User:Seb/notes
Potentially useful notes from diverses sources
On a related note, the Plymouth colony being communist/socialist is one of those persistent historical myths trotted out by libertarians/conservatives as a nice little moral homily about the evils of collectivism. It's also complete bullshit. The Plymouth colony was a corporate entity with shareholders. Many of whom were safe back home in Britain. The people undertaking the voyage were employees of this entity. The myth goes that the colonists starved because collective agriculture and socialism doesn't work. But they were supposed to be producing cash crops/prospecting for gold. They broke their charter and distributed the company's land for homesteading because they needed to survive and the whole business venture had proven to be a bust. [1]
This is golden. Transnational corporate entities have a huuuuge stake in limiting the powers of nation-states - that's neoliberalism in a nutshell! Even if a global state project was immediately achievable and feasible, global corps would push back against almost any iteration of a world state, because such a state would have the wherewithal to regulate on an unprecedented scale. Brilliant.