“From each according to his ability to each according to his need” is the classic operating manual for socialism. In fact the Pilgrims signed on to the Mayflour Compact etc. under ship’s papers tbat spelled that out and became Plymouth’s Charter.This is also a pretty close description of what’s called altruism.Unfortunately, there’s a fatal flaw, a key to human nature missing from that operating system. Here are some clues – – –When the boys are buying drinks at the pub, what happens when Donald never buys a round?What happens when Natalie never takes a turn driving the kids to Soccer practice?If you think through the pub and the soccer examples above, you won’t be too surprised at what happened to the Pilgrims – – –Perhaps the most intriguing examples of spectacular socialist failures were the Pilgrims who first settled on the east coast of North America during the European invasion.In his ‘History of Plymouth Plantation,‘ the governor of the colony, William Bradford, reported that the colonists went hungry for years, because they refused to work in the fields. …This “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” was an early form of socialism, and it is why the Pilgrims were starving. Bradford writes that “young men that are most able and fit for labor and service” complained about being forced to “spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children.” Also, “the strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and clothes, than he that was weak.” So the young and strong refused to work and the total amount of food produced was never adequate.Many early groups of colonists set up socialist states, all with the same terrible results. At Jamestown, established in 1607, out of every shipload of settlers that arrived, less than half would survive their first twelve months in America. Most of the work was being done by only one-fifth of the men … In the winter of 1609-10, called “The Starving Time,” the population fell from five hundred to sixty.Here’s a grisly example of what that was like:Smithsonian: Settlers in Jamestown Colony Resorted to Cannibalism: New archaeological evidence and forensic analysis reveals that starving colonists ate a 14-year-old girl’s brain in desperation. –Starving Settlers in Jamestown Colony Resorted to Cannibalism, Joseph Stromberg, smithsonianmag.com, April 30, 2013 [1]In the harvest feasts of 1621 and 1622, “all had their hungry bellies filled,” but only briefly. The prevailing condition during those years was not the abundance the official story claims, it was famine and death. The first “Thanksgiving” was not so much a celebration as it was the last meal of condemned men.This starving situation was direct but unrecognized evidence of that missing understanding of human nature.One of the big mysteries in sociology etc. has been how altruism could have survived all the folks with needs who didn’t contribute. These folks were dubbed free-riders in the literature.In other words, how could altruists keep from being bled dry into extinction by free-riders like Donald and Natalie?The piece of human nature missing from leftist thinking is covered by one word. RECIPROCAL. As in RECIPROCAL Altruism.You do something for me, we both expect me to do something back.Nearly everyone likes the idea of strings-free gifts. Unfortunately, these are rare and it’s safest to assume it’s NOT strings-free until proven otherwise.Especially left-leaning folks resist accepting this.Luckily Mother Nature wasn’t handicapped by that flaw in leftist thinking.Since everyone is buying drinks, Donald is expected to reciprocate or else he’ll find himself drinking alone. Likewise, Natalie will be out of the soccer pool.Reciprocal is built into human nature. As a result, free-riders are mostly only a problem in leftist thinking. Mother automatically nips them in the bud.With this in mind, the starving Pilgrims situation had a simple fix. In 1623 Bradford abolished socialism. He gave each household a parcel of land and told them they could keep what they produced, or trade it away as they saw fit. In other words, he replaced socialism with a free market based on reciprocal trade and that was the end of famines.You can read Governor Bradford’s own account of the positive effects of de-socializing the previously starving Pilgrims here: Modern History Sourcebook: William Bradford: from History of Plymouth Plantation, c. 1650, Private and communal farming (1623)Then the Jamestown colony was converted to a free market and the results were every bit as dramatic as those at Plymouth. In 1614, Colony Secretary Ralph Hamor wrote that after the switch there was “plenty of food which every man by his own industry may easily and doth procure.” He said that when the socialist system had prevailed, “we reaped not so much corn from the labors of thirty men as three men have done for themselves now.” –Richard J. Maybury, The Great Thanksgiving Hoax In other words, they were producing ten times as much corn per person after ditching the socialist system, a system which, by its nature, catastrophically ignores reciprocation as tracked by our little automatic accounter-app.However, some dedicated socialists, committed to “from each according to his ability to each according to his need,” but missing the essential role of reciprocity — and fervently believing socialism is the only moral system — aren’t about to leave well enough alone. They insist on trying to make it work anyway.Missing reciprocity, in attempting to make socialism work anyway, even the best intentioned get more and more desperate in trying to force folks to produce “according to their ability” or at all, reciprocity be damned. Ultimately they end up totalitarian as, in desperation, they usually allow themselves to be taken over by the ~1% wiindigo/kunlangeta/psychopath controller contingent of humanity because of the mistaken idea state force can make things work.The first stop is “communism.” As with Jamestown and Plymouth, they try to force groups to act as united indivisible “community” auto-sharing economic entities.We end up with ~18 million Kulac farmers starved to death by Stalin’s implementation of socialist-economist E. A. Preobrazhensky’s theory of “Socialist Primitive Accumulation” in the early Soviet Union, 38 million dead from Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” famine in China, Pol Pot’s “killing fields” in Cambodia etc. — and today (2023 AD.) Cuba and North Korea are on the brink of starvation.Which brings us back to North America’s Thanksgiving and the spectacular socialist failures it marks.HERE for updates, additions, comments, and corrections.AND, “Like,” “Tweet,” and otherwise, pass this along!The post Why Socialism Always Becomes Totalitarian appeared first on LewRockwell.