The first communist was George Washington, since he did lots of stuff and communism is doing stuff
I'm :stuff:
Joseph Weydemeyer was a Prussian officer who was a friend of Marx. He served in the American Civil War and kept a correspondence with Marx. He and his son Otto helped create the first english translations and american printings of much of Marx and Engel's works. Otto actually would become a labor organizer in Pittsburgh and help destroy the first Marxist party here, the workingmens party, because it literally right away went lib electoralism and ignored their base of German and Bohemian only speakers in PA and NJ. https://archive.org/details/HistoryWorkingmensPartyUS/page/n17/mode/2up?q=pittsburgh great book on the matter by iirc the nephew of Eric Foner.
But yeah I think Joseph is the best bet, and the book covers a lot of those earliest figures and orgs
thomas paine was some kinda proto socialist. he was a lib of course but if he had been born like half a century later he woulda liked that communism shit as a better formulation of his radical ideas. that's my ted talk for today thank you all.
I'll start out with the full disclosure that I am not the "indigenous people understander," but I have heard some interviews where indigenous people speak with distain about how some leftists point to them as an example of Communism in practice (A Navajo if I remember correctly). That indigenous people were practising their own thing which predated the concept of Communism by centuries (if not millennia) and it is a bit colonizey to slap a label from modern european philosophy on it in retrospect.
There is probably a diversity of views about it. "Indigenous people" itself is a very reductive word which basically boils down to "everyone who doesn't fit into the category of settlers." But either way, it is a bit reductive to call them Communists just because they were a communal society.
Hell the Zapatistas dislike people trying to assign established European terminology to them and their leftism, and they are open communists
No worries, I wasn't trying to drag you or anything. Just expanding on your post :)
There was a town, Zoar, Ohio, which was founded in 1817 on utopian communal principles. From Wikipedia:
Zoar was founded by German religious dissenters called the Society of Separatists of Zoar in 1817. It was named after the Biblical village to which Lot and his family escaped from Sodom. It was a communal society: all property was communally owned, and the farms, shops, and factories were managed by regularly elected trustees.
I personally don’t know that much about it, and don’t feel super comfortable saying it absolutely was communist or socialist. But it sounds like the founders were some sort of utopian socialists and that it was the basis for how they organized themselves. [edit: reading further, they weren’t ideologically socialist at the start. As an insular religious community sorta similar to Quakers that wasn’t welcomed elsewhere, they realized that if poorer settlers couldn’t afford the land they’d bought, the community would eventually dissipate; so they decided to pool resources]
I haven’t read this page, which is an excerpt from the book The Communistic Societies of the United States by Charles Nordhoff, written in 1875. No clue about the author or what kind of axe he may or may not be grinding with that title (trying to make them sound cooler than they were, that sort of thing). The whole book was easy to find as a pdf just on DuckDuckGo but it’s typeset like shit
Absolutely! I know someone else was interested when I brought this up before, but I’m finally taking the chance to actually learn a bit more about it now that I’m sharing in the thread.
I was originally going to reply to my comment with what follows, but I’ll just reply to you:
Reading the Zoar section of the book is pretty cool. Using a spoiler tag for big excerpts:
big excerpts (purely quoting from the book, bolding parts I find particularly interesting)
Subject to the above declaration they have a formal constitution, which divides the members into two classes, the novitiates and the full associates. The former are required to serve at least one year before admission to the second class, and this is exacted even of their own children, if on attaining majority they wish to enter the society.
The members of the first or probationary class do not give up their property. They sign an agreement, "for the furtherance of their spiritual and temporal welfare and happiness," in which they "bind themselves to labor, obey, and execute all the orders of the trustees and their successors," and to "use all their industry and skill in behalf of the exclusive benefit of the said Separatist Society of Zoar;" and to put their minor children under the exclusive guardianship and care of the trustees.
The trustees on their part, and for the society, agree to secure to the signers of these articles "board and clothing free of cost, the clothing to consist of at any time no less than two suits, including the clothes brought by the said party of the first part to this society." Also medical attendance and nursing in case of sickness. "Good moral conduct, such as is enjoined by the strict observance of the principles of Holy Writ," is also promised by both parties; and it is stipulated that "no extra supplies shall be asked or allowed, neither in meat, drink, clothing, nor dwelling (cases of sickness excepted); but such, if any can be allowed to exist, may and shall be obtained [by the neophytes] through means of their own, and never out of the common fund."
All money in possession of the probationer must be deposited with the society when he signs the agreement; for it a receipt is given, making the deposit payable to him on his demand, without interest.
Finally, it is agreed that all disputes shall be settled by arbitration alone, and within the society.
[The Covenant they sign]:
We, the subscribers, members of the Society of Separatists of the second class, declare hereby that we give all our property, of every kind, not only what we already possess, but what we may hereafter come into possession of by inheritance, gift, or otherwise, real and personal, and all rights, titles, and expectations whatever, both for ourselves and our heirs, to the said society forever, to be and remain, not only during our lives, but after our deaths, the exclusive property of the society. Also we promise and bind ourselves to obey all the commands and orders of the trustees and their subordinates, with the utmost zeal and diligence, without opposition or grumbling; and to devote all our strength, good-will, diligence, and skill, during our whole lives, to the common service of the society and for the satisfaction of its trustees. Also we consign in a similar manner our children, so long as they are minors, to the charge of the trustees, giving these the same rights and powers over them as though they had been formally indentured to them under the laws of the state."
[...]
Finally, there is a formal CONSTITUTION, which prescribes the order of administration; and which also is signed by all the members. According to this instrument, all officers are to be elected by the whole society, the women voting as well as the men. All elections are to be by ballot, and by the majority vote; and they are to be held on the second Tuesday in May. The society is to elect annually one trustee and one member of the standing committee or council, once in four years a cashier, and an agent whenever a vacancy occurs or is made. The time and place of the election are to be made public twenty days beforehand by the trustees, and four members are to be chosen at each election to be managers and judges at the next.
The trustees, three in number, are to serve three years, but may be indefinitely re-elected. They have unlimited power over all the temporalities of the society, but are bound to provide board, clothing, and dwelling for each member, "without respect of persons;" and to use all confided to their charge for the best interests of the society. They are to manage all its industries and affairs, and to prescribe to each member his work; "but in all they do they are to have the general consent of the society." They are to appoint subordinates and superintendents of the different industries; are to consult in difficult cases with the Standing Committee of Five, and are with its help to keep the peace among the members
(There’s probably more cool shit but this is super long so that’s enough for now. I didn’t quote any of their religious beliefs which included not serving in the military because good Christians don’t kill people)
[edit, can’t help myself]
They also upheld volcel-thought 👀
"Do you favor marriage?" I asked some of the older members, trustees, and managers. They answered "No;" but they exact no penalty nor inflict any disability upon those who choose to marry. "Marriage," I was told, "is on the whole unfavorable to community life. It is better to observe the celibate life. But it is not, in our experience, fatally adverse. It only makes more trouble; and in either case, whether a community permit or forbid marriage, it may lose members."
Would we consider the french revolution communist? America and France were very close both before and after their respective revolutions, and I wouldn't know of any specific character, but I'd bet there were some french revolutionaries that settled down in America.
I agree completely, but knowing that the French Revolution laid the foundations for many other radical revolutions over the next few centuries, and considering there have been a few communist movements that were racist/sexist/not as radical as others, I wasn't sure if we wanted to consider them a form of proto-communism.
I still see it as plausible that some french folk came to America post revolution and kept their ideas of "equality," solidarity, and beheading bourgeoisie. But like you said, it was all well before Marx.
