Socialism Has Never Worked

No Work, No Eat & No Socialism at Jamestown or in America

 
You no doubt remember the name of John Smith and the colony at Jamestown from grade school history but what you might not remember is the important example of good governance and civic order the their legacy left for our nation. A legacy best descried in Smith’s paraphrase of the bible, “No work, no food.”

Jamestown was the first English colony in the United States and was run by the London Company which sent 105 men seeking fortune here in 1609. About half of those sent considered themselves “Gentlemen” and refused to labor feeling entitled by their class. They instead wanted to live off the toils of others who knew how to work with their hands. A perfect example of the Marx phrase, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” After their longer than expected journey to America and poor work ethic, the colonists quickly began to starve. Enter John Smith.

Smith embraced what is now known as a “no work, no eat policy” demanding all able bodied men collect as much food as he did each day or face banishment from the colony. His idea a paraphrase of the bible which states “Those unwilling to work will not get to eat.”

“Countrymen, the long experience of our late miseries, I hope is sufficient to persuade every one to a present correction of himself, and think not that either my pains, nor the [investors'] purses, will ever maintain you in idleness and sloth. I speak not this to you all, for diverse of you I know deserve both honor and reward, better than is yet here to be had: but the greater part must be more industrious, or starve, how ever you have been heretofore tolerated by the authorities of the Council, from that I have often commanded you. You see now that power rests wholly in myself: you must obey this now for a Law, that he that will not work shall not eat (except by sickness he be disabled) for the labors of thirty or forty honest and industrious men shall not be consumed to maintain an hundred and fifty idle loiterers. And though you presume the authority here is but a shadow, and that I dare not touch the lives of any but my own must answer it: the Letters patents shall each week be read to you, whose Contents will tell you the contrary. I would wish you therefore without contempt seek to observe these orders set down, for there are now no more Councilors to protect you, nor curb my endeavors. Therefore he that offends, let him assuredly expect his due punishment.” – John Smith

Smith’s actions saved the colony and brought order and discipline to a group of people who would otherwise have starved and possibly perished. More than that, his policy is a shining example of how the core principals of socialism, whenever tried, fail. When able bodied men don’t work and instead choose to live off the livelihood of others, all are brought down with them. No one expects those who are truly sick or disabled to produce the same as those who are able, yet our nation, like Jamestown before it, suffers from the malaise and indifference of those who otherwise should be producing in our society demanding to be fed from the labor of others because of a sense of entitlement.

Socialism and a culture of entitlement did not work in Jamestown and it is not working in our nation today. No doubt we will once again have no choice but to turn to the basic notion that sustained Jamestown and adopt the policy of no work, no eat.