SOURCE: "Technology in the Digger Utopia" in Dissent and Affirmation: Essays in Honor of Mulford Q. Sibley, edited by Arthur L. Kolleberg, J. Donald Moon, and Daniel R. Sabia, Jr., Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1983, pp. 118-31.

[In the following essay, Farr studies the "problem of technology" in Winstanley's utopian political program. Farr demonstrates that Winstanley supported technological advancements, but only those determined to be responsible, humane, and beneficial to the utopian commonwealth.]

During the bold and heady days which followed in the wake of the first English Revolution, Gerrard Winstanley the Digger wrote and published "the first socialist utopia formed in the hopes of becoming a party program."¹The Law of Freedom in a Platform was Winstanley's last work and its design of utopian laws and institutions captured the spirit of Digger ideology—socialism, democracy, and pacifism. These were daring visions for the mid-seventeenth century, a time known for its daring visions. Amidst the great lights of his age—from Hobbes to Harrington, Bacon to Newton—Winstanley's "candle" bums bright still.

Winstanley and the Diggers were dead two and a half centuries before they received attention commensurate with their historical significance.³ In this essay I shall investigate the problem of technology in Winstanley's utopian political thought. As did most of his contemporaries, Wiustanley praised technological advance. Yet much more than they, he grasped the need to submit technology to constant democratic scrutiny in order that it remain responsible, humane, and part of the "common treasury for all."

The general story-line into which I am placing the Digger utopia is an important and familiar one, thanks to the work of Mulford Sibley.⁴ In one of a number of fine analyses, Professor Sibley has suggested that utopias fall into one of three general patterns as regards technology: (1) whole-hearted acceptance; (2) radical rejection; and (3) selective implementation.⁵ On balance, Winstanley's utopian platform falls into the third category. However, the Digger utopia also displays certain features common to utopias of the first two types. It is as if in Winstanley we find the ambivalence on technology which has marked human history from the very beginning. In broad outline, then, I shall narrate in some detail one episode in the history of utopian political thought in terms of the problem of technology. I write this also with a conviction that we still require utopian thinking, and that any such thinking must come to grips with technology. I believe, moreover, that only a socialist utopia committed to egalitarian participation in all areas of life and to an educational system which promotes virtue, not merely skills, can begin to deal humanely and effectively with the pervasive problem of technology. Winstanley and the Diggers—among others—helped us to see that in seventeenth century revolutionary England; a select band of contemporary thinkers—Mulford Sibley foremost among them—help us to see that today.

Winstanley's Utopian Political Thought

Utopian speculation was one of the visionary products thrown up by the turmoil of the English Revolution. Creative energies previously censored and obstructed by despotic government were suddenly unleashed. These energies assumed many practical and literary forms—including utopias, constitutions, and communities. The Digger communities, of which there were several,⁶ were but more radical versions of the Puritan design to establish a City on the Hill. Puritans and Diggers alike believed that congregations of saints (differently understood) could make the world anew by their very example. In print and pulpit model constitutions were also drafted and debated—a phenomenon all the more remarkable in a land never to know a written constitution. The most important was the Leveller's Agreement of the People. Many English writers chose the format of utopian literature which Sir Thomas More had rescued from antiquity and given new life a century earlier. More's Utopia became a model for Francis Bacon in New Atlantis, as for Campanella in City of the Sun. The utopias of the 1640s and 1650s were as diverse and contradictory as the times which produced them. Their titles display that curious mixture of solemnity and Puritan sobriety on the one hand, with unbridled fancy and exotic imagination on the other. One hears the turmoil of those. times in The Christian Commonwealth and A Way Propounded, and again in Macaria, Oceana, Nova Solyma, and Olbia.

In the midst of this ferment Winstanley wrote and published his own utopia "in a platform." Having remained silent during the chaos of the civil war, Winstanley finally spoke in 1648 by producing three sectarian and millenarian pamphlets. Winstanley's thought took an even more radical turn in the New Law of Righteousness. Revealed to him "in a trance," the new law bade all men and women to "work together. Eat bread together; declare this all abroad" /190/. True to his revelation, Winstanley soon organized a community of Diggers—or "true Levellers," as they called themselves—at St. George's Hill in Surrey. The Diggers were mainly impoverished commoners forced off the land by inclosures and hard-pressed by a decade of bad harvests.⁷ In the True Leveller's Standard Advanced, Winstanley next proclaimed the Diggers' intention to make the earth a "common treasury" for all. Not surprisingly, the Diggers soon attracted the hostility of the local landowners. Within a year the community was harassed out of existence, even after relocating to Cobham Heath. All the while Winstanley protested furiously. In a number of remarkable pamphlets documenting the Digger hopes and travails, Winstanley appealed to the principal agents of the Revolution: the House of Commons, the Army and Lord Fairfax, the City of London, the Clergy and Lawyers, indeed "all Englishmen." But alas, all were deaf. And so in 1650 Winstanley once again fell silent.

The Law of Freedom in a Platform broke Winstanley's silence one final time. The work is without question among the most important theoretical contributions of the revolutionary period. As a work of political theory, the Law of Freedom falls somewhere between two genres: the fictional utopia and the model constitution. The platform is classically utopian in that it measures the immense distance between the possible and the actual. However, Winstanley foregoes the literary fiction standard to many other English utopias of his day. In the Law of Freedom we find no idealized account of Utopia, Oceana, Arcadia, Macaria, Bensalem, Olbia, or even the Land of Cokayne. Rather, Winstanley offered his platform as something of a rough blueprint or as the materials out of which a working commonwealth could be crafted: "Tho this Platform be like a peece of Timber rough hewd, yet the discreet workman may take it, and frame a handsome building out of it" /510/. But the vision of such a bold new political architecture makes it an implausible candidate for an actual constitution. Seventeenth century England was just not ready. The fact that certain laws and institutions could be implemented characterizes a draft plan like Winstanley's; but so does it characterize a fictional utopia. The agrarian law described in Oceana was Harrington's hope for England's reformation; and the Royal Society of 1662 modelled itself on Bacon's Saloman's House. So the dividing line between a fictional utopia and a model constitution is very fine indeed. What must be recognized is that the connection between utopian speculation and political theory aimed at institutional change is very close—a connection which is likely to be missed if one overemphasizes the idealism of utopia, as expressed in its being a "good place" located literally "nowhere," or if one contrasts "utopian" with "real" or "scientific."

Utopias like Winstanley's platform for true commonwealth deal essentially with institutions and, as such, are "eminently practical," as Mulford Sibley reminds us.⁸ But utopian institutions also reflect political theories of the more systematic and critical kind. Utopias, in short, perform theoretical, critical and practical functions. In performing these functions utopias reflect their times, and idealize a world lost or one anticipated. Winstanley's utopia is no exception and his institutions reflect the socialist, pacifist, and democratic character of Digger philosophy.

The Law of Freedom continues and develops Digger ideology. But two related changes of emphasis take place. First, the earlier emphasis on individual moral regeneration as the key to a real reformation is more or less replaced by an emphasis on social and institutional change. Social and institutional relations are now taken to be causes of individual moral change.

I speak now in relation between Oppressor and oppressed; the inward bondages I meddle not with in this place, though I am assured that if it be rightly searched into, the inward bondages of the mind, as covetousness, pride, hypocrisy, envy, sorrows, fears, desperation, and madness, are all occasioned by the outward bondage, that one sort of people lay upon another.

Winstanley, we might say, exteriorizes the problem of utopia and freedom. A second change accompanies the first. More than any previous Digger pamphlet, the Law of Freedom concerns itself with laws and the external regulation of behavior. There must now be "suitable laws for every occasion and almost for every action that men do" /582/. The Law of Freedom is, we might say, Winstanley's most "Puritan" work. Law—not just love—must make true commonwealth.

These changes notwithstanding, the Law of Freedom is a decidedly Digger platform. Land, labor, and goods are shared as part of the "common treasury for all." There are laws to prevent idleness—aimed no doubt at the idle rich, as much as at beggars. "Every one shall be brought up in Trades and Labors," and consequently "all Trades shall be maintained with more improvement, to the enriching of the commonwealth" /526/. Storehouses for common collection and distribution are established for food, raw materials, and finished products. After all, what is freedom but the "free enjoyment of the earth" /520/, and the earth itself but a "common storehouse" /252/? "As every one works to advance the Common Stock, so everyone shall have a free use of any commodity in the Storehouse … without buying and selling" /583/. Indeed buying and selling would be outlawed, as would money. Reversing Midas, gold and silver would be transformed into ordinary "dishes and other necessities" /595/. On the basis of this economic transformation, all institutions of English society would be changed. "There shall be no Tyrant Kings, Lords of Manor, Tything Priests, Oppressing Lawyers, exacting Landlords, nor any such pricking bryar" /535/.

Winstanley's socialism is Janus-faced. It looks back to the peasant communalism of the middle ages and foward to the proletarian movements of the next three centuries. True commonwealth is populated, as it were, by Joachimites and Anabaptists, Chartists and Wobblies. The simplicity of life and needs is surely pre-modern, as is Winstanley's view of small-scale science and technology. But Winstanley's overall vision is in many ways historically precocious, not medieval at all. Many medieval utopists had made utopia heaven, and heaven utopia. Winstanley, on the contrary, is forthright in his this-worldliness. Why, he asks, must "the poor people … be content with their poverty" with a "promise of a Heaven hereafter? … But why may we not have our Heaven here (that is, a comfortable livelihood in the earth)?" /409/. More importantly, he stresses the primacy of labor and production over distribution. This allows him to grasp a crucial point about exploitation. In history as a whole Winstanley discovers that "the difference between Lords of Manors and the poor, about the commons land, is the greatest controversie that hath rise up these 600 years past" /420/. But it wasn't just land, but labor which was at the heart of this exploitation.

The Inferior Tenants and Laborers bears all the burdens in laboring the Earth …: and yet the Gentry, who oppress them, and that live idle upon their labors, carry away all the comfortable livelihood of the earth /507/.

All rich men live at ease, feeding and clothing themselves by the labors of other men, not by their own.… Rich men receive all they have from the labourers hand, and what they give, they give away other men's labours, not their own /512f/.

The materialist interpretation of history and the theory of surplus value may well be a long time coming, but Winstanley has here already grasped the root of the matter.

Winstanley designed his utopia, then, to rectify class exploitation. But he was well aware that his vision was wholly out of step with the England of 1652. He must have sensed that his readers would have thought his ideas to be extravagantly anachronistic at best; and at worst only institutionalizable by armed force. So Winstanley came up with an ingenious suggestion. He claimed only to want the "ancient commons and waste lands" /513/ and such property as was donated by willing owners. "And for others, who are not willing, let them stay in the way of buying and selling, which is the Law of the Conqueror, till they be willing" /513/. In short, Winstanley offered an interim program for a dual commonwealth. A true commonwealth could coexist alongside the property-sanctifying one already in existence.⁹ In this way the commoners could have the commons land, and the landlords their enclosures.

In sketching this visionary program, Winstanley thereby bolstered his pacifism: "I do not say, nor desire, that every one shall be compelled to practise this Commonwealth's Government" /513/. Rather, as Gandhi and the utopian socialists would later, Winstanley hoped that good example would ultimately persuade gentry and freeholders to surrender private property and gain a community. Here Winstanley echoes the pacifism which consistently and nobly marked the Diggers' conduct even amidst much harm and physical abuse. To soldiers and bullies he proclaimed: "We abhor fighting for Freedom …: and do thou uphold it by the sword we will not; we will conquer by Love and Patience, or else we count it no Freedom" /378/.

It merits observing, however, that in the Law of Freedom Winstanley appears to compromise his pacifism to some degree by legislating capital punishment for extreme crimes. Puzzling at the possible inconsistency here, Mulford Sibley suggests Winstanley's possible motive: "Perhaps his harsh discipline is in part a reaction to what Winstanley regards as the centuries of exploitation to which the people of England have been subjected: he expects the exploiters to resist."¹⁰ This may also account for Winstanley's justification of popular defence by "force of arms … against any Invasion, Rebellion, or Resistance" /539/. Even with these surprising twists in mind, however, Winstanley still trusts that his platform alone "will turn swords into ploughshares, and settle such a peace in the Earth, as Nations shall learn War no more" /513/.

The Law of Freedom also expresses a democratic creed. The fact that Winstanley's utopian political theory is both socialist and democratic is especially noteworthy because other socialist utopias, like Plato's or Campanella's or debatably More's, are exceedingly nondemocratic. Winstanley's plan for universal manhood sufferage was far ahead of the limited franchise proposed by the Levellers—the only other remote contenders for the title of democrats during the English Revolution. Winstanley retained Parliament as the supreme and sole "Head of Power" /562/ and demanded that Members of Parliament be elected yearly for single terms to ensure democratic accountability. All other public officials would also be elected annually, including ministers, bureaucrats, postmasters, justices, and military officers. More generally, a democratic and participatory way of life (and not just democratic political institutions) invigorate the Digger utopia. There would be no lawyers; judges would pronounce "the bare letter of the law" /554/; and the law would be in English, not French, Latin, or legalese (as it remains today). In this way, all commonwealthmen would know the law and be able to speak for themselves in court. Even Sunday meetings were democratic. During gatherings any individual could speak, not just ministers. All of God's children had the light within. God was no doubt a democrat; Christ was the "Head Leveller" /390/.

Finally, the single most important democratic mechanism of the Law of Freedom was the continuous referendum on all acts of Parliament. This alone would insure that all "new laws must be by the Peoples' consent and knowledge" /559/. Whenever Parliament proposes a law it must "make a public Declaration thereof to the people of the Land …; and if no Objections come in from the people within one month, they may then take the people's silence as a consent thereto" /559/. Winstanley did not elaborate on the details, nor did he suggest how deadlocked Parliaments might move ahead in the face of public dissent. He clearly envisioned a more enlightened and informed electorate whose sense of democracy would come increasingly with the practice of it. So too their concern for the public good. The Quaker principle of consensus seems to guide Winstanley here—as indeed do many other Quaker principles, like pacifism, the seeking after truth, and the belief that religious experience is an "inward light and power of life within" /234/. Consensus on public issues should result as long as "common interest" and not "particular interest" informs the peoples' choices /559/.

Science and Technology in the Digger Utopia

Winstanley's utopian political theory, to say the least, was an amazing achievement, especially given its origins. Three years after the conclusion of a nasty, brutish, and protracted civil war, whose true victors were the rural gentry and the urban bourgeoisie, Winstanley crafts a platform for a socialist, democratic, and peaceful commonwealth. Surely he dissembled not when he claimed never to have learned his first principles in books. But if one listens closely, one can hear the tumult of voices which characterized the excitement, novelty, and fecundity of seventeenth-century political debate.

Winstanley engaged his age and had new things to say about the role of science and technology in utopia, as well. Seventeenth century utopians, particularly Bacon, Campanella, and Hartlib, were almost possessed by the new experimental science. Indeed the connection between utopia and science was particularly strong. For example, the Royal Society founded in 1662—which Sibley rightly marks as "the symbolic initiation of the new age" of science and technology—was inspired and even patterned after Saloman's House in New Atlantis.¹¹ The utopians, and the educational reformers generally, believed that science served two masters: it glorified God, whose works it discovered and marvelled at; and it benefitted Man by useful technological invention. God, science, and human technology formed a new trinity in the saintly but practical minds of the seventeenth century.

Our Digger philosopher shared this general enthusiasm for science. Although Winstanley was never in the front ranks of scientific speculation, nor became Lord Chancellor as did Bacon, nor founder of a scientific college as did Hartlib, the Law of Freedom is of premier importance precisely because it tells us so much about the popularization of science at a time when popular scientific education was virtually nonexistent, and when science was still hedged around by astrology, magic, and traditional religion.

Despite his enthusiasm, however, Winstanley never glorified science and technology. Indeed he limited them in true commonwealth to preserve democratic and socialist institutions. It is for this reason that, on balance, I would place the Digger utopia in the third of Sibley's three types of utopian appropriation of technology:

(1) whole-hearted acceptance of complex technology, without limits, as a key to the good life; (2) radical distrust of technological development; and (3) the adoption of some forms of technology and the rejection of others.¹²

The third—"selective implementation"—type best captures Winstanley's intentions. But the fit is perhaps not perfect, and indeed we find hints of the first two types as well. The Law of Freedom is something of a complicated document which records man's historic ambivalence on technology.

True commonwealthmen breathe the new air of science. This was not to spite God, as modems might suppose, but to praise Him: "To know the secrets of Nature, is to know the works of God; and to know the works of God within the Creation, is to know God Himself, for God dwels in every visible work or body" /565/. The pantheism and plebeian materialism which pervades such a view makes for a curious union of mysticism and rationalism. From mystical trances Winstanley uttered revelations of "the great Creator Reason" /251/. Indeed in praising God and coming to know Him, we can only approach Him rationally and experimentally through His works in nature, through "motion or growth … the stars and planets … grass, plants, fishes, beasts, birds, and mankind… To reach God beyond the Creation is a knowledge beyond the line or capacity of man to attain" /565/. So it is that like the Quakers, of whom he might be numbered,¹³ Winstanley praised "experimental religion" /40ff/. Such views made for a certain skepticism, as well. It was not just doubting but "wise-hearted Thomas to believe nothing but what / there is/reason for" /523/. Puritan divines, naturally enough, found these views heretical, even atheistic. But Winstanley was not unnerved by such charges. Indeed he returned the slander.

The subtle clergy can but charm the people.… Their divining Spiritual Doctrine is a cheat; for while men are gazing up to Heaven, imagining after a Happiness, or fearing a Hell, after they are dead, their eyes are put out, that they see not what is their birthrights, and what is to be done by them here on earth while they are living /569/.

Even Hobbes' sneers at the "kingdom of Darkness" in Leviathan were more generous.

Digger eyes are cast upon God then when they seek "experimental knowledge in the things which are" /564/. It is "in every Trade, Art, and Science," therefore, that men "finde out the Secrets of the Creation" /577/. In short, the technological inventions appropriate to humanly-scaled Trades and Arts are "knowledge in the practice, and it is good" /579/. Technological innovation is positively encouraged in the Digger utopia and the democratic spirit pervades the encouragement:

In the managing of any trade, let no young wit be crushed in his invention, for if any man desire to make a new tryall of his skill in any Trade or Science, the overseers shall not hinder him, but incourage him therein; that so the spirit of knowledge may have his full growth in man, to find out the secret in every Art /579f/.

Such activity is not only to be encouraged, but rewarded. "Let every one who finds out a new invention have a deserved honor given him" /580/.

Winstanley cleverly redesigned two traditional offices—the ministry and the post office—to ensure the success of a scientific and democratic polity. There was no love lost between our Digger philosopher and Anglican and Puritan divines, for reasons we have partly seen. But Winstanley would keep a new model ministry in true commonwealth, not, it should be emphasized, to enforce any particular religious doctrine nor even to have a civil religion. Rather, a Sabbath day organizer was crucial for the solidarity so essential to a communitarian society. The people must "meet together to see one anothers faces, and beget or preserve fellowship in friendly love" /562/. The minister's role was minimal. He or she read both the "law of the Commonwealth" and "the affairs of the whole land as it is brought in by the Post-master" /562/. But since wits need exercising the minister may also give speeches or sermons on a delimited range of topics, sometimes on history and government, "sometimes on the nature of Mankind" /563/. But most importantly, "speeches may be made, of all Arts and Science, some one day, some another; As in Physick, Chryrurgery, Astrology, Astronomy, Navigation, Husbandry, and such like" /563/. Speechmakers, much less sermonizers, as we all know from experience, are infamous for holding forth. So Winstanley, the unabashed true Leveller, would have the minister stand down on demand.

He who is the chosen Minister for that year to read, shall not be the only man to make sermons or speeches: but every one who hath any experience, and is able to speak of any art or language, or of the Nature of the Heavens above, or of the Earth below, shall have free liberty to speak when they offer themselves /564/.

The only criterion which Winstanley demands is a simple, but scientific one:

And every one who speaks of any Herb, Plant, Art, or Nature of Mankind is required to speak nothing by imagination, but what he hath found out by his own industry and observation in tryal /564/.

In this way, ordinary scientific and technical knowledge speaks from the hearts and minds of ordinary men and women; and the old ministers—who are but "Witches and Cheats" /597/—can no longer fool the plain-hearted people with their mysteries and incantations.

The postmasters also serve the cause of Digger science and technology. Besides the likely task of providing "speedy knowledge," the postmasters were to perform a somewhat unlikely task. "If any through industry of understanding have found out any Secret in Nature, or new invention in any Art or Trade, or in the Tillage of the Earth" /571/ then the postmasters were to spread this news, too. Casting patents to the wind, the postmasters were to help fertilize the land with knowledge. "When other parts of the land hear of it, many thereby will be encouraged to employ their Reason and industry to do the like, that so in time there will not be any Secret in Nature, which now lies hid" /571/. The obvious point is that Winstanley was using and reforming the postal service to secure both democratic and scientific results. Indeed it has even been argued that "Winstanley was slightly ahead of actual developments in the postal service of England.… It was not until Oliver Cromwell's Post Office Act of 1657 that a comprehensive system with a postmaster general was established."¹⁴ Although it is doubtful that it was Cromwell's inspiration, it would be ironic, nay tragic, if the candle Winstanley set forth before the Lord Protector's door illuminated the way not to true commonwealth, but to a postal system.

Surely it is no exaggeration, then, to say that in the Law of Freedom we find "one of the most magnificent panegyrics of rational science, with its feet on the earth, to be found in the whole of seventeenth century English literature."¹⁵ Neither Bacon nor Hartlib, nor Hobbes nor Boyle, outdo Winstanley on this score. Our Digger philosopher made science and technology part of everyday life—in the trades, in the pulpit, in the mailbox. It would be wrong, however, to conclude from Winstanley's panegyric that his utopia whole-heartedly embraces complex technology. Despite some shared elements with Bacon and Hartlib, the Digger utopia is not a full-fledged instance of Sibley's first category. There is the obvious point that Winstanley set his sights on a relatively simple and small-scale technology. But much more importantly, utopians who whole-heartedly accept technology characteristically commit themselves to one or all of four further points.

First, their commitment to technology entails specialized education for, and sometimes rule by, a narrow elite. This, for example, was Bacon's view, whose fellows of Saloman's House were uniquely well-educated in New Atlantis and were consequently self-perpetuating scientist guardians of both technology and polity. Secondly, most utopias of whole-hearted acceptance develop a domineering, even imperialistic, attitude towards nature. Again Bacon is paradigmatic. He argued that by technology we "control" nature and make her "submit to our experiments," thus "enlarging the bounds of human empire to the effecting of all things possible."¹⁶ Thirdly, in Sibley's words, technology is understood to be "the key to the good life." That is, causally, and perhaps ethically, technological innovation makes for the good life. The more technology, the better our lives. Finally, utopians of this kind never provide mechanisms of popular oversight. Technology is granted a life of its own. When introduced it is developed without consideration to consequences. And if unwanted consequences develop, it is simply assumed that still newer technology will arrive to relieve us. More technology means more technology.

Winstanley will have none of these. First, his view of education was democratic and anti-elitist. As such, Winstanley's views were "strikingly modern in comparison with the traditional concepts of his day."¹⁷ Education in true commonwealth would be universal and life-long. Winstanley would have shared the belief of Mulford Sibley's own latter-day utopians that "true rule implies education in its broadest sense."¹⁸ Winstanley conceived of education as both practical and humanistic, and he refused to allow a class of scholars to remain idle while others worked. That was the principal failure of the educational system under "kingly government" where scholarly idleness in the universities was like "the standing ponds of stinking waters" /238/. Winstanley's vision is the antithesis of the elitism and narrow intellectualism which pervades Bacon's Saloman's House, or even John Milton's proposals for education. "Let no young wit be crushed" was the motto of Digger pedagogy.

Secondly, Winstanley would have winced at Bacon's boasts of "human empire" over nature. By contrast, Winstanley spoke of scientific knowledge enhancing the "beauty of our Commonwealth" and providing "nourishment and preservation" and "enjoyment of the earth" /519f, 571/. Moreover, he implies that only those forms of technology which preserve the beauty and enjoyment of the earth should be engaged in, since he limits trades to those "which mankind should be brought up in" /577/. That is, Winstanley proposes an ethic about our relationship with nature which should not be violated by technological progress. In this regard he shares some of the views of later utopians who were decidedly anti-technological. In William Morris' News From Nowhere, for example, just as in the Law of Freedom, money is not used, goods and services are exchanged solely on the basis of human need, and the spiritual union with nature is valued as part of life itself.¹⁹ In this somewhat ambivalent way, the Digger utopia is built upon some of the very premises which later utopians would use to radically reject complex technology.

Thirdly, Winstanley actually reverses the relationship between technology and the good life which characterizes those utopians who accept technology whole-heartedly. The latter regard technology as the causal and ethical key to the good life. But this puts the matter on its head, Winstanley would say. In his platform he sets the matter aright:

When men are sure of food and raiment, their reason will be ripe, and ready to dive into the secrets of the Creation, that they may learn to see and know God … in all his works; for fear of want, and care to pay Rent to Taskmakers, hath hindered many rare inventions /580/.

Only a just society can provide the good life, and the freedom which is that life. Science and technology are not its producers, but one of its products.

Finally and most importantly, Winstanley's parliamentary referendum subjects technological implementation to popular discussion and democratic decision-making. The referendum was designed to ensure democracy in this as in all other matters. Since there must be "laws for every occasion" /528/, Parliament (by implication) must legislate on matters of technological implementation which affect the "common treasury." As with the medievals, so with Winstanley: "Whatever touches all, must be judged by all." In the month between Parliament's proposing a law and its final passage, the people must be informed and their support solicited. The burden of proof would lie with those MPs who favored the law supporting technological change. After all, the people need not provide alternatives when they use their veto. During this month, the public, counselled by partisans of change as well as by partisans of preservation, would register their final say. Obviously for the referendum to achieve its democratic goals a minimal scientific education would be required of all. This, as we have seen, Winstanley sought to institute. Moreover, extra-technological concerns could surely guide new legislation. Winstanley's abiding concern for the "poor oppressed people" made him favor technological innovation which reduced unnecessary toil, but not when it displaced people from their work, or when it made them dependent on the changing technical composition of work. Neither Luddites nor romantics, the Diggers nonetheless would not have technological growth at any cost.

Surely, modifications in the Digger plan would be required for the complexities introduced by larger populations, more complex technology, and the like. But the important point is that in the Digger utopia the spirit exists, and with modification so too the mechanism, to keep technology under democratic rein and to ensure its service for human needs. It is this spirit which makes the Digger utopia a unique seventeenth century utopia of selective technology.

Winstanley was, if nothing else, a visionary. Sadly, not all his visions were uplifting. Despite his efforts to stem the tide, he knew that science, technology, and knowledge itself, when not harnessed to a vision of justice, equity, and true freedom, bring about their opposites. This Winstanley felt deeply, and perhaps with a sense of resignation. The Law of Freedom begins with a hopeful buoyancy that knowledge in the form of his platform might, like a candle, light the way to the good life. But alas, not all knowledge is of this kind. What begins with hopeful buoyancy ends in a lament: "Knowledge, why didst thou come, to wound, and not to cure?" Winstanley's parting poem could be hung over our age, as well as his:

Here is the righteous Law, Man, wilt thou it maintain?
It may be, is, as hath still, in the world been slain.
Truth appears in Light, Falsehood rules in Power;
To see these things to be, is cause of grief each hour.
Knowledge, why didst thou come, to wound, and not to cure?
I sent not for thee, thou didst me inlure.
Where knowledge does increase, there sorrows multiply.
To see the great deceit which in the World doth lie.
Man saying one thing now, unsaying it anon,
Breaking all's Engagements, when deeds for him are done.
O power where are thou, that must mend things amiss?
Come change the heart of Man, and make him truth to Kiss:
O death where art thou? wilt thou not tidings send?
I fear thee not, thou art my loving friend.
Come take this body, and scatter it in the Four,
That I may dwell in One, and rest in peace once more.

Notes

¹ George Sabine, ed., The Works of Gerrard Winstanley (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1941), p. 5.

² Parenthetical references in the text are to Sabine's edition of Winstanley's works (ibid.). I also follow Sabine in leaving Winstanley's seventeenth century English in its original form.

³ The best full-length study of Winstanley is by David Petegorsky, Left-Wing Democracy in the English Civil War (London: Victor Gollanz, 1940). Besides a number of articles (some of which are cited below), Sabine's introduction is particularly important, as is Christopher Hill's to his edition of Winstanley's works, The Law of Freedom and Other Essays (Middlesex: Harmondsworth, 1973). Also see Hill's The World Turned Upside Down (New York: Viking Press, 1972), ch. 7. Histories of political thought often fail to deal with Winstanley and the Diggers. The exceptions are important: Perez Zagorin, A History of Political Thought in the English Revolution (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1954); and Mulford Sibley, Political Ideas and Ideologies (New York: Harper and Row, 1970).

⁴ Mulford Sibley, Technology and Utopian Thought (Minneapolis: Burgess, 1971); and Nature and Civilization: Some Implications for Politics (Itasca: F. E. Peacock, 1977).

⁵Nature and Civilization, pp. 171ff.

⁶ For areas of Digger influence see Keith Thomas "Another Digger Broadside," Past and Present, 42 (1969). With the discovery of this pamphlet those areas proved to be greater than previously thought.

⁷ Thomas, p. 58, has suggested the broader background against which to understand the Diggers of 1649: "The whole Digger movement can plausibly be regarded as the culmination of a century of unauthorized encroachment upon the forests and wastes by squatters and local commoners, pushed on by land shortage and the pressure of population."

⁸Nature and Civilization, p. 254.

⁹ For a longer discussion of the importance of this feature of Winstanley's program see J.C. Davis, "Gerrard Winstanley and the Restoration of True Magistracy," Past and Present, 70 (1976).

¹⁰Political Ideas and Ideologies, p. 369.

¹¹Technology and Utopian Thought, p. 20.

¹²Nature and Civilization, p. 171.

¹³ The ideological connection between Winstanley's ideas and the early Quakers has frequently been noted. Some have sought a more material connection between them, suggesting that Winstanley once was a Quaker, or became one sometime after 1652. See the articles by R.T. Vann, "From Radicalism to Quakerism: Gerrard Winstanley and Friends," Friends Historical Society Journal, XLIX (1959); "Diggers and Friends—A Further Note," ibid, L (1961); and "The Later Life of Gerrard Winstanley," Journal of the Histbry of Ideas, XXVI (1965).

¹⁴ Nell Eurich, Science in Utopia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), p. 314.

¹⁵ Hill, The Law of Freedom and Other Essays, p. 46.

¹⁶ Bacon in Ideal Commonwealths, edited by Henry Morley (New York: The Colonial Press, 1901), p. 129.

¹⁷ R.L. Greaves, "Gerrard Winstanley and Educational Reform in Puritan England," British Journal of Educational Studies, XVII (1969), p. 169.

¹⁸Nature and Civilization, p. 273.

¹⁹ See discussion in ibid, p. 183.