In anticipation of the Thanksgiving
holiday, PBS television tonight featured “The Pilgrim,” a story
of the founding of Plymouth colony and the first thanksgiving. It is
a slick program with many interesting facts, especially about the
immense starvation during the early years. But this two hour program,
despite all its scholarship, failed to mention the real lesson to be
learned here, namely, what ended the starvation. That was private
property rights, assigning land “to every man for his own
particular,”—after which the governor wrote years later, “any
general want or famine hath not been amongst them since to this day.”
PBS hasn't learned this lesson any more than Obama. And a great many
other people don't know about this important lesson either. So
we present our previous Thanksgiving Day message again here:
President Obama has failed to learn the
simple basic lesson that the Pilgrims, who established the tradition
of Thanksgiving Day in 1623 (not 1621, as often claimed), learned the
hard way. The bounteous harvest they were gratefully celebrating on
that day was preceded by years of starvation. They arrived in
mid-December 1620, and half of them died the first year. Though the
Indians helped them survive, the colonists were chronically short of
food, and their numbers continued to dwindle.
Under the Mayflower Compact,
which governed the colony, “all profits and benefits that are got
by trade, working, fishing or any other means” were community
property in the “common stock” of the colony. And “all such
persons as are of this colony are to have their meat, drink, apparel
and all provisions out of this common stock.” People were required
to put in everything they could—they were forbidden from growing
their own food—and to take out only what they needed. It was a
policy of “from each according to his ability, to each according to
his need,” centuries before Karl Marx seduced millions of people
with those words.
The communal system was such
a failure that in the spring of 1623 the Pilgrims feared they would
not survive another poor harvest. “So they began to think,” wrote
the colony's governor William Bradford, “how they might raise as
much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done,
that they might not still thus languish in misery. At length, after
much debate of things, the Governor (with the advice of the chiefest
among them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own
particular, and in that regard trust to themselves....And so assigned
to every family a parcel of land.....This had very good success; for
it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted
then otherwise would have been by any other means the Governor or any
other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far
better content.”
Far from making the people
“happy and flourishing,” the communal system, wrote Bradford,
“was found to breed confusion and discontent, and retard much
employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort.” Not
surprisingly,“young men that were able and fit did repine
[complain] that they should spend their time and strength to work for
other men's wives and children, without recompense. The strong, or
men of parts, had no more division of food, clothes, etc. than he
that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was
thought injustice. The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalized
in labor, and food, clothes, etc. with the meaner and younger sort,
thought it some indignity and disrespect unto them.”
Under the circumstances,
there was little incentive to produce food. Severe whippings were
tried to induce greater production, but they did little more than
increase discontent.
The social disharmony, along
with the food shortages, disappeared once the concept of private
property was introduced and people could keep whatever they produced,
or trade it away as they saw fit. In 1647 Bradford was able to write
“any general want or famine hath not been amongst them since to
this day.” Such was the success of the new system that in 1624 the
colonists began to export corn, trading it for beaver pelts, other
furs, and meat.
In 1624 the Pilgrims took a
further step in property rights. The system of assigning land “to
every man for his own particular” had certainly increased the
production of corn, but the assignment was drawn by lot yearly. Thus
there was not much incentive for making improvements to one's tillage
when someone else might draw that land next year. The men requested
of the Governor “to have some portion of the land given them for
continuance, and not by yearly lot....Which being well considered,
their request was granted.”
Jamestown, the first
permanent English colony in America, established in Virginia in 1607,
had an experience similar to the Pilgrims at Plymouth. Early years of
starvation were followed by converting to a system of property rights
and a free market, which brought abundance. Under collectivism, less
than half of every shipload of settlers survived the first twelve
months at Jamestown. Most of the work was done by only one-fifth of
the men, to whom the socialist system gave the same rations as to the
others. During the winter 1609-10, called “The Starving Time,”
the population fell from 500 to 60.
But when Jamestown converted
to a free market, there was “plenty of food, which every man by his
own industry may easily and doth procure,” wrote the colony
secretary Ralph Hamor in 1614. Under the previous system, he said,
“we reaped not so much corn from the labors of thirty men as three
men have done for themselves now.”
We should not underestimate
the significance of the experiences at Plymouth and Jamestown.
Property rights and free markets were truly revolutionary and
fundamental to capitalism. Without them, all the wealth, progress and
human betterment that followed could not have occurred. According to
Sartell Prentice, “In England, meanwhile, farming 'in common'
continued to be the general practice for another hundred years. Not
until the second decade of the seventeen hundreds did 'setting crops
for their particular' begin to be slowly accepted in England—and
decades were to pass before the new practice became sufficiently
widespread to provide an adequate food supply for the population.”
Even today, centuries later,
there is still inadequate understanding of the importance of property
rights and free markets. A recent BBC poll of 29,000 people worldwide
found only 11 percent think free-market capitalism is a good thing.
One-quarter of those polled said capitalism is “fatally flawed.”
There is no shortage of
people who want a political system that gives them the fruits of
other men's labors, as at Plymouth and Jamestown. And there is an
abundance of politicians willing to accommodate them at the expense
of other men's property. The result is repetition of the collectivist
systems (socialism, fascism) that have failed in the past, and no end
to the discontent and resentment they engender. But people can be
seduced to try them again and again by lofty idealistic statements,
eloquent messages of hope, and promises that can never be kept. All
of which allow the covetousness of other people's property—whether
for personal gain or altruistic, collectivist aims—to masquerade
under noble-sounding phrases.
When Barrack Obama was
campaigning for the presidency, he promised to redistribute other
people's wealth for the collective good. In a short but spirited
dialog with a small businessman, “Joe the plumber,” Obama argued
that society would be better off if Joe's taxes were increased and
the money distributed more widely to those less well off. What is
this but a denial of Joe's property right to his own money and a
repetition of the socialist distribution schemes that were so
disastrous at Plymouth and Jamestown?
Once he was president, Obama
came up with a health plan that would require everyone to buy health
insurance—as though people's money was not theirs by right but,
rather, was part of the “common stock” of community property, to
be allocated by the leader for the collective good! And, just as at
Plymouth, people who did not cooperate would be punished—not by
severe whippings as was done there, but by the more civilized penalty
of seizing their property (money) through fines if they refused to
buy health insurance.
Contrast the government
inflicting pain and penalty to force compliance compared to the
benefit and satisfaction—even happiness—from market transactions,
which people undertake without force or penalty in order to enhance
their lives and are far more effective than socialistic
distributions. Obama said, "We are
fundamentally transforming the United States of America." He is
indeed, wiping out the fundamental principles that allowed America to
prosper.
Obama claimed, "This
is our moment, this is our time to turn the page on the policies of
the past, to offer a new direction." Yes, he is “turning the
page on the policies” of property rights and free markets. But the
direction he is offering is not new but old. It is the ancient system
of four centuries ago, before property rights, those basic rights
which are still denied in varying degrees in many countries that have
never discovered free-market capitalism, much less embraced it—and
whose standard of living reflects that fact. And those countries
comprise a large share of the 89 percent of the world's people who do
not think capitalism is a good thing—but who look with envy on
America's success and demand we redistribute a share of our wealth to
them.
"Generations from now,” Obama said, “we will be
able to look back and tell our children that this was our time."
Yes, and they will be the worse for it—and damn you for it!
