The Diggers tried to reform the existing social order with an agrarian lifestyle based on their ideas for the creation of small, egalitarian rural communities.
Their belief in economic equality was drawn from Acts of the Apostles 4:32, which describes a community of believers that “had all things in common” instead of having personal property.
The True Levellers advocated for an early form of public health insurance and communal ownership in opposition to individual ownership.
If anyone is interested in these pre-capitalist Western European people’s movements, Silvia Fererici’s Caliban and the Witch is a great read. First two chapters go into tons of stories of these groups and the heretics, and all these weird movements. Really makes you feel less alone and part of a long heritage when you go through these histories and realize people have essentially been fighting this class war forever
Thanks!
Wasn’t there a pipeline from diggers to levelers that came about because the extended duration of the civil war led to many conscripted men losing their land?
Their ideas were presented in their manifesto “Agreement of the People”. In contrast to the Diggers, the Levellers opposed common ownership, except in cases of mutual agreement of the property owners.
I dinnae understaun what yer talkin’ bout, lad. They seem completely different factions… one’s a liberal, the other’s proto-socialist, if not “True Leveller”, an’ aw’…
