Communist origin of American capitalism: cooperatives in the colonization of the West

Abstract

Analytical review on the Whig version of the American West colonization to clarify the complex process and to compare the experiences. The theoretical and methodological framework comes from the Austrian Economics and New-Institutional Approach, applied in the cross-discipline Religion & Economics. First part offers an overview in the bases of the cooperative movement in The United States of America. Second part is a systematization and comparison between the religious and ideological utopias in the frontier, as a kind of cooperative enterprises of intentional life in farms and workshop, to improve the commerce and the connections across the country. Finally, there is an analysis of efficiency and sustainability among the experiences. The review pretends to explain the colonial paradox of American utopias, because the last established, with more initial inversion, they were the first to fall. This study shapes the development of the Western Territories, from the Quaker´s Holy Experiment framework and its support for the utopias experiments in the expansion to Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. This review allows to study the American utopias and to compare them, with an explanation for the US colonial paradox. Also, it offers historical cases of anarcho-capitalism experiences.