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Date Posted: 07:38:43 04/07/03 Mon
Author: Equity
Subject: Puritan Socialism

A few years ago I was listening to Alistair Cooke's "Letter From America". (Just to let you know this is a regular features broadcast by the BBC wherein the Eponymous Mr. Cooke gives a outline of events in the United States for a UK audience - with a brief explanation).

At that time he spoke about some of the early Puritan settlers in the New World who initially attempted communal ownership of the land as a feature of their society. These failed and it was only when they adapted and engaged in individual ownership that they were able to produce enough to support themselves.

Do you have any information on this period or books you can recommend?

My reason for asking and the point of this post is that if there ever were a time for socialism to succeed it would be this one.

(I am of the belief that the participants were dedicated - believing that they were doing God's will the levels of labour would be high and being puritans they would be unlikely to squander the gains on 'worldly pursuits'. Also they had a high level of capital injection with the availability of land and other resources. Likewise any regime or opinion which was opposed to their thinking was many thousands of miles away so they would have little worries on that score. The indigenous population appear to have been ambivalent, even helpful, to the settlement and even if hostile it could be argued that the occasional Amerindian raid would have the effect of uniting the settlers. The only problem might be that of a lack of what is termed infra-structure so that would need investigating!)

And yet despite all that, the experiment failed. Interesting!

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