(A.2) America's Socialist Roots
Believe it or not, the first government established by the Pilgrims was a socialist government. It sounds outlandish, I know, but it it true. They were probably inspired by the New Testament gospels and a sixteenth century book by Thomas More called Utopia. Fortunately, the Pilgrims soon recognized the incentive problems inherent in a socialist economy, and embraced an economic system which allowed for private property. The video below tells this story.
Video 1—America's Socialist Pilgrims
The Pilgrims initially liked the idea of no private property. In England, property resided solely in the hands of the rich and politically powerful—the same people the Pilgrims wanted to leave behind. Perhaps the Pilgrims associated private property with the rich landowners, and wanted none to do with either. This avoidance of private property is somewhat alive in America today, where our democratic system regularly passes laws which takes property through taxation and places limits on what can be done with property.
The Pilgrims didn't cross the Atlantic just to escape the rich, but an oppressive monarchy as well. They yearned to be self-governed, and this disapprovel for a powerful government is also alive today, for there are limits to which we will allow government to grow. The desire for a socialist colony where all property was shared emanated from their feelings of community among one another and an insistence that no one person will rule the others. They went too far though, for holding their property in common almost killed them.
However religious and devoted to one another the Pilgrims were, they still didn't want to work hard for others, especially if they saw others shirking their duty. Why harvest grain for others when they don't seem to be harvesting much for you? Once it became evident that communal property was dragging them into to starvation, they realized their error and began assigning households roughly equal amounts of private property. Knowing each person would receive the rewards of their hard work, they worked hard. They were also allowed to produce goods to sell and trade with others, and the Pilgrim community soon teemed with activity, good food, and a better life. Because each person had roughly the same amount of property, they could enhance their lives through hard work without having to worry about someone gaining enough power to take the fruits of their labor.
Hundreds of years later China would repeat this folly. After World War II the communists forced Chinese peasants onto collective farms very similar to the Pilgrims' socialist system, and facing the same lack of incentives to work hard, they almost starved. One collective farm eventually realized that property was the main problem, and like the Pilgrims, after they allocated private property to households everyone worked harder and grew wealthier. This one farm served as an example of what was possible to the Chinese communist leaders, and they decided to adopt a semi-capitalistic system of private property. Slowly and steadily, the Communist Party allowed people more and more freedom to make an honest profit. There came a time in the 1980's when self-employed trades like barbers, restaurant owners, and street vendors earned more money than surgeons and nuclear scientists who worked for the government for very low wages.(C2) Since then wealth in China has soared, and though ostensibly still a communist country, property and profit-making are its main economic institutions, and delivers wealth a socialist system never could.
Video 2—The Chinese Adopt Capitalism (from documentary, Born Under the Red Flag)
(must use Internet Explorer)
(Note: this story can also be heard at the Planet Money podcast episode
The Secret Document That Transformed China)
Colonists in America learned from their Pilgrim experience, and grew a strong fondness for property. So strong, in fact, that when Great Britain sought to confiscate its property by onerous taxation Americans decided to risk their lives in a bolt for independence. You know how that turned out (USA! USA! ...). This love of property and the individuals' right to make an honest profit thrives in America today, where both Democrats and Republicans approve of small business, free enterprise, and entrepreneurs. We should be grateful; from this blend of political ideologies emanates a society with a rather harmonious balance between the private and public sector, and from this, one of the most wealthy and free countries to ever exist.
 american political ideologies.jpg.gif)
