This paper will look at the shifting receptions of the stories of the early Christians holding "all things in common" (Acts 2.44-45 and 4.32-35), particularly among English radical movements that envisioned a dramatic alternative to the existing order of things. After a brief discussion of the texts from the book of Acts, the majority of the paper will examine how and why interpretations shifted from medieval and feudal settings to challenges to capitalism. As this suggests, this analysis will not simply be a listing of differences between interpretations. Instead, this paper will ground and connect changing receptions in their economic, social, and political contexts. This will involve showing how understandings in medieval revolts and among medieval lower clergy (and their audiences) were developed and then updated and transformed over the centuries in light of new material concerns. Selected examples of the old informing and being transformed by the new will include interpretations of Acts 2.44-45 and 4.32-35 from the English uprising of 1381 (popularly known as the Peasants' Revolt), the English Revolution, the emergence of the working class, William Morris and early English socialism, twentieth-century debates about nationalisation and welfare, and the (apparent) return of socialism in political discourse in the twenty-first century. As we proceed, this paper will also note how a range of related ideas and other biblical texts inform the history of interpretation of "all things in common," including issues of work, ethnicity, gender, democracy, communality, and the emergent tensions between secularisation and an unambiguously religious heritage.