the Plymouth Colony was an experiment in mercantilism, not socialism

Conservatives are desperate to prove that socialism can't work, so they seize on anything that might be interpreted as a socialist failure. A favorite example is the Plymouth Colony.

PointySextant answers that at Pilgrims were socialists - snopes.com:

The land of the Plymouth Colony was not commonly held by some nebulous public system but by a joint stock system between a group of investors and the Crown, with the Crowns major investment being a royal writ for the territory claimed by the...