We ran across a great commentary about Thanksgiving – the First Thanksgiving(s) – that are definitely worth reposting.
This is especially insightful given the Occupy Movement taking place across the country. Perhaps the “occupiers” might take a lesson from this.
By Richard J. Maybury
Each year at this time school children all over America are taught the official Thanksgiving story, and newspapers, radio, TV, and magazines devote vast amounts of time and space to it. It is all very colorful and fascinating.
It is also very deceiving. This official story is nothing like what really happened. It is a fairy tale, a whitewashed and sanitized collection of half-truths which divert attention away from Thanksgiving’s real meaning.
The official story has the pilgrims boarding the Mayflower, coming to America and establishing the Plymouth colony in the winter of 1620-21. This first winter is hard, and half the colonists die. But the survivors are hard working and tenacious, and they learn new farming techniques from the Indians. The harvest of 1621 is bountiful. The Pilgrims hold a celebration, and give thanks to God. They are grateful for the wonderful new abundant land He has given them.
The official story then has the Pilgrims living more or less happily ever after, each year repeating the first Thanksgiving. Other early colonies also have hard times at first, but they soon prosper and adopt the annual tradition of giving thanks for this prosperous new land called America.
The problem with this official story is that the harvest of 1621 was not bountiful, nor were the colonists hardworking or tenacious. 1621 was a famine year and many of the colonists were lazy thieves.
In his ‘History of Plymouth Plantation,’ the governor of the colony, William Bradford, reported that the colonists went hungry for years, because they refused to work in the fields. They preferred instead to steal food. He says the colony was riddled with “corruption,” and with “confusion and discontent.” The crops were small because “much was stolen both by night and day, before it became scarce eatable.”
In the harvest feasts of 1621 and 1622, “all had their hungry bellies filled,” but only briefly. The prevailing condition during those years was not the abundance the official story claims, it was famine and death. The first “Thanksgiving” was not so much a celebration as it was the last meal of condemned men.
But in subsequent years something changes. The harvest of 1623 was different. Suddenly, “instead of famine now God gave them plenty,” Bradford wrote, “and the face of things was changed, to the rejoicing of the hearts of many, for which they blessed God.” Thereafter, he wrote, “any general want or famine hath not been amongst them since to this day.” In fact, in 1624, so much food was produced that the colonists were able to begin exporting corn.
What happened?
After the poor harvest of 1622, writes Bradford, “they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop.” They began to question their form of economic organization.
This had required that “all profits & benefits that are got by trade, working, fishing, or any other means” were to be placed in the common stock of the colony, and that, “all such persons as are of this colony, are to have their meat, drink, apparel, and all provisions out of the common stock.” A person was to put into the common stock all he could, and take out only what he needed.
This “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” was an early form of socialism, and it is why the Pilgrims were starving. Bradford writes that “young men that are most able and fit for labor and service” complained about being forced to “spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children.” Also, “the strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and clothes, than he that was weak.” So the young and strong refused to work and the total amount of food produced was never adequate.
To rectify this situation, in 1623 Bradford abolished socialism. He gave each household a parcel of land and told them they could keep what they produced, or trade it away as they saw fit. In other words, he replaced socialism with a free market, and that was the end of famines.
Many early groups of colonists set up socialist states, all with the same terrible results. At Jamestown, established in 1607, out of every shipload of settlers that arrived, less than half would survive their first twelve months in America. Most of the work was being done by only one-fifth of the men, the other four-fifths choosing to be parasites. In the winter of 1609-10, called “The Starving Time,” the population fell from five-hundred to sixty.
Then the Jamestown colony was converted to a free market, and the results were every bit as dramatic as those at Plymouth. In 1614, Colony Secretary Ralph Hamor wrote that after the switch there was “plenty of food, which every man by his own industry may easily and doth procure.” He said that when the socialist system had prevailed, “we reaped not so much corn from the labors of thirty men as three men have done for themselves now.”
Before these free markets were established, the colonists had nothing for which to be thankful. They were in the same situation as Ethiopians are today, and for the same reasons. But after free markets were established, the resulting abundance was so dramatic that the annual Thanksgiving celebrations became common throughout the colonies, and in 1863, Thanksgiving became a national holiday.
Thus the real reason for Thanksgiving, deleted from the official story, is: Socialism does not work; the one and only source of abundance is free markets, and we thank God we live in a country where we can have them.
* * * * *
Mr. Maybury writes on investments. This article originally appeared in The Free Market, November 1985. source: Mises Daily
The great hoax about the Thanksgiving is the Tea Party lie that that the Pilgrims were socialists – they were not. This story, re-printed here because it’s suppose to be so timely, is in fact flat-out wrong, in truth, “the Pilgrims were more like shareholders in an early corporation than subjects of socialism.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/weekinreview/21zernike.html?pagewanted=1&_r=4&ref=todayspaper
I encourage everyone to read the NYT’s excellent fact-based article. It does not address contemporary politics; rather, it just focuses on the historical record and the truth of what happened in those formative years.
This is not an issue of whether socialism is right or wrong (it’s wrong) or about whether the US is headed down the path of socialism (it isn’t). It’s about telling the truth, something some in the Tea Party just can’t do.
They would rather defame the colonist in the hope of achieving an admirable goal (halting socialism) than deal honestly with a fairly straight-forward issue.
To sum up, socialism sucks, but so to do does lying.
I read the NYT article. Here is an excerpt:
Historians say that the settlers in Plymouth, and their supporters in England, did indeed agree to hold their property in common — William Bradford, the governor, referred to it in his writings as the “common course.” But the plan was in the interest of realizing a profit sooner, and was only intended for the short term; historians say the Pilgrims were more like shareholders in an early corporation than subjects of socialism.
Clearly, this IS socialism. True, in the context of being an English investor, it looks like capitalism. However, in the context of living in Plymouth it is, functionally, socialism. It is possible to set up a socialist society in a free market economy. That’s what Plymouth had. When they decided to change to a private enterprise society within the free market economy, they actually livied within a free market under the authority of their company.
In many respects, any association of individuals whether in a family, corporation, or organization has elements of socialism in the sense that, within those structures, there is a command economy and people are directed what to do and what benefits are derived by an established leadership process. What makes these “private socialist” structures respectful of individuals is that people are free to pick and choose (with the possible exception of families) which structures they will associate with and participate in. This limits the amount of exploitation an individual has to tolerate.
For example, someone can decide to work for another company to get better pay and working conditions. Someone can quit AARP and join AMAC. You can be a member of and shop at Sam’s Club instead of COSTCO (or vice versa). Etc.
However, you can’t individually pick and choose a government as easily. Essentially, the company that owned Plymouth was their government which is confirmed by using the Mayflower Compact to establish their government. If the government is the socialist structure, then individual choices about who to associate with and how to associate with them are not available to limit the amount of expoitation people are forced to suffer at the hands of others running the organization.
Bottom line: the Pilgrims had socialism. They changed to a more private enterprise approach. They had more prosperity and happiness as a result. The main post is not a lie. True Conservative was obviously a political science rather than an economics major.
It was not socialism for exactly the reason you state: the settlers signed up to come and live as a corporation.
They were not born into it. This was not a family endeavor.
This was a for-profit venture where the members expected to reap great wealth. They considered their options and decided that coming here was preferred to staying there, wherever there might be.
It didn’t work out for the way they hoped, but that doesn’t make it socialism, that just makes it a corporation that failed and had to undergo a restructuring.
At the end of the day, this is just another meme put forth in the name of a good cause – warning against socialism – that extracts as its cost the good name of the pilgrims and the destruction of American institution.
Pilgrims were given their own land to work and allowed to work it the way they wanted and to sell the crops however they wanted. They could engage in other occupations as well and charge for their services. They were not merely working as employees of the company.
That transformation looks a lot more like the collapse of the Soviet Union than corporate restructuring. When you had one company towns established by corporate charters without easy opportunities for emigration, the business entity is almost indistinguishable from a government. Keep in mind that families went over there and there was an intent by many to have children and permanently settle there. This was not simply an investor/employee relationship as you think of it today.
Functionally, it was definitely a socialist economy whose people were saved by switching to a free enterprise approach. This is obvious to anyone with even a basic understanding of economics. If you just look at the basic founding documents of a society, then that would have made the Soviet Union a free country with well protected individual rights. The Pilgrims had free enterprise when they started just like the Soviet Union was a bastion of liberty and individual rights.
Recognizing this reality does not hurt the good name of the Pilgrims or destroy any American institution.
True Conservative, you must be a lawyer or political scientist whose “education” has blinded you to the reality of how actual life is sometimes not reflected by legal and political documents.
If your premise is correct, that they could do whatever job they desired, then you are correct.
Every historian seems to disagree with you. They were working for a corporation that expected them to produce profits.
I have a lot of real world, global experience. I dislike socialism as much as anyone else. I just don’t see any proof that the Pilgrims were thinking like socialist any more than I see Haliburtan or the East India Trading company as being socialists.
There are freeloaders in corporations, as well, and when they gum-up your system they need to go. That’s what happened here. It wasn’t socialism, it was bad corporate governance.
Ask anyone who worked in the dot-com era for a pre-IPO company. Some workers were willing to sleep on the floor to get the project done so as to reap the reward of the IPO, others just coasted by. No one at those for-profit companies were socialists, yet they had to deal with exactly the same problem as the pilgrims. Ergo, the pilgrims, who were part of a for-profit venture, also were not socialists.
As I state below, there is a good conservative message that comes from the pilgrim story – (1) you need to reward people for hard work and not reward freeloaders, and (2) hard work can get you out of a bad situation – don’t be afraid to re-examine your plan and to make changes as needed.
While I respect your argument, which you make very well, I don’t see the absence of intra-company free enterprise as the presence of socialism.
I can’t run my own company from within my client’s companies, is that then also socialism?
And to add some perspective from noted historian Stephan Budiansky:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Budiansky
“Actually, the first English colonists in Massachusetts and Virginia did work together, but this was neither the cause of their misfortune nor a reflection of any utopian, much less collectivist, spirit: the colonies were organized and backed by joint-stock companies of wealthy English merchants — and the settlers worked for the company.
“The real problem, though, was that the men recruited for Jamestown and Plymouth were expecting quick and easy riches without having to work at all.
“Most of the participants of the debacle at Jamestown listed their occupation as “Gentleman,” which was defined at the time as, “Whosoever can live without manual labor.” John Smith kept desperately requesting that the company send men who possessed some actual skills and who were willing to get off their rear ends and work, but to no avail: “When you sende againe I intreat you rather send but thirty Carpenters, husbandmen, Gardiners, fishermen, blacksmiths . . . than a thousand such as we have.” Likewise he advised the Puritans, planning their colony in Massachusetts, “One hundred good labourers better than a thousand such Gallants as were sent to me, that would do nothing but complaine, curse, and despaire, when they saw all things clean contrary to the report in England.”
While Hunter is correct that there existed a command economy, it was one found in a corporation, not a kumbaya singing collective.
The goal of the settlers was to make a profit and then do with it what ever they will. They were for-profit ventures back by corporations and investors. This was, definitively, not socialism.
First my disclaimer.
I prefer capitalism over socialism.
Having said so, socialism may SUCK in the opinion of some of our contemporaries but others may embrace it. Many will embrace it, much too many right here in the good old U. S. of A.
In general socialism will never work in a greed-riddled Society. It does however work in the Scandinavian Countries, it also works in Switzerland.
It worked well in Germany from 1933 to 1945. It worked so well that in 1936 only 3 years after the National Socialist Party took over the reign of government their unemployment rate was a negative 110%, that means that for every 100 job seekers there were 110 job openings. Germany in 1936 opened its borders to well over a half million guest workers. It worked so well that the Austrians and part of Czechoslovakia voted for the “Anschluss” meaning they wanted to be re-united with Germany to become part of the success of National Socialism..
It worked so well that it actually made Socialism in and of itself obsolete. Not unlike J.F.K. who coined the phrase: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”.
The Germans of the 30′s coined the phrase “all for one and one for all” and it meant what it said it also implied: “we, collectively will help you if you fell on hard times until you recover, but beware, if you game the system we will send you to a place you wish you’d never have seen”.
It is my educated guess that we have too many folks gaming the system right here and now, by faking full or partial disability may that from having served to protect our freedoms during the Grenada Offensive and suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome as a result of that service or slipping off the running board of a salt truck for the Denver D.O.T. 6 years ago or whatever their ambulance chaser could dream of.
Socialism will only work and make itself literally obsolete if it occurs in an ethical disciplined society or within a benevolent dictatorship. It will not ever work in the USA.
Horst, your view of history is very selective. German socialism from 1933-1945 was the NAZI party. I suppose it might have worked out well up until 1942 unless you happened to be Jewish, a Gypsy, or politically opposed to the NAZI party. If you think the NAZIs had a great system and were a model of cooperation, then you have a different view of cooperation than any sane person I have ever met. Furthermore, the NAZI government was ended by military defeat and occupation by the armies of those who defeated it. It did not simply disappear because of its success.
Socialism can work only in the most primitive, simple societies. It becomes unmanagable as a society gets more complicated and has more people.
The New York Times! Oh boy; that source doesn’t wash with me.
Neat. So when did the Indians show up?
The culture of the Natives could also be described as socialism, but it’s a stretch. Life was rough, yet it worked pretty well for them for thousands of years.
Maybe the #OWS crowd has more in common with the Jamestown idle lazy nobility who grew up in wealth, with servants, but no inheritance, who arrived thinking they could sit around, eat whatever was left on the ship and dig gold and had to be literally whipped into working by the incredibly intrepid Capt John Smith, who then was almost killed thanks to their obnoxious behavior with the Native Americans living nearby.
Not sure if you’re being sarcastic, but I agree with you on this aspect: there is a lesson about hard work and proper economic incentives to be drawn from the Pilgrim story.
It has two parts: when you set out for easy money, you more than often fail; and, but if you get your act together, put into place the proper economic reward system, then you can achieve the greatness that we traditionally associate with these settlers.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL ON SA!
Capt John Smith had been sold as a slave in the Ottoman Empire prior to that “gig.” He had a deeper sense of freedom and personal resourcefulness than the entire shipload of 1%ers he got stuck wuth.
This is so silly. I feel sorry for people who can’t just feel gratitude on Thanksgiving for all their blessings and have to inject politics of whatever kind onto the best and the most American holidays.
You are officially informed that YOUR comment deserved a suitable reply today:
“When What We Take for Granted Seem Great.”
I hope you enjoy it. Happy Thanksgiving!
I teach college English classes (one of the classes I’m currently teaching, at Hunter College, CUNY, is Survey of American Literature: Origins to 1865) and the standard source for etymology and citations is the OED (Oxford English Dictionary). You need to check out the OED entry for “socialism” or simply Wikipedia or another encyclopedia, and you’ll see that “socialism” is an 18th century invention; it simply didn’t exist in the 17th century.
Why not just, on Thanksgiving, reprint something I taught this semester from that time, like Bradford’s own words, rather than say something silly like “Bradford abolished socialism”? Here’s something from John Winthrop’s “A Model of Christian Charity”:
“Now the only way to avoid this shipwreck, and to provide for our posterity, is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as His own people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of His wisdom, power, goodness and truth, than formerly we have been acquainted with. We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when He shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, “may the Lord make it like that of New England.” For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God, and all professors for God’s sake. We shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us till we be consumed out of the good land whither we are going.”
“I teach college English classes (one of the classes I’m currently teaching, at Hunter College, CUNY, is Survey of American Literature: Origins to 1865) and the standard source for etymology and citations is the OED (Oxford English Dictionary). You need to check out the OED entry for “socialism” or simply Wikipedia or another encyclopedia, and you’ll see that “socialism” is an 18th century invention; it simply didn’t exist in the 17th century.”
Surely you’re not serious? Are you honestly maintaining that because the origins of the word “socialism” are rooted in the 18th century, that therefore the political ideology, sociological concepts, or even economic doctrines simply did not exist prior to that? “Socialsim” is just another brand of collectivism, nothing new or different about it.
As an English professor, one would assume you’d have at least a passing familiarity with Thomas More’s “Utopia”, one of the early Euro-centric works of collectivist vision, published in 1516. Largely due to More’s influence, the ideology was called “Utopianism” for a while. Of course, there are also the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers of the “naturalist” bent, many of whom had a decidedly collectivist slant as well. I could go on, but presumably you’re getting the idea.
Simply because one bestows a new name on the same old thing, does not make it a new thing. Collectivism in its various guises has been around for quite a while, possibly as long as man has. The only thing that baffles me is why, after its long and well documented history of failure to live up to its promises, we still insist on trying it again, over and over.
Reminds me of the old joke about insanity being defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. What that says about collectivists in general, I’ll leave up to you …
Then there’s Plato … whose collossal conceit spans thousands of years to inspire all the worst characters of each new generation..