying here is that socialism doesn't work because it provides no incentive to produce.”
Of all the lessons to learn from the Pilgrims, that’s one many Americans still need to learn, Eidsmore said, pointing to the recent election of avowed socialist Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City.
“What did we learn from this? Well, just a couple of weeks ago, we saw the city of New York electing a socialist or possibly a communist as their mayor,” he said. “What did we learn? Apparently not nearly enough. Anyway, so that experiment [in Plymouth] is something that we certainly need to be aware of.”
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