Most Americans are familiar with the story of the Pilgrims coming to American and establishing the Plymouth colony; which led to events that became the first Thanksgiving. But what very few people realize is that the original group charter was to establish a commune where each person was entitled to an equal share of the colonies assets. That explains why even today Massachusetts is referred to as the CommonWealth of Massachusetts. What we are familiar with is how terrible that first winter of 1620-21 was and how half of the Pilgrims perished. Luckily for the Pilgrims, they were aided by Squanto and other Native Americans who taught them how to survive. By the next Winter they were able to grow enough food to survive.

Even though they were able to get by during the next winter, the colony still struggled to produce goods to ensure their continued survival and to pay off the debt for the Atlantic crossing. In 1623 the colony abandoned their communal agreement and divided the land between the surviving Pilgrims. It wasn't until then that the colony began to truly prosper. William Bradford one of the founding leaders of the Pilgrims explained their decision and its results in his diary. So even in a small community where your very survival depended on everyone working together, they could barely get enough work out of most people to scrape by. When the colony abandoned communism for free enterprise, they started to prosper. I guess that no matter how much people want socialism to work, human nature keeps getting in the way.

The Plymouth Experiment

How Private Property Saved the Pilgrims

The Great Thanksgiving Hoax

Property and the First Thanksgiving

- Thomas Paine 2

Technorati Tags: communism, first thanksgiving, government, socialism, personal property, thanksgiving