The Peaceable Commonwealth of Gerrard Winstanley – Freedom, the Commons, and Spirit Reason
Short outline
INTRODUCTION
Criticism of Winstanley’s theology and politics – Winstanley as the epitome of the 17C revolutionary - Winstanley’s importance and contemporary relevance
BIOGRAPHY
Winstanley’s origins – the rejection of organised religion - puzzles in personality and politics - Winstanley as Quaker - evading attempts to pigeonhole
INFLUENCES
Winstanley’s influences – origins in a tradition of English radicalism
writing style - words in action - Winstanley’s place in radical literature - legacy as radical and writer
Winstanley’s religious roots - the theological underpinning of Winstanley’s thought
The relation of religion and politics in Winstanley’s writings – the Biblical roots of Winstanley’s communism
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Religious wars and reformation – the English religious sects
LIBERATION THEOLOGY – THE LAW BEYOND LEGALISM
Criticism of Winstanley’s theology
Winstanley and religious humanism - Winstanley in the tradition of religious radicalism
Winstanley and biblical authority - Winstanley’s freewheeling use of the Bible
unorthodox theology – pantheism and rationalism
the immanence of good and evil, heaven and hell
God and Reason – Heaven is not a place of glory beyond the skies - the humanising of God – Reason and agency and equality – there is no God or Devil without - God as Reason – the humanisation of good and evil – the power of the spirit within
transformation – Winstanley’s humanist millenarianism
the immanent and transcendent God – Winstanley as anticipating the deism and sensualism of the eighteenth century, but as retaining a transcendent God - the religious interpretation – transcendence as well as immanence
abolishing the kingdom of darkness - millenarian expectation - inner light but not a millenarian theology
Winstanley’s theology – the universalist doctrine beyond the elect - universalism - all saved by realisation of spirit over the letter – Winstanley as anti-elect - resurrection within
GOD/REASON/NATURE
God, Reason, Nature – the internal as against the external – the inner light - a spiritualized natural law – the experience of nature
criticism of the Divining Doctrine - reason, spirit, nature – the natural knowledge of creation
Winstanley and Spinoza - God as Reason against imagination - Winstanley and Blake on imagination and reason
EXPERIENTIAL AND EXPERIMENTAL KNOWLEDGE
praxis – the experimental knowledge of Christ
Winstanley’s anti-clericalism as entailing a social and political anti-elitism – against alien mediation – for the democratisation of knowledge, power and politics and against its professionalization - experience and experiment – praxis and agency – reason and spirit within - experimental knowledge
THE REPUBLIC OF HEAVEN
an action spirituality. An enabling dream – co-creation - inciting resurrection – internal vs external salvation - universalism – the republic vs the kingdom of heaven – beyond kingship on earth and in heaven –
pantheism beyond external forms - restitution of the common earth as true religion - earth as common store/treasury
THE FALL
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FALL
war against property and selfishness – The social fall and the two Adams - the fall – dependence on the objects of creation – the two Adams – historical and spiritual - private property and self-interestedness – and the rise of spirit Reason and the second Adam – beyond legalism - the fall and the covetous flesh - theology and economics
THE SOCIAL FALL
Social fall through the appropriation of the earth - private property and social war - private property as social fall - buying and selling - social division – freeing labour from the curse of exploitation - riches and poverty in the labour relation – the rich depend on labour of others
THE CRITIQUE OF ALIEN POWER
covetousness leads to kingly power - private property leads to authoritarian rule and domination – church and state – the Norman yoke - kingly government as swordly (based on force) – for law against the mediation of lawyers - the church - anticlericalism and experience – anti-elitism and anti-clericalism
BEYOND EXTERNAL MEDIATION AND RELIGIOSITY
mediation – the clash between external constraints and internal law - God and Reason – internal vs external – the critique of religious mediation (compare with Marx’s critique of religiosity)
RESTORATION AND REGENERATION
the new Law of Righteousness – silence – the need for fundamental change - inner and outer transformation – spiritual and social action - immanence – the power of life – the unity of spiritual and social activism
THE EARTHLY COMMONWEALTH
Winstanley’s ecology – earth as common treasury - the inner light and eco-centrism – immanentism as an internal creative unfolding
DIGGING AND COMMONING – THE COLLABORATIVE ETHIC
the Digger experiment - Winstanley’s inspiration – work together, eat bread together, declare to all abroad - the call to restore Eden -
praxis – collaboration as labouring together
origins of the Digger movement – the agricultural crisis - political revolution - land use and poverty and hunger –
digging as a practical and logical response to poverty - politics over millenarianism – the distinctiveness of Winstanley as response to social problems - digging as commoning – creative praxis and restoration of agency - the lost and alternative revolution - coincidence of changing circumstances and self - praxis as anti-elitism – agency of common people - practical idealism
DIGGING AND COMMONING – THE DIG
the abolition of private property and the extent of digging - Cobham digging as the tip of the iceberg - Winstanley as leader – persecution and misrepresentation - the move to Cobham
the Digger writings as an expression of libertarian communism - the Ranters
the end of the experiment – the collapse of the Digger experiment – Winstanley’s disappearance – the end of the digger commune and wage labour – the Diggers’ legacy
THE REPUBLIC OF EARTH
PRINCIPLES OF PUBLIC COMMUNITY AND LEGITIMATE AUTHORITY
Principles – self-assumed obligation and the universal law – the need to crack the problem of free-riding – politics and the logic of collective action - climate change and need for collective action
THE LAW OF FREEDOM
The architectonics of the Law of Freedom – ethical and institutional foundations – enjoyment of the earth – the critique of iniquitous social arrangements
The need to take the revolution further –uprooting kingly power
from religion to politics (?) - religious language and symbolism in The Law of Freedom – the religious dimension - spiritual regeneration beyond social and economic reformation
The appeal to Cromwell – overturning kingly power - continuing the revolution to abolish kingly power – the need for institutional reformation
CONSTITUTING POLITICAL ORDER
The Law of Freedom as a work of political order – beyond kingly power to self-assumed law, authority and obligation – principles and policies of political and social organisation – the rebuttal of objections – and the choice of kingly or democratic government
THE PRINCIPLES OF LEGITIMATE PUBLIC COMMUNITY
The nature of freedom – charges of authoritarianism – the conception of freedom (rational, collective, moral and libertarian) - true freedom as sharing the earth in common – the critique of kingly power and private property – the enjoyment of the earth in common
The everlasting law and the laws of the commonwealth – the ancient law - short and pithy laws - criticism of lawyers – law as the democratic constitution of authority
Organisational questions – details of the plan - Winstanley’s polity - the officers
The democratic constitution of authority – extending participatory structures, public spaces and democratic forms in politics - democratic participation
THE TRUE COMMONWEALTH
The true commonwealth – name and nature coinciding – the commonwealth as association through abolition of private property - beyond buying and selling to establish the conditions of the commonwealth - the restoration of natural equality – freeing trade from buying and selling – communism - common and private property – the economy of small-scale production - freely associated labour – democratic organisation – the commonwealth of just property – the satisfaction of needs – communism of distribution – cooperative wealth – the communist commonwealth – laws against buying and selling – laws against hire labour
pacifism - education - crime and punishment – the mail - anti-clericalism and the church – the position of women – patriarchy - marriage
conclusion on laws and principles of political order and governance - pacifism, resistance and force – universal law and love –Winstanley’s practical utopia - utopian programme for a feasible future? - the need for a politics of love and friendship -
WINSTANLEY’S LATER LIFE
Winstanley’s later life
IMPORTANCE AND LEGACY
Winstanley’s impact and influence – fellowship – Winstanley’s influence on Quakerism - Winstanley, Henry George and Karl Marx - George and land tax – the cooperative labour colony of John Bellers
contemporary relevance – radical political ecology – Winstanley as pioneer eco-socialist - commoning as an inspiration to today’s activists - possibilities for the true commonwealth, history and utopia – concluding thoughts
The longer outline:
The Peaceable Commonwealth of Gerrard Winstanley
Spirit Reason, Freedom, and the Commons
CH 1 INTRODUCTION
Criticism of Winstanley’s theology and politics – Winstanley as the epitome of the 17C revolutionary - Winstanley’s importance and contemporary relevance
[Winstanley's alternative reformation to modern rationalization and desolidarisation
[introduction of themes – ground critique of rationalization
as separation and disembodiment in transcendent norms –
Winstanley's 'Spirit Reason' avoids disenchantment.
Winstanley's internal critique of Weber's Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism]
[psychological and social critique – the inclusive society – kingdom within and without]
[integrating within and without in the political moment]
[intro – the earthly republic – a redemptive history which reappropriates power from the institutions of the social Fall – against rationalization and capitalist modernity] (Blake against the Satanic Mills – Blake's alien Urizen)
[overcoming abstraction via mediation in place and proximity and embodiment]
[intro – Digging as a communal praxis against notions of the elect – reclaiming the commons in both means and ends]
[Winstanley’s religiosity as of enduring worth]
[embodiment against institutional mediation - shared experience of life in a social body – creative praxis of agents against external bondage/alien control]
[embodiment – critique of pride as bondage –
metaphor of the chain in Williams
[rationalization - freedom within and without –
inner and outer relations reworking the Protestant ethic]
[metaphoric prose –
the power of Winstanley’s language to communicate]
[rationalization - Winstanley’s spirit within against the disenchantment of Hobbes and the Protestant Ethic] [Hobbes and conventionalism] (Rousseau against Hobbes)
[introduction of themes – ground critique of rationalization
as separation and disembodiment in transcendent norms –
Spirit Reason avoids disenchantment
[Hobbes and conventionalism – a depoliticisation]
[Winstanley vs Hobbes and alien power – beyond men as gods – Winstanley gives us a way past Hobbes and Marx]
[The contemporary relevance of Winstanley vs Hobbes]
[Law of Freedom as the embrace of worldly authority]
[The contemporary significance of Winstanley's commoning – reclaiming the Earth as a common treasury to be shared by all, not least the other beings and bodies of the more-than-human world]
BIOGRAPHY
Winstanley’s origins – the rejection of organised religion - puzzles in personality and politics - Winstanley as Quaker - evading attempts to pigeonhole
[biography – Winstanley's bankruptcy - Winstanley emerges as a writer – early writings]
INFLUENCES
Winstanley’s influences – origins in a tradition of English radicalism
writing style - words in action - Winstanley’s place in radical literature - legacy as radical and writer
Winstanley’s religious roots - the theological underpinning of Winstanley’s thought
The relation of religion and politics in Winstanley’s writings – the Biblical roots of Winstanley’s communism
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Religious wars and reformation – the English religious sects
LIBERATION THEOLOGY – THE LAW BEYOND LEGALISM
Criticism of Winstanley’s theology
Winstanley and religious humanism - Winstanley in the tradition of religious radicalism
Winstanley and biblical authority - Winstanley’s freewheeling use of the Bible
unorthodox theology – pantheism and rationalism
the immanence of good and evil, heaven and hell
God and Reason – Heaven is not a place of glory beyond the skies - the humanising of God – Reason and agency and equality – there is no God or Devil without - God as Reason – the humanisation of good and evil – the power of the spirit within
transformation – Winstanley’s humanist millenarianism
the immanent and transcendent God – Winstanley as anticipating the deism and sensualism of the eighteenth century, but as retaining a transcendent God - the religious interpretation – transcendence as well as immanence
abolishing the kingdom of darkness - millenarian expectation - inner light but not a millenarian theology
Winstanley’s theology – the universalist doctrine beyond the elect - universalism - all saved by realisation of spirit over the letter – Winstanley as anti-elect - resurrection within
PART I THE PSYCHOLOGICAL MOMENT
[religiosity - inner bondage externalised in worldly forms – the inner spirit of love]
[Spirit Reason = God/Nature/Reason – an enchanted universe
Commonalities and divergences with Spinoza
[The God within in not subjective but is Reason that animates all creation –
embodiment beyond imposure]
[experimental knowledge of God/Reason and right relations –
embodiment and experience, knowing the world from inside
EXPERIENTIAL AND EXPERIMENTAL KNOWLEDGE
praxis – the experimental knowledge of Christ
Winstanley’s anti-clericalism as entailing a social and political anti-elitism – against alien mediation – for the democratisation of knowledge, power and politics and against its professionalization - experience and experiment – praxis and agency – reason and spirit within - experimental knowledge
[Winstanley as psycho-analyst – emotional and bodily experience]
THE REPUBLIC OF HEAVEN
an action spirituality. An enabling dream – co-creation - inciting resurrection – internal vs external salvation - universalism – the republic vs the kingdom of heaven – beyond kingship on earth and in heaven –
pantheism beyond external forms - restitution of the common earth as true religion - earth as common store/treasury
THE FALL
CHAPTER 1 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FALL
The Fall of Adam
The war against property and selfishness – The social fall and the two Adams - the fall – dependence on the objects of creation – the two Adams – historical and spiritual - private property and self-interestedness – and the rise of spirit Reason and the second Adam – beyond legalism - the fall and the covetous flesh - theology and economics
[the birth of the modern ego – the two Adams and psychology, embodiment, innocence and experience]
Pride, self-love and the self-made world as a new enslavement –
The internal moral-psychological division – inner emptiness leads to external imposition.
Nourishment – the loss of and the need for nourishment.
[Protestantism’s problem with women – the source of Winstanley’s paternalism]
[protestant paternalism –
subverting a logic that creates bondage rather than freedom –
embodiment and institutional mediation]
[Psychology and The Fall – pride to be creator of oneself – the spirit of self-love driving the Social Fall – the aspiration to be gods]
The Psychology of Adam: Ambivalence and Pride
[establishing the right kind of inner government –
embodiment and mediation]
[the flesh as fantasy – the covetous, fleshly imagination –
the fantasy of self-fulfilment – the dependence on objects –
aggression, competition, insatiability]
Pride and Nourishment
[Hobbes and endless desire]
[the attempt to live by one’s own creations]
[the ascetism and self-denial of the rationalizing Protestant Ethic –
Weber on Eudaimonia - idolatry and alienation –
worldly denial gods becoming enslaved to their creations]
[imagination as invention and distortion – idolatry
Imagination, Ideas and Autonomy
GOD/REASON/NATURE
Winstanley returns God to nature
God, Reason, Nature – the internal as against the external – the inner light - a spiritualized natural law – the experience of nature.
The criticism of the Divining Doctrine - reason, spirit, nature – the natural knowledge of creation.
Winstanley and Spinoza - God as Reason against imagination - Winstanley and Blake on imagination and reason
[similarities with Spinoza – Reason over Imagination – similarities with Blake – Winstanley's 'Spirit Reason' and Blake's 'Imagination' are cognate]
[against imagination and invention – locating God in Nature and restoring spirit to the body – to know/experience God/Nature – the emphasis on embodiment and experience
[imagination, invention and abstraction – institutional mediation divorced from experience and embodiment
[criteria to distinguish true knowledge from imaginary ideas]
[imagination, invention and the idolatry of words]
[abstraction and disembodiment]
[Rationalization as a psychological scarcity – separation from God as nourishment
[the critique of Hobbes’ ascetic discipline – rationalization as the secularization of Protestantism - the bodily basis of Winstanley’s experimental and experiential science and 'true religion'] [the similarity of Winstanley's view with Margaret Wertheim’s 'embodied science']
[Puritans externalize their inner lives as worldly practices
The Culture of Fallen Adam
worldly inventions and practices ruled by pride – mediation by imaginary inventions
worldly magistracy and worldly gain – covetousness with regard to earthly objects.
the mediation of language for reasons of domination
Vanity and idolatry – prideful infatuation with self-invention
The connection between the desire to "engrosse" the earth and the corruption of language – living by an undernourishing self-invention rather than by God’s inner love – self-made man and the impossibilities of building the New Jerusalem.
[paternalism – challenging the monopoly of spirit – the right of all to speak and act – the embodiment of love]
[the inner light]
[legalism]
[piety for an inner authority –
Winstanley’s god within vs Hobbes’ god of human invention]
[authority by experience – creative agency of all beyond external teaching – the inner authority that overcomes bondage – reappropriating power from alien mediation]
CHAPTER 2 The Rebirth of Adam
[The Rebirth of Adam – beyond the social Fall
[Reconnection with the God within as reconnection with self and with nature - Winstanley locates god in nature and the body
[the idea of God as in nature and in the body – no need to impose form on chaos – Winstanley offers an alternative to the prideful shaping of self and culture. Going beyond human self-invention and the prideful war with nature which ensues – challenging the view of nature as a 'stingy' enemy to be subordinated to human will]
Job and Christ: Moving Beyond Orthodoxy
from subjection to an angry and distant god to deliverance by a god of love
Winstanley's Theory of Reverence and Freedom
[Reverence and Winstanley’s idea of freedom
Winstanley's Theory of Reverence and Freedom
[love giving up mastery – sublime science of simple souls]
[god and rebirth – to be free within – beyond anxiety, control and possession]
The God within
"freedom within" is the inner fulfillment
human beings embody the spirit of god
[Rational Freedom as a moral ecology of interdependence – co-creation in a ceaselessly creative, participatory, and interdependent universe]
[freedom in the world through reason – rational freedom as the moral ecology of interdependent bodies]
[reverence in worldly action – inner piety connected to legitimate worldly freedom]
Reverence in Action
God's love and reason is experienced as a "word of power speaking in and to your hearts
becoming conscious of the god within and gaining autonomy
everyone might enjoy, in this life, the redemption that Puritans reserve only for an elect
[agency – taking control of language – acting on words in community
[the answers to Job’s questions –
rising to freedom through bondage – alienation as progressive]
[the right relation to God as Reason – grounding identity]
[inner kingdom insights beyond cure
[for making history – retaining agency – beyond alienation to healthy creation]
Evaluating the Reverence
movement from pride to freedom - experimental knowledge
Winstanley grounds human identity, language, and community in the reason and needs he believes humans cannot and do not create: human capacities yield freedom only if exercised in reverence for the "fountain of life" in each person and the interdependence of all people
[Christ's resurrection in each person overcoming pride – the rising of Spirit Reason within – the transitional social wilderness condition leading to a new relationship with God/Nature
[piety as an experimental knowledge –
experience and salvation for all in historical time.
[reconnection with the loving God, the God of nourishment – the satisfaction of inner need is the abandonment of external acquisition and mastery – the drive for acquisition and mastery expresses a neurotic compulsion born of lack and scarcity]
[the covenant between a loving God and created beings nourished and satisfied in their reverence for life.
Evaluating Radicalism: Christ and Prometheus
Beyond covetous conflict about reality and conventions will yield to "sweet harmony":
those who engage in this "practice of love" abjure actual politics or intentionally collective action
Winstanley's loving authority and sovereign authority
[against the anti-political purity which puts politics and people on ice - the end of politics through the resolution of all conflict and the realisation of harmony – the need for co-creation between nature and culture]
[for an experiential politics and originary politics – knowledge through dialogue]
PART II
THE SOCIAL MOMENT
[Digging - the call to action 1649]
[the ethic of collaboration
"Work together. Eat bread together; declare all this abroad."
"selling the earth”
"Every man is an equal to every man”
"the Spirit Reason" within each honors the earth as a "common mother"
Winstanley's Second Wilderness Experience
a second and social wilderness condition
"community of the earth."
Sins against the earth – enclosing the treasure and ruling by sword
morality of sharing and of work - moral responsibility and individual autonomy
worldly autonomy – wage labour and property - freedom depends on gaining direct access to the earth
"Inner and outer freedom"
commitment to the personal autonomy of "freedom within" develops into a theory of worldly bondage and collective action
[collective labour on common ground – working together – the world shared in common.
[divisions of rich and poor - communal equality]
[the need to act on words]
[the right relations and the legitimate way to labour – common labour]
[recovering the Old Testament covenant and inheritance]
[worldly bondage, personal autonomy and collective action]
[the correspondences and divergences between Winstanley and Marx]
CHAPTER 3 The Social Fall
The Fall Revisited: Outer Bondage
Social fall through the appropriation of the earth - private property and social war - private property as social fall - buying and selling - social division – freeing labour from the curse of exploitation - riches and poverty in the labour relation – the rich depend on labour of others
[The Social Fall - the critique of alien power – the state and capital as alienated social power.
[The social fall – the division of the body – separation as the key figure structuring modernity – the rule of all by alien power – the internal and social power of human beings takes external form through alienative and exploitative relations]
[the social fall – property – the two Adams – class conflict as fratricide
the constituents of a fallen society: property and exploited labor
estrangement and outer bondage
property and social class
Property
enclosure as a denial of mutuality
labor and property – wage labour
[wage labour and private property – new idols – the interlocking features of the social metabolic order – labour creates capital]
[property and the state]
Kingly Power
[Egypt and the Norman Yoke –
propertied republicanism as kingly power]
Sovereignty
Popular consent
[sovereignty and popular consent – the democratic constitution of authority – a communist republicanism vs the propertied republicanism associated with the Reformation and capitalist modernity]
[constituting the republican commonwealth – locating Winstanley within the left and democratic republicanism of Spinoza, Rousseau, and Kant]
The social sin of property
social divisions created by property and wage labor
covetousness has a contingent social cause
Winstanley bases his argument about worldly estrangement on precisely the inner religiosity whose negation is the premise of Marx's theory
[covetousness within inevitably engendered social divisions
THE CRITIQUE OF ALIEN POWER
covetousness leads to kingly power - private property leads to authoritarian rule and domination – church and state – the Norman yoke - kingly government as swordly (based on force) – for law against the mediation of lawyers - the church - anticlericalism and experience – anti-elitism and anti-clericalism
[the critique of alien power
[against kingly power in nature and name
[covetousness creates the state]
[the social sin of property –
uprooting the social origins of divisions against propertied republicanism –
the psychological and social contingency of covetousness]
[the social Fall – the role of the Church - the clergy]
The Clergy
[existing order – Church props up the social order
the clergy blind people to maintain not only their own power but also the power of owners and rulers
[alien power]
Winstanley criticizes as imaginary any idea of god that justifies human submission to worldly idols
[established order – difference between Hobbes and Winstanley
as a difference over the grounds of politics and judgment –
against conventionality
Conclusion
those who overcome their estrangement from the power of god within can thereby reclaim the worldly power they have relinquished to owners, teachers, and rulers
Chapter 4 Rebirth as Social Transformation
[Social Transformation beyond the Social Fall
we move in Part II from the inner logic of Winstanley's turn toward the life of the social body, to his diagnosis of estrangement and social division, and now to his effort to embed his theory and collective action in a history he understands differently from before
Winstanley fashions a radicalism that links individual piety to collective action, and authority to rebellion
BEYOND EXTERNAL MEDIATION AND RELIGIOSITY
mediation – the clash between external constraints and internal law - God and Reason – internal vs external – the critique of religious mediation (compare with Marx’s critique of religiosity)
RESTORATION AND REGENERATION
the new Law of Righteousness – silence – the need for fundamental change - inner and outer transformation – spiritual and social action - immanence – the power of life – the unity of spiritual and social activism
[overcoming the social fall – salvation from Moses to poor men
[Winstanley, Marx and ‘the Jewish Question.’ – invention and self-invention]
[hope beyond the social hell]
Moving from Texts to History
[community of earth - disclosure over imposure]
Moving from Texts to History
wait upon the Spirit Reason … the true Teacher of everyone in their own inward experience
leave off this buying and selling of land
leave off dominion and lordship
leave behind clerical ideology, the market, and political domination, and therefore they are able to establish the "community of earth" and "community of spirit."
Winstanley's community of earth and spirit is not self-consciously invented
Winstanley and the Old Testament
[God as active in history – realising life’s redemptive meaning]
THE EARTHLY COMMONWEALTH
Winstanley’s ecology – earth as common treasury - the inner light and eco-centrism – immanentism as an internal creative unfolding
The universal household
"Do not hinder the Mother Earth from giving all her children suck," but instead "give thy free consent to make the earth a common treasury”
Winstanley recovers the Old Testament emphasis on the land, fratricidal conflict, and the question of legitimate title or righteousness. As a result, he situates the poor in a historical narrative that provides the grounds for rebellious action.
[the propertied politics of secularisation that sheds the Biblical framework of the Reformation – Winstanley's alternate Reformation.
[Protestant Reformation and rationalization – modernity under the shadow of Max Weber
[Winstanley's alternative to rationalization in the sharing of a common wealth
[Winstanley against the religious politics of the ministers
and the propertied politics of the secularized activists]
[the elements of Winstanley’s Jewish view –
an earthly and this-worldly blessing –
the younger as the class with radical chains]
[radical politics as reverence for an inheritance - the radical politics of inheritance vs the alien politics of possession
From Isaac to Moses: The Politics of Inheritance
[alternative to rationalization in the sharing of a common wealth
Community as such does not need to be constructed, nor does a principle of justice need to be imagined. People do not create any order and give to it any meaning they please, but act in terms of a self and world already existent
Winstanley now rebels against the inventions of the elder brothers
[the radical politics of inheritance vs the politics of possession – redefining the Isaacs and the Ishmaels]
[the radical politics of inheritance – the revolt against invention
[the radical politics of inheritance –
innovation of co-creation vs invention –
the untraditional belief in the earth as a common treasury]
[the radical politics of inheritance –
justifying the unprecedented common treasury]
From Moses to Christ: Tradition and the Unprecedented
Through inward piety, says Winstanley, men and women are freed from illusions about god and are empowered to confront directly their inner covetousness and worldly bondage. By orienting themselves around an inner "sun," they will be able to establish a "true religion" that realizes "freedom within and without."
The innovation of co-creation within a ceaselessly creative universe vs the petrification, sterility, and self-destruction of human self-invention.
[the radical politics of inheritance vs external mediation]
[Marx's critique of alienation]
Winstanley, Marx, and "The Jewish Question"
[Jewish question – truth, invention and freedom]
Christ Rising in the Poor
everyone shall know the Law, and everyone shall obey the Law, for it shall be writ in everyone's heart; and everyone that is subject to Reasons law shall enjoy the benefit of sonship.
Winstanley's vision of Christ rising is not a mystical flight from politics but a powerful account of the experiences from which social revolution arises and of the standards that make it legitimate.
[the class with radical chains]
[second coming and salvation]
Conclusion
[radicalism as reverence]
Winstanley is defending traditions still alive in his present, although under attack.
Winstanley visualizes an alternative to feudalism and emerging liberalism. Although his understanding of community, nature, and god owes a great deal to the experience and discourse of feudal culture, he subjects these givens to a more modern—that is, middle-class—sensibility.
His project is to build a community that still sees itself as a household and nature as the common mother, and as a result, he preserves a sense of rightful and natural dependence.
PART III THE POLITICAL MOMENT
[the seventeenth century political context of Digging – digging as commoning]
For historian Christopher Hill, the coalition against the Norman Yoke broke apart once the king was executed in 1949: the class nature of the revolution was exposed as "the better sort" regrouped around Cromwell to defend property and political rule by the propertied. Walzer, looking from above, counts as maturity what Hill, looking from below, depicts as repression and betrayal.
CHAPTER 5 The Digging Experiment
Speaking Truth to Power
The Digging experiment
DIGGING AND COMMONING – THE COLLABORATIVE ETHIC
the Digger experiment - Winstanley’s inspiration – work together, eat bread together, declare to all abroad - the call to restore Eden -
praxis – collaboration as labouring together
origins of the Digger movement – the agricultural crisis - political revolution - land use and poverty and hunger –
digging as a practical and logical response to poverty - politics over millenarianism – the distinctiveness of Winstanley as response to social problems - digging as commoning – creative praxis and restoration of agency - the lost and alternative revolution - coincidence of changing circumstances and self - praxis as anti-elitism – agency of common people - practical idealism
DIGGING AND COMMONING – THE DIG
the abolition of private property and the extent of digging - Cobham digging as the tip of the iceberg - Winstanley as leader – persecution and misrepresentation - the move to Cobham
the Digger writings as an expression of libertarian communism - the Ranters
the end of the experiment – the collapse of the Digger experiment – Winstanley’s disappearance – the end of the digger commune and wage labour – the Diggers’ legacy
Winstanley's vision of digging is best understood as an effort to conceptualize the kind of covenant, or true religion, that will guide practical action and establish Canaan.
Digging
Winstanley's vision of digging reveals his rosy expectations for what appears as an agrarian theorist's unrealistic dream. But that vision has a sober political core—the idea of a covenant that will establish "the beginning of public freedom to the whole land"
their covenant will enable them to meet their needs in a way that engenders their inner and worldly freedom.
The covenant to work and eat together
[Digging as a covenant – voluntary submission = true freedom - the diggers' covenant is intended to be a practical alternative to the market. – true religion of commoning as a conversion experience – digging as internal vs external coordination]
Whilst Winstanley's vision suggests an agrarian theorist's pastoral dream, when put in the context of poverty and oppression, it also reflects a powerful and sober effort to think through what it would require to strengthen the poor.
[the internal self-correction of behaviour in a communal context]
[utopian shift in agency on the commons]
[Winstanley’s alternative to past and to emergent forces and forms –
political agency to reclaim earthly inheritance]
[commoning as practical alternative to rationalization
[commoning as practical alternative to capitalist expropriation, commodification, and rationalization
[politics and the state as a legitimate institution – public community and public freedom – the aftermath of digging leads Winstanley to establish the need for and principles of public authority]
Common freedom and collective interest over free riding
[politics and public community –
a new understanding of political language and of the state as a potentially legitimate institution – saints and citizens
the betrayal of revolutionary promises
the social body requires the political form of a representative assembly.
What is Happening to the Reformation?
[politics and public community –
reimposition of the Norman Yoke –
Uprooting "the great spread tree of kingly power"
Why this is Happening: Intentions, Motives, and Meanings
[politics and public community –
the divergence between universal claims of language and particular interests]
[politics and public community – ideology and language]
covetousness blinds the elder brothers, not to the meaning of words, but to the possibility of enacting them in a way that gains what they deserve without sacrificing others.
to persuade them to understand their interest and identity differently so that they no longer scorn the idea of mutuality.
Taking Speech Seriously: Winstanley and Hobbes
[the meaning of words is linked to transcendent principle - transcendent vs conventional norms – Plato vs the sophists]
Winstanley finds in political language itself the grounds for shared judgments, the criteria for a public or political response to England's situation.
Winstanley's reverence for the spoken word and its meaning, once expressed as the idea of bearing witness, now appears in the liberty of a citizen , who speaks to clarify the covenant and acts to affirm it.
covenanting gives rise to the vocation of prophecy
Winstanley's belief in a truth beyond human invention and his desire for political engagement require him to believe that the elder brothers could and will listen to him—and even change—though he himself has analyzed the covetousness and interests that make this outcome unlikely.
Taking Speech Seriously: Winstanley and Marx
For Marx, words function only as tools of self-deception, disguise, and mobilization
the tradition of political theory since Plato's struggle with the Sophists: the relationship between might and right in language.
Winstanley engages in the dialogue Marx precludes because of faith in a historical process different from Marx's. He is not naive about social interests, but his theory of history teaches that people are free beings and rational because they are children not of modes of production but of god.
How the Covenant Defines Right Action
[the covenant defines right action]
a universal liberty and freedom which is not only our birthright, which our Maker gives us, but which thou hast promised to restore unto us
Legitimate State Power
Winstanley as Citizen: Theory and Action
[theory and action – active citizenship and pluralism – making earthly need a political act]
what acts show reverence for that standard?
Winstanley as Citizen: Theory and Action
By turning the questions of what people need into the question of what they are entitled to, Winstanley gives necessity and social interests a political form and makes digging a political act. By politicizing bodily necessities and household concerns in terms of justice and for the sake of freedom, he puts earthly realities into political terms.
politicization implied in this theory of citizenship and public community
A "commonwealth's government" exists to reconcile such differences; people become citizens when they learn that they must take into account their differences and their similarities.
Chapter 6 The Curse of Cain
[politics and political force – the paradox of political involvement]
In the year of digging, Winstanley modifies his basic views about leadership and violence so that certain fissures and pressures appear in his thought and action.
Winstanley's Initial Position
Harassment of the Digger colony
[violence, force, and freedom]
[politics and political force – the need for political involvement]
[persecution of the Diggers – Winstanley's cows]
[politics and political force – Winstanley's cows : the politics of love in defence of the earth]
[politics and political force – the politics of love
The Politics of Love - digging is an act of love
[politics and violence
The Golden Rule, which entails loving one's enemies, is "the substantial truth brought forth into action" by the diggers.
Winstanley begins with reverence for god-given limits and therefore becomes a rebel who believes he can avoid transgression altogether.
Violence, Anger, and Transgression
[the politics of love and friendship
the eviction of the Diggers and the complicity of the poor
Chapter 7 Libertarianism - Unleashing the Beast Within
The Ranters and the revolt of the flesh
Freedom from Puritan moral restraints
Overthrowing the internal tyranny of the Puritan superego
ranters disavowed discipline and therefore the vocation of conscientious political labour
[against the libertarianism of the Ranters - true freedom requiring the prudence of labour and reason - a discipline that liberates.
the power of love and reason vs cynicism and libertarianism
[responding to cynicism – Ranters as anticipating the transgressive libertarianism of postmodernism –
transcendent values against morality of subjective value judgments]
the desire for superfluous goods or numerous sexual partners expresses an inappropriate reliance on "objects without" and reflects an inner hunger that nothing human or perishable can satisfy.
Winstanley sought to distinguish between impulses and actions that are "beastly" and those that are "human."
Winstanley's Critique of the Ranters
Winstanley's Response
To use a Biblical metaphor, Winstanley is in the wilderness and sees the ranters dancing around the golden calf of their desire.
Responding to CynicismThe valid insight of the ranters into the conventionality of standards like sin and justice and their defense of the inner light become a way for the individual to sanction any and all behavior. By dismissing standards as entirely personal or arbitrary, they renounce the effort to reason about, or justify, their own values while denying that any could be commonly valid. Thus, Winstanley condemns them for being "unrational" as well as "immoderate."
This problem with the authority of standards and values taken as conventional, as evidenced by the ranters, may have inspired Hobbes's famous "state of nature." He too developed ranter insights and relativism, but he was horrified by the logic and consequences of rebellion. Hobbes can be seen as using the ranters (and the elder brothers) to construct a larger argument about conventions and language and the relationship between standards and actions.
The Shameful Residue and the Demon of Politics
If one were to jettison Winstanley's religious language, however, in an attempt to get at the secular core of his political practice, one would lose his understanding of precisely what reanimates a demoralized people.
Responding to Cynicism
[the defeat of Digging – coming to terms with politics, law and the state – Winstanley's Law of Freedom on a Platform as a rational freedom and not a libertarianism.
PART IV
THE MEANING OF DEFEAT
[the defeat of the Diggers]
Defeat
Winstanley's politics remains spiritual
Against those who think that Winstanley had become "secular" in some simple sense, both books testify to the fact that he still sought a synthesis between the kingdom within and the kingdom without.
[the god of love and demonic politics – the meaning of defeat
[the God of love versus a demonic and diabolic politics of division - Winstanley develops a citizen politics]
Winstanley began to dig as the good son of "the god of love," who is in irreconcilable tension with "the demon of politics."
Although The Law of Freedom may have failed as resurrection, it seems to have succeeded as an act of closure, and thus as a new beginning. As the documents suggest, the disinherited younger brother becomes a respected man of property, a father in his own right, and an officeholder in the very institutions he had criticized so powerfully.
It is difficult enough to credit that the millenarian who denounced trade in the 1640s as unjust and often dishonest eventually reentered London commerce as a Quaker. It would appear incredible that the outspoken heretical critic of established religion became a churchwarden, and the Digger agitator who disrupted society held office as a chief constable—particularly when these activities took place at Cobham, the scene of his radicalism. Yet the evidence is straightforward.
The interpretation, of course, is not.
Chapter 8 Building a Home
Remaking the Fathers' House
Winstanley's last work - The Law of Freedom on a Platform
[The Law of Freedom as a coming to terms with politics and authority
[Law of Freedom – transcendent principle ('the everlasting gospel') and the conventionality of authority
In The Law of Freedom Winstanley did not build a mortal god, but he did create an imaginary orthodoxy to which he imagined citizens reverently conforming.
THE LAW OF FREEDOM
The architectonics of the Law of Freedom – ethical and institutional foundations – enjoyment of the earth – the critique of iniquitous social arrangements
The need to take the revolution further –uprooting kingly power
from religion to politics (?) - religious language and symbolism in The Law of Freedom – the religious dimension - spiritual regeneration beyond social and economic reformation
The appeal to Cromwell – overturning kingly power - continuing the revolution to abolish kingly power – the need for institutional reformation
CONSTITUTING POLITICAL ORDER
The Law of Freedom as a work of political order – beyond kingly power to self-assumed law, authority and obligation – principles and policies of political and social organisation – the rebuttal of objections – and the choice of kingly or democratic government
THE PRINCIPLES OF LEGITIMATE PUBLIC COMMUNITY
The nature of freedom – charges of authoritarianism – the conception of freedom (rational, collective, moral and libertarian) - true freedom as sharing the earth in common – the critique of kingly power and private property – the enjoyment of the earth in common
The everlasting law and the laws of the commonwealth – the ancient law - short and pithy laws - criticism of lawyers – law as the democratic constitution of authority
Organisational questions – details of the plan - Winstanley’s polity - the officers
The democratic constitution of authority – extending participatory structures, public spaces and democratic forms in politics - democratic participation
THE TRUE COMMONWEALTH
The true commonwealth – name and nature coinciding – the commonwealth as association through abolition of private property - beyond buying and selling to establish the conditions of the commonwealth - the restoration of natural equality – freeing trade from buying and selling – communism - common and private property – the economy of small-scale production - freely associated labour – democratic organisation – the commonwealth of just property – the satisfaction of needs – communism of distribution – cooperative wealth – the communist commonwealth – laws against buying and selling – laws against hire labour
pacifism - education - crime and punishment – the mail - anti-clericalism and the church – the position of women – patriarchy - marriage
conclusion on laws and principles of political order and governance - pacifism, resistance and force – universal law and love –Winstanley’s practical utopia - utopian programme for a feasible future? - the need for a politics of love and friendship -
Law of Freedom
A Political Theorist Speaks Truth To Power
Marx and Winstanley initially premised political action on a faith that people's direct experience would disclose the truth about their world.
Theory and practice – and need for a truth beyond experience
direct experience deceived people, so that theory and political education became necessary. He withdrew from politics to seek truth through theory
Just as Marx and his heirs resurrected philosophy and invented a party after history failed to generate class consciousness, so Winstanley had to provide theory and create leadership once Christ no longer was rising in sons and daughters.
Setting the Reformation in Motion
Cromwell is to initiate the transition Winstanley still believes is the heart of reformation: turning a kingdom into a commonwealth. The text makes clear that Parliament (and not Cromwell) is to become the real "father of the land"
Family and Society: Creating a New HouseholdThe true commonwealth is functionally differentiated into various types of agriculture and manufacturing, which operate without the mediation of the market.
"The original root of magistracy is common preservation, and it rose up first in the family"
The State and the Sword
They must build a government that is "a wise and free ordering of the earth,
there are no grounds to argue that government imposes its inventions on an unwilling populace: no autonomous state power or standing army coerces people into a community of one heart and one mind.
The Law of Freedom requires citizens to use punishment to instruct each other in the meaning of responsibility and mutuality.
[Law of Freedom – institutional features – state and sword – citizen self-legislation – legitimate constraint]
[Law of Freedom – preface – the appeal as truth to power
The Preface: A Political Theorist Speaks Truth To Power
[Law of Freedom – preface - meeting objections
[Law of Freedom – preface – options
[Law of Freedom – preface - punishment
[Law of Freedom – preface –
turning the kingdom into a commonwealth – elections
Setting the Reformation in Motion
[Law of Freedom – preface –
creating a new household – functional representation]
[Law of Freedom – institutional features -
[Law of Freedom – institutional features – the family household
[Law of Freedom – institutional features – discipline – education
[constituting legitimate political community and authority – Kant and Rousseau and the problem of rational freedom
The State and the Sword
[Law of Freedom – institutional features – voluntary subjection
Reverence and Freedom
[In addressing the practical questions of politics, law, authority, and the provision of needs Winstanley is accused of becoming complicit with the Kingdom of the Beast – Winstanley addresses political issues addressed by Hobbes and Rousseau –
but remember Rousseau’s recognition of transcendent norms
written on the heart, it’s the same with Winstanley –
Winstanley is not guilty of criticisms of complicity, the problem lies with the impossible utopianism of libertarian critics, an impossibility that itself invites the authoritarianism it purportedly rejects]
[critique of the enclosing/totalising reason of the capitalist modernity that followed the Reformation, in contradistinction to Winstanley's true reformation]
[Law of Freedom – voluntary constraint and the problem of legitimacy
[the call to a Christian politics of loving your neighbour – and your enemy]
[the need to rest the Law of Freedom on a stronger ethic and unity]
[idolatry to self-created man and his self-made world –
the problem of modern rational freedom shorn of God
and Spirit Reason within life]
[ossifying principles – institutional inertia that petrifies rational principle and turns them into their opposite – the need to accept experiment and experience – Marx’s praxis vs blueprints]
Chapter 9 From the Lamb to the Dragon
WINSTANLEY’S LATER LIFE
[Winstanley’s life after activism - Winstanley's later life
IMPORTANCE AND LEGACY
[Winstanley’s legacy – the value and enduring significance of Winstanley’s writings
Winstanley’s impact and influence – fellowship – Winstanley’s influence on Quakerism - Winstanley, Henry George and Karl Marx - George and land tax – the cooperative labour colony of John Bellers
contemporary relevance – radical political ecology – Winstanley as pioneer eco-socialist - commoning as an inspiration to today’s activists - possibilities for the true commonwealth, history and utopia – concluding thoughts
THE REPUBLIC OF EARTH
PRINCIPLES OF PUBLIC COMMUNITY AND LEGITIMATE AUTHORITY
Principles – self-assumed obligation and the universal law – the need to crack the problem of free-riding – politics and the logic of collective action - climate change and need for collective action
Parallels with modern theorists (Spinoza, Rousseau, Kant, Marx) emphasize what is special, distinctive, and valuable about Winstanley – his 'Spirit Reason' presents a commoning that transcends the material and the institutional, a spirit that evades enclosure by a totalising rationalization.
[reference later philosophers to show what they have to offer,
or to correct their omissions, and show what Winstanley has to offer]
[Winstanley’s legacy – the road not taken - recovering possibilities for communal living]
[Winstanley’s legacy – experienced speech –
embedded freedom – a conditioned freedom]
[Winstanley’s legacy – God and Reason inviting secularisation
[the absence of a loving God betrays Reason to self-creation and idolatry]
[Winstanley’s legacy – timeless truths and experiential knowledge – learning by living and co-creation]
[the problems of pride and power – modern rational freedom as self-worship
Forgetting and Power: Winstanley and Hobbes
Winstanley's theory represents an alternative to Hobbes's
a road not taken in our history.
Winstanley's reverent religiosity and Hobbes's Promethean science
and sovereign invention.
the builders of the citadels of reason who came after –
who could point to capitalism, material plenty and democratic rights.