When the American Colonists Experimented with Socialism
Religion & Liberty Online

When the American Colonists Experimented with Socialism

Do you remember the story about colonial Americans experimenting with socialism? Probably not. It’s a tale that rarely finds its way into the textbooks of high school and college students. Indeed, I had been out of school nearly 20 years when I first heard about it.

If your not familiar with this part of American history, this short video by Larry Schweikart will fill you in on explains what happened when the early settlers who arrived at Plymouth and Jamestown in the early 1600s experimented with socialist communes. (Spoiler alert: It didn’t work out.)

Joe Carter

Joe Carter is a Senior Editor at the Acton Institute. Joe also serves as an editor at the The Gospel Coalition, a communications specialist for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, and as an adjunct professor of journalism at Patrick Henry College. He is the editor of the NIV Lifehacks Bible and co-author of How to Argue like Jesus: Learning Persuasion from History's Greatest Communicator (Crossway).