Diggers and Common Ownership

Gerrard Winstanley (1609-1676) wrote more than twenty radical political religious tracts, which provide support for his practical experiment in common ownership known as the "Digger" colony. This was an attempt to cultivate common land to provide the landless with a livelihood, but also a utopian statement about the shape of an ideal society where common ownership was the norm. It is an interesting moment in history, because the republic under Oliver Cromwell might have been influenced by this movement if landowners and the propertied class had not asserted their power to oppose the 'Diggers'.

I am reading about Winstanley in the book Radical Christian Writings: A Reader. My interest in common ownership comes from my teaching at the University of Exeter on co-operatives and member based enterprises. These have the potential to be more democratic forms of business than investor owned organisations. The Hebrew scriptures state that: 'The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it' (Psalm 24:1).  Ownership is very much God's relation to creation, not ours. Therefore, our ownership is more akin to the relation of a tenant to a landlord; witness the parable of the tenants (Matthew 21). From passages such as Exodus 16, we learn that sufficiency and equality are the guiding principles of God's economy. And we find that mutuality was at the heart of the New Testament church as the Apostle Paul insisted on economic distribution as the expression of our gratitude to God. Witness the levelling involves in 2 Corinthians 8 through the collection for the churches suffering from famine.  You can read more about the collective principles of church governance in Andrew McLeod's book Holy Cooperation: Building Graceful Economies. It all seems very akin to Winstanley's writings.

So how did Winstanley view the church in his own time, in relation to these ideas of mutuality and common ownership? He makes a bold stand by replacing the name of God with that of Reason. In Truth Lifting up its Head Above Scandals (1648) it appears that Winstanley was so oppressed by the institution of the Church and its support of the status quo that he gave up the name of God because it had been devalued by the church. This is a sad inditement of worship in England during the 17th century, but the same argument could be made today in many contexts. Today we see the charismatic churches busting out of the respectabile strait jackets of Christian traditions that have been ordered by forms of rational religion, those that leave the spirit and heart untouched by compassion for the poor.  These charismatic churches have the potential to develop practical knowledge of God through solidarity with the poor. The parable of the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25 is worth some reflection.

Another aspect of Winstanley's writing that strikes me was when I learned that the community was forced to leave their occupation of St George's Hill and were moved on to Little Heath, Cobham. As a gardener and allotment holder I know that this is one of the most painful experiences you can face. The hard labour that goes into making land productive becomes part of your character, your future hope, your satisfaction and your dignity. Moving on to another plot destoys the external landscape, but it also rearranges the internal landscape of the soul. It can be damaging to character, to hope, to satisfaction, and to dignity to be forcibly moved on. I too have had to leave farmland behind that I love, leaving my sweat and tears in that place. I can't really empathise with those who have been forcibly evicted from land, but I have touched the edge of that circle. Thankfully, I have a better life after moving on, but the same was not true for Winstanley I suspect.

I note Winstanley's preference for practical experience over book-learning. This is something that I am now understanding about the Co-operative Movement. You really need to experience the movement first hand as a co-operator to speak with authority about the pros and cons of the movement. Being a co-operator reminds you that co-operation is inseparable from human relationships and experience. For example, how can you teach self-responsibility outside of community? I'll speak about this in my next post on Credit Unions.

In The New Law of Righteousness (1649), Winstanley discusses legitimacy and how this is performed in society. In his day, the powerful got to write history and shape how commuities interpreted the revelation of God through scripture. This domination ignored the teaching of the Bible that suggests there 'shal be no bond-man nor beggar in all his holy mountain'.  This is perhaps not so prevalent today in the churches that I frequent, but not so long ago many school children were obliged to sing the hymn, All Things Bright and Beautiful, which has the lyric:

The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
He made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate.

Christianity has often been the supporter of blind injustice and fatalism that does not correspond to the teaching of scripture about the judgement coming upon the unjust e.g. James 5:4. So I think Winstanley provides a prophetic memory for the church to recover, which involves our relationship to property and the vision of common ownership found in Acts 4:32 'All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had'.