Spot on! - Realist Posted: Nov 23rd, 2017 - 10:55 am In Reply to: The description I read is the Pilgrims operated like some kind of - commune, but they found out that
You are correct. I see you got more downvotes than upvotes. Some here are so fixated on "feel-good" stories that they prefer fiction to facts. Once the truth is posted here, they will downvote you before admitting they were wrong.
And, as I've already posted, there IS a connection between Plymouth and Jamestown. But others here insist that unicorns and rainbows are preferable.
"As I've outlined in greater detail here before (Lessons From a Capitalist Thanksgiving), the original colony had written into its charter a system of communal property and labor. As William Bradford recorded in his Of Plymouth Plantation, a people who had formerly been known for their virtue and hard work became lazy and unproductive. Resources were squandered, vegetables were allowed to rot on the ground and mass starvation was the result. And where there is starvation, there is plague. After 2 1/2 years, the leaders of the colony decided to abandon their socialist mandate and create a system which honored private property. The colony survived and thrived and the abundance which resulted was what was celebrated at that iconic Thanksgiving feast.
As my friend Reuven Brenner has taught me, history is a series of experiments: The Human Gamble. Some gambles work and are adopted by history and some do not and should be abandoned by it. The problem is that the human gamble only works if there is a record of experimental outcomes and if decision makers consult that record. For many years, the story of the first failed commune of Plymouth Bay was part of the collective memory of American students. But Progressive Education found that story unhelpful and it has fallen into obscurity, which explains why (as I alluded to before) a well-educated establishment figure like Jared Bernstein would be unaware of it."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jerrybowyer/2012/11/21/how-a-failed-commune-gave-us-what-is-now-thanksgiving/#2fe9ff5d67e5
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