Well, since the progressives like to pretend places like the former Soviet Union, China, and Cambodia "weren't practicing REAL communism" as an excuse, how about THIS example? I know this story has been told many times.
When the Pilgrims arrived on the Mayflower, they set up a society in which no one could own property and everyone shared equally, no matter how much work they did. The result was misery and hunger. But when the governor allowed each man to plant and raise crops for his own household, something amazing happened.
William Bradford recorded the experiences of the Separatists who came to the New World on the Mayflower and later voyages some years after the events actually occurred. His memory was evidently aided by personal letters that had been retained as well as his own contemporary writings. The following occurred around 1622 and 1623, three years after the establishment of Plymouth colony. It involved not more than probably two-dozen families. For some time, the “Pilgrims” had raised meager crops, running short of food stores every winter. Infusions of new mouths to feed on ships from England did not help, but that, it turns out, was not the source of their problem. Mr. Bradford can speak for himself:
All this while no supplies were heard of, nor did they know when they might expect any. So they began to consider how to raise more corn, and obtain a better crop than they had done, so that they might not continue to endure the misery of want. At length after much debate, the Governor, with the advice of the chief among them, allowed each man to plant corn for his own household, and to trust to themselves for that; in all other things to go on in the general way as before. So every family was assigned a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number with that in view, — for present purposes only, and making no division for inheritance, — all boys and children being included under some family.
This was very successful. It made all hands very industrious, so that much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could devise, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better satisfaction. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to plant corn, while before they would allege weakness and inability; and to have compelled them would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.
The failure of the experiment of communal service, which was tried for several years, and by good and honest men proves the emptiness of the theory of Plato and other ancients, applauded by some of later times, — that the taking away of private property, and the possession of it in community, by a commonwealth, would make a state happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God.
William Bradford's writings go on to explain that the young men objected to being made to labor to support other mens' wives and children. The older and more experienced men felt that being ranked equally with those younger and less-wise was an insult to them. And the women regarded being made to labor for men other than their own husbands as a form of slavery, and their husbands were offended by it.
It wasn't until the Pilgrims - or Separatists, as they called themselves - were released from their communal arrangement to work solely on behalf of themselves and their own families that their colony became prosperous.
The Pilgrims' failed experiment with communism | Goldwater Institute
Feel free, if you don't like this source, to find any references you like to
BradfordÂ’s History of the Plymouth Settlement; 1608-1650, by William Bradford. The whole sad tale is down there in black and white.
