- 24 Mar 2009 16:39
#1845738
by Red Star
The turmoil of the War of the Three Kingdoms that ensnared the British archipelago between 1642 and 1649, sometimes termed the English Revolution, was the natural breeding ground for millenarian sects. The short-lived revival of the “Free Spirit†groups that made up the extreme left wing of the republican movement – the Diggers and the Ranters – infused the newfound sense of individual rights with the economic security concerns of the grassroots medieval rebellions.
Unlike the Levellers (a group in the New Model Army) who were strictly constitutionalist and respected the right to private property, the Diggers called themselves the True Levellers in that they wanted economic as well as political equality – arguably one of the first articulations of communitarian theory. The spokesperson of the Diggers - Gerrard Winstanley – recognized that the State and private property were intimately linked when he stated that “there cannot be a universal liberty until the universal community is establishedâ€.
The time of the English Civil War seemed ripe with opportunities. Not only were the established State and Church principles being turned upside down, but there was also a chance to destroy the Protestant ethic with its heavy emphasis on Ascetism and work. The preceding hundred years had seen the rise of the number of “vagrantsâ€, “masterless men†and other “bandits†who roamed the countryside calling for the abolition of masters. There was even an inkling of sexual liberation in the husbandless women who asserted they could kiss who they liked. Romanticized by Brome in his The Joviall Crew (1641), these forest squatters had an anarchist ring to them:
The only freemen of a common-wealth
Free above scot-free; that observe no law,
Obey no governor, use no religion,
But what they draw from their own ancient custom
Or constitute themselves
The result of the demographic explosion since the mid-sixteenth century that had increased the population and prices but driven real wages down, these men were the underclass that made such experiments possible.
The first commune was set up on wasteland on St. George’s Hill (they called it George’s Hill as they recognized no saints) in Surrey in April 1649. In their manifesto The True Levellers’ Standard Advanced they proclaimed that “We may work in righteousness and lay the foundation of making the earth a common treasury for all.†Despite their peaceful work, they were opposed by everyone including local husbandmen with tools taken away and seedlings trampled on. They were summoned before General Fairfax for an explanation. Cromwell was right to see a challenge to his totalitarian rule in this agrarian communist experiment. Winstanley had already warned that “All men have stood for freedom…for freedom is the man that will turn the world upside down, therefore no wonder he hath enemies.†The attack on property and the state was well articulated in his A Delcaration from the Poor Oppressed People of England: "The power of enclosing land and owning property was brought into the creation by your ancestors by the sword; which first did murder their fellow creatures, men, and after plunder or steal away their land, and left this land successively to you, their children. And therefore, though you did not kill or thieve, yet you hold that cursed thing in your hand by the power of the sword; and so you justify the wicked deeds of your fathers, and that sin of your fathers shall be visited upon the head of you and your children to the third and fourth generation, and longer too, till your bloody and thieving power be rooted out of the land.†The church and state would become superfluous once private property had been destroyed – a striking similarity can be seen here between his ideas and that of Marxists.
The Diggers were a non-conformist, dissenting group and happily combined a myth of an idealized Saxon world before the Norman Yoke with a vision of the Garden of Eden. As most radicals in their day, they too framed their social aspirations in religious language and upheld Christ as a symbol of liberty: “True freedom lies in the community in spirit and community in the earthly treasury, and this is Christ the true man-child spread abroad in the creation, restoring all things into himself.†Their anarchist beliefs were also expressed in this – external government was no longer necessary if people govern themselves according to their God-given reason. In many ways this appeal to the inner workings of man (for the Diggers believed in an impersonal God who dwelled in all things) as a basis for a true democratic society is the precursor of Kropotkin’s idea where God is replaced by evolutionary mutual aid, or Landauer’s assertion that the state is no more than an inner condition and a relation between people. It is thus not mistaken to see the Diggers as early anarchists as well as communists or just religious radicals.
The failure of the Diggers’ experiment was a result of their small numbers and the atmosphere at the time, coming at the profoundly turbulent time following Charles I’s execution. Parliamentary forces and the army were on their way to a fallout and any radical experiments from below were unwelcome in the uncertain period at the end of the war in England – but with war in Ireland and Scotland already on the way. However, this does not detract from their exciting example of agrarian communism and religious radicalism, traits of which can be seen in both communism and anarchism of both the collectivist and Christian kind.
Further Reading: Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism, Peter Marshall, Harper Perennial 1993 ed, pp. 96-108
Winstanley and the Diggers, Andrew Bradstock (ed), Frank Class 2000 ed
The turmoil of the War of the Three Kingdoms that ensnared the British archipelago between 1642 and 1649, sometimes termed the English Revolution, was the natural breeding ground for millenarian sects. The short-lived revival of the “Free Spirit†groups that made up the extreme left wing of the republican movement – the Diggers and the Ranters – infused the newfound sense of individual rights with the economic security concerns of the grassroots medieval rebellions.
Unlike the Levellers (a group in the New Model Army) who were strictly constitutionalist and respected the right to private property, the Diggers called themselves the True Levellers in that they wanted economic as well as political equality – arguably one of the first articulations of communitarian theory. The spokesperson of the Diggers - Gerrard Winstanley – recognized that the State and private property were intimately linked when he stated that “there cannot be a universal liberty until the universal community is establishedâ€.
The time of the English Civil War seemed ripe with opportunities. Not only were the established State and Church principles being turned upside down, but there was also a chance to destroy the Protestant ethic with its heavy emphasis on Ascetism and work. The preceding hundred years had seen the rise of the number of “vagrantsâ€, “masterless men†and other “bandits†who roamed the countryside calling for the abolition of masters. There was even an inkling of sexual liberation in the husbandless women who asserted they could kiss who they liked. Romanticized by Brome in his The Joviall Crew (1641), these forest squatters had an anarchist ring to them:
The only freemen of a common-wealth
Free above scot-free; that observe no law,
Obey no governor, use no religion,
But what they draw from their own ancient custom
Or constitute themselves
The result of the demographic explosion since the mid-sixteenth century that had increased the population and prices but driven real wages down, these men were the underclass that made such experiments possible.
The first commune was set up on wasteland on St. George’s Hill (they called it George’s Hill as they recognized no saints) in Surrey in April 1649. In their manifesto The True Levellers’ Standard Advanced they proclaimed that “We may work in righteousness and lay the foundation of making the earth a common treasury for all.†Despite their peaceful work, they were opposed by everyone including local husbandmen with tools taken away and seedlings trampled on. They were summoned before General Fairfax for an explanation. Cromwell was right to see a challenge to his totalitarian rule in this agrarian communist experiment. Winstanley had already warned that “All men have stood for freedom…for freedom is the man that will turn the world upside down, therefore no wonder he hath enemies.†The attack on property and the state was well articulated in his A Delcaration from the Poor Oppressed People of England: "The power of enclosing land and owning property was brought into the creation by your ancestors by the sword; which first did murder their fellow creatures, men, and after plunder or steal away their land, and left this land successively to you, their children. And therefore, though you did not kill or thieve, yet you hold that cursed thing in your hand by the power of the sword; and so you justify the wicked deeds of your fathers, and that sin of your fathers shall be visited upon the head of you and your children to the third and fourth generation, and longer too, till your bloody and thieving power be rooted out of the land.†The church and state would become superfluous once private property had been destroyed – a striking similarity can be seen here between his ideas and that of Marxists.
The Diggers were a non-conformist, dissenting group and happily combined a myth of an idealized Saxon world before the Norman Yoke with a vision of the Garden of Eden. As most radicals in their day, they too framed their social aspirations in religious language and upheld Christ as a symbol of liberty: “True freedom lies in the community in spirit and community in the earthly treasury, and this is Christ the true man-child spread abroad in the creation, restoring all things into himself.†Their anarchist beliefs were also expressed in this – external government was no longer necessary if people govern themselves according to their God-given reason. In many ways this appeal to the inner workings of man (for the Diggers believed in an impersonal God who dwelled in all things) as a basis for a true democratic society is the precursor of Kropotkin’s idea where God is replaced by evolutionary mutual aid, or Landauer’s assertion that the state is no more than an inner condition and a relation between people. It is thus not mistaken to see the Diggers as early anarchists as well as communists or just religious radicals.
The failure of the Diggers’ experiment was a result of their small numbers and the atmosphere at the time, coming at the profoundly turbulent time following Charles I’s execution. Parliamentary forces and the army were on their way to a fallout and any radical experiments from below were unwelcome in the uncertain period at the end of the war in England – but with war in Ireland and Scotland already on the way. However, this does not detract from their exciting example of agrarian communism and religious radicalism, traits of which can be seen in both communism and anarchism of both the collectivist and Christian kind.
Further Reading: Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism, Peter Marshall, Harper Perennial 1993 ed, pp. 96-108
Winstanley and the Diggers, Andrew Bradstock (ed), Frank Class 2000 ed
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