Jamestown Foray into a Communist Failure

William Bradford

Our U.S. socialist public education system has produced the likes of AOC who espouse socialist programs without any historical backgrounds of the consequences of the Utopian nightmare. One of my readers commented at Canada Free Press:

"Even the Christian Puritan Pilgrims found that out in their foray into socialism in 1620's early America. Their Atlantic journey and colonial establishment was to rely upon the contractual funding of backers in London. A very key component of the contract with these wealthy backers said that all colonists were to get their food, clothing, and other essentials from a common storage stock. Additionally, the colonists were to accumulate all surpluses into a warehouse for the first seven years to be evenly distributed amongst the colonists.

This socialist commune was an utter failure. Their first winter in 1620 saw over half of the Pilgrims perishing. Local natives helped them survive, but the harvests of 1621 and 1622 were dismal.
William Bradford (Governor) wrote to the backers and explained that the socialist philosophy caused lack of progress in the colony and even death and disease. Young, strong men with families resented working for the benefit of other weaker men with families without due compensation. They considered themselves as slaves for their efforts and slacked off their duties. So, the dystopian nightmare of socialism was abandoned in 1623, land was parceled out and life was good again."

My response was as follows.

The Jamestown experiment with socialism and equal shares failed miserably because some people had a better work ethic and worked harder than others. Humans are generally not that altruistic by nature to continue working hard for those who don't.

We had a wise guy say during the communist era, "we pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us." People hid at work, did not do their assigned jobs properly or at all, slept on the job, drank on the job, did jobs during work hours for themselves or for outside friends with whom they bartered for other commodities, took time off for weeks on end with dishonest medical excuses from doctors whom they bribed, while receiving their measly but equal pay like those who actually worked or at least showed up to work and made a minimum effort.

Resentment against the slackers was sky high but nobody could say anything because they always punished or killed the messengers.

Communists claimed that there was no class system under communism but there was, the communist elites and their lackey informers, and the proletariat.