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Winstanley & The Diggers

The Spirtual and Political Story
 of a Seventeenth Century Communist Movement

By David Spritzler

[newdemocracyworld.org]
 

This paper tells the story of the seventeenth century British theological and political philosopher Gerrard Winstanley, and the egalitarian community with which he attempted to change the world. By telling Winstanley's story, I hope to show that resistance to the Hobbesian ideas that rule our lives today is as old as those ideas themselves. In his introduction to Thomas Hobbes's most well known work, Leviathan, Crawford Brough Macpherson asks "Why, in the second half of the twentieth century, do we still read Hobbes, who wrote three centuries ago?" I might pose the related question: Why, in the second half of the twentieth century, do we not read Winstanley, who was by all accounts at least as brilliant as his contemporary, Hobbes? My question, I must admit, is a rhetorical one. The answer is that it is Hobbes, not Winstanley whose views became the basis of our society.

That history is written by the victors is an almost entirely accurate truism (as Winstanley demonstrates, the victors are not always the only ones capable of recording the events of their time.) But, the degree to which different versions of history are emphasized lies entirely within the control of those who find themselves in power after these events are concluded. Such is the case with the respective representation today of Winstanley and Hobbes.

Hobbes's basic assumption, upon which he bases the entirety of his political views, is that men are necessarily locked into a struggle for power over one another:

This assumption is also the basis of the most powerful political forces at work in the world today. Both modern capitalism, and modern communism maintain that it is necessary for a paternalistic government to control the populace, to protect it from its self. Indeed this assumption has been at the heart of public policy in the Western world and its dominion as far back as Hobbes's time.

And so, it is not surprising that it is Hobbes who is still widely read in the twentieth century, and not Winstanley. For the world of the twentieth century is a world in which those in power base their policies upon Hobbes's basic assumptions that good and bad are subjective, and that humans' ability to control their desires is non-existent; not Winstanley's conviction that there is an objectively good force inherent in every person, and that this force will ultimately prevail over selfishness. Thus, it makes perfect sense that the expression of conflicting views should be kept at a minimum. It is not even necessary to believe in a covert conspiracy; those responsible have no reason to cover their trails. After all, Hobbes's assumption is considered by them to be as unquestionable as his contemporary, Galileo's discovery that all objects fall at the same rate. Any who disagree are branded idealists, and informed that they are ignorant of the true nature of people, and the true nature of the world. History is painted in Hobbesian terms, and thus there is never a shortage of historical examples to support the Hobbesian's claim.

My main interest in Winstanley is that he, and many of his contemporaries, are representative of a great number of historical examples that defy this dominant paradigm. Yet (or perhaps, thus,) Winstanley's views are consistently glossed over by historians. If we read on in Macphereson's introduction, we learn that: "As soon as [Hobbes] had demonstrated the need for a single sovereign power, no one, from the Levellers, to Harrington, to Locke, disputed it. All they disputed was whether it need be a self perpetuating sovereign body." This, as we shall see, is simply not true: Winstanley disputed the right of any person to rule another at the same time that Hobbes claimed it was necessary for the survival of humanity.

And so, it soon becomes apparent that Winstanley is also representative of the countless resistors of oppression whose stories and opinions have been suppressed. Lisa Lowe comments that the emphasized version of history is, "as [Walter] Benjamin suggests, a narrative that has 'empathy with the victor,'…" If this is so, she writes, then "the material memory of the unvictorious is not simply repressed by that narrative," but it returns to "pressure and restructure" the very systems that seek to repress it. (Lowe 127-127) By offering an alternative narrative, one which illuminates "the material memory of the unvictorious," I hope to aid this memory's return, and thus demonstrate that the powers that rule today have been challenged since their very beginnings. Without knowledge of Winstanley's struggle, and many others, it may seem that we as people struggling against oppression today are isolated. Oppressive elites, ruling on the basis of Hobbes's assumptions control much of what we see of the world. This paper emphasizes a point of view that runs contrary to the views emphasized by these elites, and should thus help to level, so to speak, the score between them and the rest of us, Winstanley included, who do not believe that humans can not help but do each other harm.

The Diggers' story is important because it shows us that despite vastly different worldviews, despite the fact that it was a totally different time, oppression is always wrong, and gets the same sort of reactions. Hobbes is wrong, Winstanley & Freire are right.

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