EKIP– Expert Club for Economics and Politics A Different Opinion
Every year at this time, schoolchildren across America are taught the official story of Thanksgiving. Newspapers, radio, television, and magazines devote a huge amount of time and space to the holiday. It's all quite colorful and fascinating.
But it's also quite misleading. The official story has nothing to do with what really happened. It's just a fairy tale, a whitewashed and sugarcoated collection of half-truths that distract from the true meaning of Thanksgiving.
The official story tells of the Pilgrims who boarded the Mayflower, came to America, and founded the Plymouth Colony in the winter of 1620-21. The first winter was harsh, and half of the settlers died. However, the survivors were hardworking and persistent, and learned new farming techniques from the Indians. The harvest in 1621 was bountiful. The Pilgrims held a feast and gave thanks to God. They were grateful for the new, wonderful and rich land that he had given them.
According to the story taught in schools, the Pilgrims lived a more or less happy life, repeating the first Thanksgiving every year. Other early colonies also struggled at first, but soon began to prosper and adopted the annual tradition of giving thanks for this prosperous new land called America.
The problem with this official story is that neither the harvest in 1621 was bountiful, nor were the settlers hardworking or persistent. The following year, 1622, was a year of famine, and many of the settlers were lazy thieves.
In his History of Plymouth Plantation, the colony’s governor, William Bradford, recounts that the settlers starved for years because they refused to work in the fields. Instead, they preferred to steal food. He describes the colony as being rife with “corruption” and “confusion and discontent.” Harvests were poor because “much was stolen both by day and night, and even when the produce was scarcely fit to eat.”
During the harvest feasts of 1621 and 1622, “everyone had their stomachs filled,” but only briefly. The prevailing reality of those years was not one of abundance, as the official history claims. It was one of famine and death. The first Thanksgiving was not so much a celebration as the last meal of a doomed people.
However, in the years that followed, something changed. The harvest of 1623 was different. Suddenly, “instead of famine, God now gave them plenty,” Bradford wrote, “and the mood was changed to joy coming from the hearts of the people, for which they blessed him.” He continued, “all general famine left them after that day.” In fact, so much food was produced by the settlers in 1624 that they even began to export corn.
What happened? Bradford writes that after the poor harvest of 1622, “they began to think how to get as much corn as possible, in order to get a better harvest.” Thus, they began to question their then-existing form of economic organization.
It required that “all profits and benefits derived from trade, traffic, transportation, labor, fishing, or any other means” be collected in the common storehouses of the colony, and that “all persons who are part of the colony shall receive meat, clothing, and all provisions from the common stock.” A person was to contribute all that he could to the common resources, and to take only what he needed.
This situation of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” was an early form of socialism, and it was the reason the Pilgrims starved. Bradford writes that “young men who were able and fit for work” complained that they were forced to “use their time and labor to work for other people’s wives and children.” Moreover, “the strong, or men in general, had no greater say in the distribution of provisions and clothing than the weak.” Because of this, the young and strong refused to work, and the total amount of food produced was never enough.
To remedy this situation, Bradford abolished socialism in 1623. He gave each household a plot of land and told them they could keep what they produced or trade it if they chose. In other words, he replaced socialism with a free market, and that was the end of the famine.
Many early settler groups established socialist states, all with the same terrible results. At Jamestown, founded in 1607, of every shipload of settlers that arrived, fewer than half survived the first 12 months in America. Most of the work was done by only about a fifth of the people, and the remaining four-fifths chose to be parasites. In the winter of 1609-10, called the “Starving Time,” the population plummeted from 500 to 60. The economic system in the Jamestown colony was then changed to a free market, and the results were just as dramatic as those in Plymouth. In 1614, the colony’s secretary, Ralph Hamor, wrote that after the change there was “an abundance of food, which every man could easily provide for himself by his own trade.” He says that when the socialist system prevailed, “we got less corn from the work of 30 men than three men now produce for themselves.”
Before the establishment of the free market, the settlers had nothing to be thankful for. They were in the same situation as the Ethiopians are today, and for the same reasons. After the market was freed, the abundance that resulted was so great that annual Thanksgiving celebrations became popular throughout the colonies, and in 1863 the celebration became a national holiday.
So, the true meaning of Thanksgiving, erased from official history, is: socialism doesn't work. The only source of abundance is the free market.
Translation: Stefan Chankov
Editor: Daniel Vassilev
You can read the original text here.
After the market was freed, the resulting abundance was so great that annual Thanksgiving celebrations became popular throughout the colonies, and in 1863 the celebration became a national holiday.
A quick note on the above quote. I don't think any reasonable person would have called the US a "colony" in 1863. In fact, that year was the height of a civil war, which would give a little more context to why Lincoln was looking to suck up some unifying symbol to enforce the propaganda idea of a single nation. 🙂