Early American Experiment

True, the Pilgrim Fathers did not call what they did by the ugly name of violence. But, as has been demon strated, this is what the law is. The Pilgrim Fathers applied the law. They attempted to effect communalization by force. Every Pilgrim, regardless of how little or how much he produced, was required to deliver the fruits of his labor to a communal or community storehouse. He was 9 permitted to withdraw the stores in accordance with "need," not the individual Pilgrim's idea of need but the law's decree of his need. These Pilgrims put into effect, not by charity or the goodness of their hearts, a principle later stated by St. Simon, and still later held up as an ideal by Karl Marx: "... from each according to ability; to each according to need."* They socialized the fruits of their labor. There was a common ownership of the means of production - communalization by force. They were com munists in the term's purest form. They had chosen to live in accordance with the principle of violence.