Collective property ownership failed twice in the early 17th century in a fledgling America because of basic human nature.
“I think the reality is for centuries we treated property as an individualized good and not a collective good,“ wrote one of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s new housing appointees, Cea Weaver, “and in transitioning to treating it as a collective good and towards a model of shared equity will require that we think about it differently, and it will mean that families—especially white families but some POC families who are homeowners–are gonna have a different relation to property than the one we have.
” This was one of many social media posts–since deleted by Weaver—that propelled Mamdani to back his new hire against fierce backlash. But what Mamdani and Weaver–and Democrat socialists like them–fail to note is this: America experimented with collective property ownership twice in the early 17th century, and both experiments failed. And they failed for the very same reason it will fail today: human nature itself. America’s first English settlers in 1607, in Jamestown, treated land the way Weaver wished: as a collective asset. Moreover, each settler was guaranteed an equal share of the common output. Long before the modern progressive notion of equity, these settlers gave the idea of shared land and shared yields the old college try. What, by God, could possibly go wrong? New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks during his public inauguration ceremony on January 1, 2026. “Plenty,” wrote Jon Sanders of the John Locke Foundation. “Jamestown’s socialism didn’t give rise to a happy community of families pulling together for the greater good; instead, it produced a shocking laziness even as people starved.” In his 1993 Yale Law Journal article “Property in Land,” professor Robert Ellickson wrote about the impact of community property on America’s early European settlers. “During Jamestown's early years, the colonists suffered horrendously from starvation, tribal raids, and diseases,” he wrote. “Sixty-five percent of the 108 members of the initial party died within the first year, 81. During the winter of 1609, the most severe period of starvation, the colony's population dropped from 500 to 60.” The hallmark of the Jamestown colony, Ellickson noted, became idleness. “To the puzzlement of historians, the starving settlers shirked from catching fish and growing food,” he added. “The most enduring image of Jamestown dates from May 1611, when Sir Thomas Dale found the inhabitants at ‘their daily and usual work, bowling in the streets.’” It's quite an image. And quite a statement about human nature. But what happened next in Jamestown created different outcomes and images–as three-acre plots of land were assigned to the settlers. Thanks to that decision, productivity, according to Captain John Smith, shot up sevenfold. “Agricultural productivity unquestionably improved at Jamestown as lands were privatized,” Ellickson wrote. “By around 1620, farmers were energetically growing tobacco, a profitable export crop. Jamestown continued to be severely plagued by disease and Indian troubles, but no longer by laziness.” Ellickson wasn’t finished. “In the 370 years since Jamestown residents first embraced the private farm, they have never reverted to collective crop-growing.” The reason for the failure of community property seem obvious in retrospect: When people share the land, they also share an incentive not to work, explained Sanders. “Nobody had any ownership in work, but each had ownership in leisure. Going from socialism to private property, Jamestown saw its people transform from starvelings lazing away in the streets to well-fed entrepreneurs “energetically” growing profitable crops,” Sanders concluded. Just a few years after Jamestown’s failed experiment, the community property model was duplicated by the settlers at Plymouth, Massachusetts. “They wanted to erect a New Jerusalem in the new world that would be built on a new foundation of communal sharing and social altruism,” according to Richard Ebeling, professor of ethics and free enterprise leadership at The Citadel. “Their ideal was the communism found in Plato’s Republic. All would work and share in common, knowing neither private property nor self-interested acquisitiveness.” What resulted, Ebeling explained, was quite similar to Jamestown. “The less industrious members of the colony came late to their work in the fields and were slow and easy in their labors,” Ebeling said. “Knowing that they and their families were to receive an equal share of whatever the group produced, they saw little reason to be more diligent in their efforts. The harder working among the colonists became resentful that their efforts would be redistributed to their more malingering neighbors. Soon they, too, were coming late to work and were less energetic in the fields.” What happened next was no surprise: crops were sparse and resentment plentiful. “Realizing that another season like those that had just passed would mean the extinction of the entire community,” Ebeling explained, “the elders of the colony decided to try something radically different: the introduction of private property and the right of the individual families to keep the fruits of their own labor.” Governor William Bradford had this to say about the results of the move from communal to private property: “This had a very good success; for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted then otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field and took their little ones with them to set corn, which before would allege weakness, and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.” Bradford was just getting started: “Instead of famine, now God gave them plenty, and the face of things was changed, to the rejoicing of the hearts of many, for which they blessed God. And the effect of their planting was well seen, for all had, one way or other, pretty well to bring the year about, and some of the abler sort and more industrious had to spare, and sell to others, so as any general want or famine hath not been amongst them since to this day.” Ebeling noted: “Hard experience had taught the Plymouth colonists the fallacy in the ideas that since the time of the ancient Greeks–including Plato—had promised paradise through collectivism rather than individualism.” Bradford said it best: “The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years, and that amongst the Godly and sober men, may well convince of the vanity and conceit of Plato’s and other ancients—that the taking away of property, and bringing into a common wealth, would make them happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God. For this community was found to breed confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort.” If Bradford and Smith were alive today, they’d give Mamdani and Co.–and Democrat socialists who abhor private property–an earful about their own experiences. And remind this new group of utopians about their own failed experiments in Jamestown and Plymouth. Their own hard lessons learned from community ownership of property. And the hard lessons learned about human nature itself.
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