Most people hear the word socialism and freak out. People love to hate on socialism. A study conducted by the Pew Research Study found that sixty percent of all Americans have a unfavorable view towards socialism while thirty-six percent have some favor towards the system (mainly because they don’t know what it is or like some policies like universal healthcare). That’s why it has never been tried here, right?
Well it is true that America has never adopted socialism since it became popular in the late-19th century and early-20th century, that doesn’t mean we haven’t had some sense of socialism before hand. No, I’m not talking about policies like welfare, public education, mailing, healthcare, or anything relating to that. I am talking about when the first Americans came here in the 17th century.
As we all know, the Pilgrims were wrecked with starvation throughout their earlier years. Yet, no one really discusses why they starved. More specifically, what were there practices that led to the horrendous conditions that caused the deaths? That answer may come as a shocker: socialism.
The first America settlers arrived to the town of Jamestown in May 1607. The Virginia Tidewater region was filled with tremendous soil and a cornucopia of seafood, deer, turkey, and fruit, according to historian Thomas J. DiLorenzo. Despite this, only 38 of the 104 Jamestown settlers were still, mostly due to famine that killed 66 of them.
In 1609, the Virginia Company sent 500 more pilgrims to settle in Virginia. Within six months, 440 were dead via starvation and disease. One eyewitness described the horrific condition of the town:
“Nay, so great was our famine, that a Salvage we slew, and buried, the poorer sort tooke him up againe and eat him, and so did divers one another boyled and stewed with roots and herbs: And one amongst the rest did kill his wife, powdered her, and had eaten part of her before it was knowne, for which hee was executed, as hee well deserved; now whether shee was better roasted, boyled or carbonado’d, I know not, but of such a dish as powdered wife I never heard of.”
One of the new settlers that arrived in Jamestown in 1609 was a 14-year old girl named Jane. She was among the many children that succumbed to death that winter known as “Starving Time.” She was buried in the Virginian soil, only to be dug up days later. A bunch of settlers began to dismember body first by taking out her skull, cutting the tentative, and splitting her whole skull open. Her brain and tongue were hacked out and her cheek meat and muscle were stripped away. Flesh was also carved out from her leg. The reasoning for this? Because the conditions were so horrible that the settlers resorted to cannibalism to not starve.
The reasoning for this was because of their economic system. All of the men had no financial stakes in the fruits of their labor. What they produced went into a common pool to support the colony and generate profits for the Virginia Company. Hard work reaped in little reward. Historian Philip A. Bruce wrote that “The settlers did not have even a modified interest in the soil. . . . Everything produced by them went into the store, in which they had no proprietorship.” According to Bruce, this resulted in the men idling over the tasks to work together. The energetic men by nature became derelict. The lack of property rights destroyed all semblance of work ethic among the settlers.
Historians Gary Walton and High Rockoff describe the lack of property rights and their effects in their book, History of American Economy.
“Consider 10 workers, who share ownership of the land and who collectively produce 100 bushels of corn, averaging 10 bushels each for consumption. Suppose that one worker begins to shirk and cuts his labor effort in half, reducing output by 5. The shirker’s consumption, like the other workers’, is now 9.5 (95/10) bushels thanks to the shared arrangement. Though his effort has fallen 50 percent, his consumption falls only 5 percent. The shirker is free riding on the labors of others. The incentive for each worker, in fact, is to free ride, and this lowers the total effort and total output.”
When the British government Sir Thomas Dale to serve as the high marshal of the Virginia colony, he noted the devastating conditions of the town. He identified the problem to be communal ownership of the means of production (a.k.a, socialism). He concluded that each man would be given three acres of land and be required no more than one month per year, and not at planting of harvest time, to contribute to the treasury of the colony. The farmers were then to pay the colony a lump-sum tax of two and a half barrels of corn.
His implemented private property into the colonies and it lead to prosperity. Free riding was no more as each individual bore the full consequences of reductions in their personal outputs. It also incentivized them to work harder because they now directly benefitted from their own labor. According to historian Matthew Page,
“As soon as the settlers were thrown upon their own resources, and each freeman had required the right of owning property, the colonists quickly developed what became the distinguishing characteristic of American- an aptitude for all kinds of craftsmanship couple with an innate genius for experimentation and invention.”
The colonists originally implored the Indians to sell them corn, but the Indians looked down on the settlers because they were not capable of growing sufficient corn. The Indians began coming to the colonists for trade of corn for fur and other items once they abandoned communal ownership. Peaceful market exchanged based on the division of labor had been achieved.
There was another town that was similar to that of Jamestown. The town of Plymouth, Massachusetts, was another town for pilgrims to settle in. Unlike Jamestown, they were not funded by the British aristocracy but rather individual investors who were not aristocrats. It was a major risk seeing how Jamestown lost millions of dollars in investment. Unfortunately, they also adopted communal ownership just as Jamestown did. They decided that working for the Virginia Company would cause them to not reap the benefits of their fruits, then they ironically said that all accumulated wealth was to be common wealth placed in a common pool where investors could feel reassured that the colonists would be working to benefit their fellow man.
In November 1620, 102 settlers arrived in Cape Cod. By the winter, 45 of them would perish according to economist Murray N. Rothbard. From them, another 100 settlers would arrive to the colony, only to struggle to make it every day. Governor of Plymouth Colony, William Bradford, noted this when he explained that the situation was so bad that
“many sold away their clothes and bed covering [to the Indians]; others (so base were they) became servants to the Indians, and would cut them wood and fetch them water for a capful of corn; others fell to plain stealing, both night and day, from the Indians. . . . In the end, they came to that misery that some starved and died with cold hunger. One in gathering shellfish was so weak as he stuck fast in the mud and was found dead in the place.”
Thankfully, Bradford soon resolved the problems in the same manner that Jamestown did. He decided that the Pilgrims would keep the fruits that they bear. Every family was assigned a particular acre of land. Setting “every man for his own particular” established private property. The lazy turned into industrious workers and women who had previously pleaded frailty worked long and hard when they realized the benefits it brought. Bradford saw the horror of communal ownership and claimed that the men who diluted themselves that communal ownership was a positive were falsely believing they were “wiser than God.”
“For the young men that were able and fit for labour 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, or man of parts, had no more division of victuals and clothes than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice.”
Bradford knew communal ownership was a tragic mistake for the colony and that only through private property could the colony thrive. By 1650, privately owned farms were predominant in New England.
Once they acknowledged private property rights, the pilgrims thrived. The economic freedom that we call capitalism today harnessed America’s abundant natural resources and took advantaged of its fertile soil in a way that the first settlers were unable to accomplish.