As we all sit around out dinner tables in a few days with family and friends to enjoy that Thanksgiving meal, we perhaps should try to remember how this holiday all came about.
When the Pilgrim Fathers settled in what became Plymouth, Massachusetts they wanted to not only escape religious persecution in England, they also wanted to create a New Jerusalem, that would not only be devout but based on the model of Plato’s vision of communism as presented in his work, “The Republic.”
When they ended up starving under collectivism, they learned the hard way that there is no alternative to individual freedom, private property, and freedom of enterprise.
I tell this story in a new piece that I have up on the AIER website on: “The Real Meaning of Thanksgiving: The Triumph of Capitalism over Collectivism.”
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You are in good company. This is a common theme on Mises.org:
The Great Thanksgiving Hoax, by Richard Maybury
Property and the First Thanksgiving, by Gary Galles
Sorry, but the ‘real meaning’ of Thanksgiving is that when you’re a bunch of turkey and cranberry farmers from the NE, you can get the president to declare a religously-based national holiday.
How very very freedom-inspiring.
How very very anti-collectivist.
Pfeh.
no hugs for thugs,
Shirley Knott
“Sorry, but the ‘real meaning’ of Thanksgiving is that when you’re a bunch of turkey and cranberry farmers from the NE, you can get the president to declare a religously-based national holiday.”
I believe you are partially correct. It is sad to see the state co-opt tradition. Abraham Lincoln wanted the people to thank God for what the feds had done for them, basically saying ” PRAY! You ungrateful subjects! Thank your God for all I have done for you!”
My eldest son is in the 9th grade, and so far during his years of public school “education” the facts presented by Professor Ebeling (and others) have not been mentioned to him. Unfortunately, given the public school system’s goal to opinion mold, if not indoctrinate, I do not believe that they will be in his remaining years in public secondary school.
It is interesting how the exclusion of the history of economic thought stretches and reaches each and every detail of ‘history’ so that the indoctrination does not encounter any inquisite minds!
It is interesting how the exclusion of the history of economic thought stretches and reaches each and every detail of ‘history’ so that the indoctrination does not encounter any inquisitive minds!
Wow. I never knew that before! What an excellent illustration of the follies of scocialism. Thank you Professor Ebeling!
With the “Howland House” being the last “pilgrim” building in Plymouth standing, learning the real history has been somewhat personal. :^)
Thanksgiving? Stole, robbed, and killed others (Native Americans) so that settlers from Great Britain can claim occupied land for themselves. Economically, the Pilgrims were doomed and should have been asking for ‘true freedom’ from their own wicked ways. Just imagine these wild eyes escaping a world of “materialistic and greedy corruption” to cast upon humanity a burden living in an evil system they transported on the Mayflower.
It is not true that the Pilgrims tried to implement a Platonic (or even explicitly Christian) communism.
While the Pilgrims original property arrangements certainly were communal, this was definitely NOT because of their religious beliefs. It was foisted upon them by their colonial sponsors after the sponsors learned that they would not be granted a monopoly of fishing rights in Cape Cod. The sponsors’ original agreement with the Pilgrims was such that the Pilgrims were to work for four days for the sponsoring company and then would have two days to work for themselves. The sponsors later changed their deal and told the Pilgrims that they would have to work all six days of the work week for the sponsors. At the end of seven years, the Pilgrims would be granted title to the property they worked. The Pilgrims were not happy with the change, several of them recognizing that the new arrangement would make them virtual slaves of the sponsors, but they went along with the deal because many had already made large investments toward the move and they were convinced that emigrating to the New World is what God wanted them to do.
Bradford’s establishing private property was in no way a repudiation of any belief they had that Christian charity requires a Platonic communism. They definitely were NOT trying to implement such a system. The Pilgrims’ move to private property was, in fact, a move to a properly Christian ethic as it regards property.
The most remarkable thing I’ve learned (since the spoonfed version of the Plymouth Rock landing and settlement–never countervailed in later years of education) is an improved account of relations between the natives and the settlers and a better account of the historical setting.
The Pilgrims weren’t by any means the first–even in the New England locale. The coast had been visited by both Drake and Smith, and unnamed others engaged in fishing and trading, and was already named “New England” on some maps. A number of natives of the area had been taken captive to England and at least one had been returned after some years in which he acquired a tolerable command of English. One was named Squanto and another Samoset; one (I forget which) had been to England, the other (and yet others) were able to converse as the result of intercourse with trading parties. At their landing, the Pilgrims were actually greeted with the words “Welcome, Englishmen!”
There was also a fellow among them who called himself “Sam,” a native of the Caribbean, who’d been kidnapped as a child onto a Portugese ship to do chores, later becoming a regular sailor on a succession of both warships and merchantmen–picking up smatterings of languages—including English— in ports all over the world. He “jumped ship” somewhere on the southeastern coast and worked his way northward, finally remaining with the natives in the locale where the Pilgrims landed.
I’m thankful that we live in a comparatively free country (however far from perfect it may be), and a reality where economic truth and law cannot be violated by the exertion political will. The current financial crisis, while personally bad for many people, is proof of this, however poorly understood it may be by most people.
Furthermore, I consider this sufficient proof that there does indeed exist certain natural laws concerning social, political, and economic behavior, though our understanding of them is still limited.
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