We carry an article by JM Thorn of Ireland’s Socialist Democracy on the Irish dimension of the upcoming election for British Parliament. Yet more proof that, even by the peculiarly undemocratic notions of bourgeois democracy, the North of Ireland remains a glaring peculiarity. Splintered Sunrise is currently doing a “Know Your Constituency” series with his usual wit and insight in the run up to the 6th of May. Required reading for followers of the Wee Province.
One of the many claims made for the peace process was that it would allow “normal politics” to assert itself in the north. This was underpinned by the assumption that the political settlement had resolved the constitutional question and weakened the communal based politics that had been dominant for so long. Since the Good Friday Agreement, and through subsequent agreements and negotiations, we have been have been assured by a range of range groups in society, most notably the trade union movement, that the advent of “normal politics” was at hand. What normal politics was defined as ranged from a focus by existing parties on economic and social issues to a complete realignment along left/right lines. This perspective even included some socialist groups who held out the hope for the development of class politics.
However, such a perspective really flew in the face of facts. For as the peace process has developed and the political settlement taken shape it has became clear that sectarianism, rather than weakening and fading away, has actually been strengthened. People in the north, both in terms of how they live and the attitudes they hold, are more divided than ever. This is driven to some degree by a political settlement that is built on the acceptance and preservation of communal division. The most obvious example is that Assembly members have to designate themselves as belonging to one community or the other in order to exercise a full vote. Every issue, from education to health, from economic development to the arts, is death with within a sectarian framework. This has been reinforced by openly sectarian organisations such as loyalists and the Loyal Orders being promoted and patronised by the state. Sectarianism in the north has now taken on an institutionalised form.
Despite all the evidence we were still being asked to believe that the current general election was going to herald a new form of politics. Much of this focused on the linkup between the Ulster Unionists and the Conservative Party. However, the Conservative’s promise to bring “non-sectarian normal politics” into the north and its commitment not to “enter any sectarian pact” was looking shaky even before the election was called. In the run up to the election, during the negotiations over the transfer of policing and justice powers, it was revealed that the Conservatives had sponsored secret talks between the DUP and the Unionists. It was reported that the agenda included the establishment of a new unionist formation in the north and the terms under which unionist MPs would support a post election Conservative government. The Conservatives were also giving indications that they would be prepared to change the workings of the Assembly to further favour unionism, and to peruse an explicitly pro-unionist line when dealing with the north. David Cameron publicly renounced the statement by former Conservative Prime Minister John Major that Britain had no economic or strategic interest in the north. (It should be remembered that this was part of the Downing Street Declaration, and had been one of the main points on which Sinn Fein promoted the peace process among its supporters.)
Alongside the Conservative talks, the DUP and UUP were also engaged in talks sponsored by the Orange Order. These focused on attempts to agree on unionist unity candidates to unseat nationalist MP’s in the forthcoming general election. Such efforts came to fruition when both the DUP and UUP announced they would be standing aside in Fermanagh/South Tyrone in favour of former chief executive of Fermanagh District Council, Rodney Connor. Though styling himself as a cross community “independent” Connor made his unionist leanings very clear and also pledged to take the Tory whip if elected. Despite its earlier commitment on pacts, this arrangement received the endorsement of the Conservatives. This prompted the resignation of a local Conservative official who denounced the party’s aim of introducing a new brand of non-sectarian national politics into the north as a “a total sham”. Following on from this the Orange Order in Sandy Row wrote to the UUP leader Reg Empey demanding that his party and the Conservatives agree to a similar deal for South Belfast in order to unseat the SDLP’s Alasdair McDonnell. Just before the close of nominations the DUP made the extraordinary offer of gifting the UUP an Assembly seat if they would give their candidate a free run in the constituency. Nothing came of this but it did expose the lengths that unionists were prepared to go to in order to remove a Catholic/Nationalist representative.
The initial response of nationalists was to denounce the unionist pact as sectarian. But this soon gave way to their own form of sectarianism, with Gerry Adams calling on the SDLP to enter a pact with Sinn Fein to counter that of the unionists. His only justification for this was the claim that Sinn Fein was responding to what its members had “been getting on the doorsteps”. When Margaret Ritchie rejected his proposal Adams accused her of having “failed her first leadership test”. But what does it say of the leadership of Sinn Fein that they should pander to the base sectarian attitude of keeping the other lot out. Is this really so different to the motivation of the unionists? The call for a nationalist pact demonstrates the complete decay of Sinn Fein as a political party. Even the basic ideal of Irish Republicanism, of uniting Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter, has been abandoned in favour of mobilising people on a communal basis. However, such a trajectory is inevitable once it has been accepted that the struggle in Ireland is not one for self-determination but between two communities.
In many ways the election within nationalism is an irrelevance, as it will not change anything no matter who comes out on top. The only dynamic is the battle within unionism and how well the anti-power sharing TUV performs. A good election for them, in which they may not win seats but do establish themselves as a major force within unionism, will have a destabilising affect on the DUP and their ability to maintain support among their ranks for a continuation of power sharing. The general election will also serve as an indictor of the next year’s Assembly election. I f the results suggest a three way split within unionism the prospects for the continuation of the Assembly and executive in their current form are poor. What unionist leader would serve under a Sinn Fein first minister? In these circumstances there would be pressure to push the system towards “voluntary coalition” and then unionist majority rule. Indeed, the Conservatives, who are likely to be in Government at the time, and possibly dependent on the support of the UUP and DUP, have already indicted that they are prepared to introduce such changes.
So much for new politics coming through in the general election. If anything the north is sinking back into the political divisions that marked the old Stomont. This is even more the case now that the cross community Alliance party, which had styled itself as the official opposition, has joined the executive. 27 April 2010
At last weekend’s Labor Notes Conference in Dearborn, Michigan (April 22-4, 2010) (of which too many SNAFUS to mention combined with work disappointedly prevented me from attending) there was a panel discussing labor solidarity with Palestine; a controversial subject here in North America, as all Palestine discussion is. Not surprisingly, in much of the rest of the world, this discussion is well advanced. After all, the great majority of the world’s people and the world’s workers not only support Palestine, but identify with its suffering. Their solidarity is born of an empathy rooted in common experience and there exist deep connections between unions in Palestine and much of the rest of the world. But, when it comes to Israel/Palestine, what the rest of the world thinks doesn’t matter. It’s how the US perceives its interests that matter and for that reason building a solidarity movement within the United States is an essential task in the development of the Palestinian struggle.
Nowhere can that solidarity be more controversial, except perhaps in certain Universities, than in the labor movement. Not only is there a long-established opposition to having the labor movement take on political issues at all; additionally, Palestine is the Third Rail of US politics and given the unions subservience to the Democratic Party (traditionally more pro-Israel than the Republicans) any singing not from the hymn sheet is bound to provoke a backlash. Combine that with the association too many union members and leaders have between Palestine and the “War on Terror”, all in the context of good old-fashioned racism, and one gets a sense of why it is a brave activists determined to raise the issue. How that solidarity is manifested is still hotly debated. Boycott and divestment are those most talked about, and there is much to be said for that campaign.
Not talked about as much are things like sympathy strikes, hot cargoing or direct union aid (rather than through some specious NGO) and the struggle for demands politically in which workers themselves would directly engage. Not surprising, since none of things are talked about in any context (except at places like Labor Notes). When unions in this country had only five (five!?) major work stoppages in 2009 and have answered the greatest crisis the working class has faced in generations with nothing but an exhausted sigh then we would be wise to not expect much in defense of our Palestinian brothers and sisters. These union “leaders” are incapable of defending their own members; defend Palestinian workers? Not likely.
With a few notable exceptions, any movement towards union solidarity with Palestine is coming from the ranks, just as (with rare exception) any movement or energy against the assault on working people has also come from the rank and file. Hmmm, perhaps we should generalize from that… and organize to replace the bureaucrats with representatives of the rank and file who will defend their class’s interests. It does seem a logical conclusion, but we’ll leave that for another post.
Building solidarity among North American workers with Palestinian workers in their struggle for their national and class liberation is not only correct from the standpoint of justice and of principle, but it can also help to change to focus of the struggle, both in the US and in Israel/Palestine, from the simplistic notions of “two tribes locked in an age-old religious conflict” to one that places that conflict firmly in the context of the struggle between the imperialist world and those oppressed by empire; between global capital and global labor, while not at all ignoring that particular to Palestine and to Jewish history. In the present context, even small steps in that direction seem like leaps.
Much could be done to support the Palestinian struggle for self-determination from here in the US, certainly much more than has been done, but I can’t think of a more needed and potentially powerful project than mobilizing labor in support of Palestine. The implications, not just for the struggle in Palestine but for the struggle of workers here at home, are enormous. Of course, we are very far from such a campaign, but any movement towards an independent working class “foreign policy” can’t help but promote independent policies domestically as well. Any move in that direction is to be encouraged; quite apart from the urgent necessity of developing solidarity now with the Palestinians. Here then are the presentations.
Hasan Newash of the Palestine Office-Michigan addresses the Labor for Palestine meeting in preparing for a planned conference call from a trade unionist in Gaza. Because of technical difficulties the conference call was not completed.
A report from Canada on Labor Unions’ efforts to support Palestine and efforts to end the occupation by long time solidarity activist Katherine Nastovski and member of CUPE-Ontario.
What Giselle wrote in about “abundance” and “sustainability” on a previous post on David Harvey’s views got me thinking. I originally wrote this in reply to her comment, but thought it would be better etiquette as a post since it turned into a full blown rant. So here is my riff on Giselle’s comment:
A political change and a change in the language of politics has seen the notion of “abundance”, a “land of of milk and honey” invoked by nearly every socialist, transform into a vile consumerist earth-killing notion of well fed, elite Western workers in the minds of many. In some ways that journey is odd, because it misses what is common to both, but Marxists are not without blame in some of the confusion. However, I think underlying most of the confusion is the fact that the things essential to our survival are also commodities. Food and the like are not primarily produced for people’s use, but for exchange value. What feeds us kills us; no wonder there’s confusion. The change in language, to say nothing of the confusion, has most certainly been conditioned by the current ecological crisis and the various reactions to it. Some of this is just a difference over how words are used and the context in which they are used, some of it a difference of ideas and interests.
An abundance of certain things seems to me to be absolutely essential; scarcity breeds war and bureaucracy to say nothing of ensuring against unforseens and nature’s nature. It’s always wise to fill the granary with more than enough grain before the winter winds arrive. It remains a truism (deserving of dialectical unraveling) that we must satisfy certain needs before we can even begin to explore “the better angels of our nature” (Lincoln’s use of words is enough to earn him “greatest President” title). “Abundance” can only then be measured in the number of healthy years well lived (the “well” of which we freely define). That’s clearly Harvey’s position too.
I think, for Marxists, by “abundance” was often meant the material foundation on which freedom as the “consciousness of necessity” could be based. It has never meant simply a mass of commodities or even of goods only realized for their use. In many ways Marxists have meant the end of the commodity and the redefinition of use. Obviously an ever expanding capitalist market, with all of its “abundance”, has proven incapable of providing even the most basic of needs to billions of people. “Abundance” can not be purchased in any marketplace; it requires social equality and democratic planning, two things definitely not on offer by even the most benign imaginable of capitalist regimes.
One of the reasons I think that leftists don’t talk about sustainability so much (some do) is the kind of branding that the notion has undergone thanks to those wily eco-capitalists. Of course, by “sustainability” they mean their profits. I too, like the idea, first and foremost because it implies long term planning and a relationship with the earth (even if limited to the earth’s resources). I like even better the notion of forging an economy to heal the “metabolic rift” between our society and nature. But that is hardly a slogan for a placard.
In any case, we have to leave behind utterly the idea that only an expanding economy is a healthy economy; quite the opposite in fact. A healthy economy is sustainable, but it is also dynamic. Making sustainability and dynamism common features requires the emancipation of labor. One of the proofs of the best of Marxism’s own dynamism is that, in the last decade or so, the view of alienation (and therefore the ‘root’ of our species distress) has changed dramatically. No longer is it possible to talk about the alienation of labor without talking also about alienation from nature.
The best of Marxism has met the challenge of the current social and ecological crisis with by placing our conflict with nature at the feet of our conflicted labor. If labor is understood as the point at which nature is transformed, then labor also become the medium of our relationship with nature. When our labor has been alienated, even as it was in eras well before capitalism’s reign, our relationship with nature has as well. Reclaiming our labor means reclaiming our relationship with nature; reclaiming our relationship with nature means reclaiming or labor. Compare this, Marxist, response to the ecological crisis nearly all agree is upon us to that of the capitalists and their ideologues.
Kicking and screaming most have come to the acceptance of blatant facts. Their solution in the face of catastrophe? The best of them offer the banality of words and the wise hand of the market (late cause of said catastrophe), where pollution can now be traded along with coal and Lysol comes printed with a little green leaf assuring its harmony with Mother Earth. All of capitalism’s perfidy and sordid talent is on display in the new field of environmental advertising.
Many of the most committed and sincere environmentalists are too often trapped within the framework of commodity production. As if the problem were what we produced, or even how, rather than our system of reproduction. I have heard the most radical analysis on the scale and scope of the crisis only to end in a program of urban farming (I’m not at all opposed to urban farms). What is always missing is the agency of the working class, and through them, socialized production. And yet the response of many Marxists (not without some kicking and screaming) has been to reconceptualize, to begin from the beginning again, the way we view our relationship with nature.
A kind of new Prometheanism has emerged; one in which liberated humanity recovers nature’s fire from an expropriating Lord. That lord is not Nature Blind but the blindness of the market. Fire is such a perfect metaphor for nature; it is energy, it transforms matter, it warms homes and cooks our meals and yet it will scorch the greenest pasture without a thought. Nature is not to dominate, but neither can there be a complacency in our relationship. Our relationship will always be fraught with tension. We are, after all, mortal. However that tension can be dynamic instead of destructive…if we give up trying to resolve it. Mortality is the number one reason to live, that we haven’t found our way to make it worth living is a realization of Hell.
“Ecology” has (to be) been placed at the center of our current framework; gone are the base Promethean notions of humanity’s domination of nature that were so much a part of past Marxist discourse. The trend developed by folks like Walt Sheasby, Paul Burkett and John Bellamy Foster twenty years ago (begun by looking back to Marx) has profoundly shaped the changing response of Marxists to these issues. These changes can’t but be welcomed; the framework they begin to provide is essential if we are to answer the crisis in a way worthy of its seriousness.
The Dirty Three (Mick Turner, Warren Ellis, Jim White) last year in San Francisco shaking the foundations with Indian Love Song. The Dirty Three comrades; don’t just observe, participate. If you will follow, they will lead. An accompaniment to my long exhale as the last paper is turned in and the semester is over. Two more classes to go and twenty years after I should have graduated high school, I’ll be graduating college. Did someone say “put your feet up and have a spliff”? Well, at least that’s what I thought I heard.
This photo (and the story behind it) belong in the So Cool You Must Share file, so here it is. Taken in Carlow, 1921 after their escape from Mountoy Prison, Mae Burke, Eithne Coyle and Linda Kearns (left to right) stand on the Butcher’s Apron with a look in their eye that says it all. A documentary on Linda Kearns fascinating life can be viewed at RTE’s Irish language station TG4 (the documentary has subtitles).
David Harvey on Brazilian TV talking about the trends that led to the current crisis and the limits of capital. The interview begins about two minutes in and is in English.
In the last years more and more Marxists are revising the call for “abundance” with the call for “enough”. Here, for example, Harvey talks about a zero growth economy; something that I imagine would make Marxists from a certain generation turn in their graves. However, good old Ernie Mandel touched on some of the same themes, if only too briefly, all the way back in 1962 in the second volume of his Marxist Economic Theory (sadly not online). Many, if not most, Marxists in the 20th century placed heavy emphasis on expanding the economy, and often with good reason. The underdevelopment capitalism subjected much of the world to made them dependent on imperialism. That dynamic had and has to be reversed.
However, capitalism creates its abundances and surpluses, in part, because of over-production and the over-production of useless or even damaging – commodities at that. The productive process is itself incredibly wasteful, never mind the product. It is no Malthusian retreat to say that resources are finite and that growth has limits; that exceeding those limits could be catastrophic. Everywhere our contemporary world is providing evidence of that catastrophe, we don’t have to imagine it. I have no problem with Harvey’s basic assertion: the only long-term sustainable solution to life on this planet is zero growth, and that limiting the growth of the economy in no way implies limiting the development of the economy.
Marx wrote that, from the point of view of labor, productivity would ideally be measured in the free time of the worker. I don’t remember any Soviet economist getting up at a Party meeting and ever saying, “Comrades, we have just achieved maximum productivity in the Volgograd Steel Factory; the 16 hour work week!” I agree with Marx; measure my productivity by how much fishing I’ve done.
And abundance? Capitalism has told us that abundance means stocked store shelves and the square footage of our house. The abundance I’m after is healthy years well lived. And that has nothing to do with access to 47 different shampoos or a new model ipod every m0nth. Of course “abundance” and “enough” are both socially defined and “enough” can’t simply be a mathematical formula; the needs we require “enough” to satisfy are not just material. “Wants” and “needs” are not necessarily counter-posed either (as anyone with a toddler knows); capitalism tends to make us want what we do not need and need what we do not want.
There are the most basic of needs however, which capitalism, with all of its abundance, is incapable of meeting. Detroit has thousands of abandoned homes…and thousands of homeless people. Hungry people, every minute of the day, walk by groceries that throw out dumpsters full of food. Some nations starve while others are forced to purge their gluttony. The most pressing need now is a change in how those social definitions, of “abundance” and “enough” are formed and by whom.
Below is a greatly truncated term paper I just finished (with grammar quirks due to pasting from Word). I’m not sure how good it is (remember I’m an undergrad!), but I had fun with it. Some readers of the blog might find it interesting and are welcome to correct my mistakes, but don’t tell the Professor. Needless to say, I have a growing appreciation of the subject and in a different world might dedicate myself to studying nothing but the beheading of kings and the New Model Army, earnest Digger communes, randy Ranters circles and armed Leveller mutinies, some refusing to go to Ireland. Alas, more term papers await.
When the Digger colony began to till the commons on St. George’s Hill, Surrey on April 1, 1649 they were participating in a centuries old claim on the commons and the traditions of peasant rebellions long past, responding to the political upheavals and changes of the English Civil War and Revolution and, finally, by insisting that the popular classes themselves take direction of the country with the aim of social production and distribution they prophetically announced the, as yet unformed, coming class struggles of the modern era.
The Diggers did not appeal to kings, clergy and barons to redress their grievances as did the peasants of 1381; their appeal was primarily to the people themselves. They demanded a world without kings or barons as a precondition to the redress of their grievances. The masses: laborers, peasants, the property-less, urban artisans all were entering history in their own name and in their own interests. However divided and contradictory those interests might be the gentry squires, barons, clergy and monarchy would no longer be alone in asserting their rights. The actions of the Restoration notwithstanding, even now the nature and limits of democracy in a society divided by class have yet to be solved.
While the social weight of those called to the Digger banner, or broadly influenced by similar trends, could not be united, articulated and brought to bear, making their dreams remain dreams, it is because they acted in the direction of those dreams that that their historic failure would also be their historic triumph. Deeply rooted in their past and their present, framing their arguments in the religious discourse of the day, their words and deeds have found echo in nearly every social upheaval since. In some ways their claims sound utterly modern; in others their words belong to the bygone days of feudalism and the European wars of religion and succession. However, to understand the Diggers it is also necessary to understand what came after, for the Diggers were the product, not just of feudalism and absolutism, but of the capitalist transformation of land and labor that 17th century England was beginning to experience.
In some ways the Diggers are a link between the feudal past and the capitalist present, in others they are a reflection of that transition and in still others, a harbinger of the future. Marginal as they were in the heady events of 1640 to 1660, the episode of the Diggers continues to capture the imagination of successive generations. At the same time they receive continued derision or dismissal from those defending now what the Diggers struggled against then. Perhaps more so, after all, our society is ever more free, ever more based on property, than could be imagined in the time of Gerrard Winstanley, and yet, quoting Winstanley:
“All men have stood for freedom and now the common enemy has gone you are all like men in a mist, seeking for freedom and know not where nor what it is, and those of the rich among you are ashamed and afraid to own it, because it comes clothed in a clownish garment. Freedom is the man that will turn the world upside down, therefore no wonder he hath enemies” (Morton ed. 249)
The years before the English Civil War burst open in 1642 were years of profound economic, political and religious and social change change. Those changes would find both realization and impetus under the conditions of Civil War. While scholars are divided over the role of class struggle in the period, it undoubtedly occurred. While some historians have tended to see the Civil War as a falling out among the ruling elite, others have analyzed the period as a Revolution in which the rising capitalist classes contended with the old feudal classes for supremacy. The confusion of the Civil War is reflected in the differences over how to interpret the war’s causes and outcomes, for both a conflict between the ruling classes and among classes occurred. This conflict, given the realities of the day, had elements of a religious war as well. Taken together, it is not surprising that historians still disagree. However, to deny the responsibility of the struggle between old and rising classes is to miss the trends, some in their infancy others more developed, that would come to dominate English social conflict to the present day.
In some ways, feudalism’s hold on land hadn’t recovered from the trauma of the plague years of the 14th century. How and who worked and managed land was a question whose answer evolved in the years since the Black Death. Property began to be bought and sold, rather than simply inherited. The deaths of so many peasants, yeoman and gentry made a redistribution of land necessary, as well as a new system of labor to work the land. The enclosure of common whereby land owned by a landlord was open to all for the pasture of animals, reaping fodder, collecting of firewood, etc had a fairly long history. The ancient right allowed peasants access to land for purposes essential to their survival, but not available to them through their small holdings or meager leased lots. Such enclosures began in earnest under the Tudors and were defended in a 1654 Council of Privy debate as being an” advantage to husbandry and tillage to which all commons are destructive.” (Hill 43).
Destructive to the market interests of the landowners, perhaps, but essential to the peasant renters and small holders. The lord claimed right over the commons and, over the years, the enclosures could began to be sold or deeded away, forever denying peasant’s access to which they considered a birthright as a member of the community. While previously the animals, reared primarily to sustain domestic consumption of peasant families, freely grazed on the land. Wealthier peasants and yeoman enriched themselves in this process creating an even stronger, non-noble, land owning class. Many peasants, increasingly replaced by sheep, became itinerants, hiring out their labor, occasionally being drawn to the towns and small cities to find work as artisans, only finding themselves joining the ranks of the vagabonds and urban poor, the deprivation of which was often far more extreme than even the worst years as peasants. Many more left for England’s growing colonies.
Those domestic animals began to be replaced by flocks of sheep, whose wool was produced for the market, powering England’s first industrial revolution. At the same time England’s reach was expanding across the globe. The defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, as well as technological advancements (largely stolen from the Portuguese) gave England confidence and increasing power on the seas. Soon English traders, already becoming more and more prominent in the domestic English market, could be found in nearly every corner of the globe. Mercantilism and merchants were becoming a force in English society, creating fraternities like the for it was through them rather than through the king’s armies that an Empire was being born. Financing those trade expeditions were joint stock companies, and emerging financial institutions not connected to the kingly purgatives. Merchants, commercial landowners, wage laborers and technicians were still greatly outnumbered by agricultural laborers and, whatever the social power they were beginning to wield, that power was not reflected in the governing of the Realm. There the monarchy, barons, gentry and Anglican clergy still retained all of the levers of state, indeed it was there economy that still predominated England. They were in power, in part, because they had real power, despite the upstarts, dissenters and “new men”.
Ever since Parliament began as an institution under the reign of Edward I and, even more so, with the establishment of the Commons as a separate body under Edward III the monarchy and Parliament acted, with great tension, as a single body politic. The king’s authority existed through the assent of Parliament, who largely controlled the monarchy’s purse strings. The Parliament itself was beholden to the monarch for it was the monarch that called and dismissed the Parliament, often selling or influencing membership to its bodies. Parliament acted as the voice of the barons and landlords, of which the king was only the largest and most powerful. While their differences were real, they were both vitally interested in the preservation of the system to which their power rested. They were beholden to one another. That dynamic began to shift, especially during the reign of James I who was eager to reassert his Divine Rights, including that of monopoly which was hurting the burgeoning merchants. The failure of the Great Contract boded poorly for future relations.
Charles II tried to circumvent Parliament recalcitrant in paying taxes by raising funds through assertion of his historic rights of custom duties, tonnage and poundage. After 1629, Charles had had enough from Parliament and decided to rule on his own with the help of a Privy Council. By making peace with France, governing frugally and asserting his ancient prerogatives forcefully; selling knighthoods and lands, collecting customs and duties and greatly expanding “ship money”. All of this made Charles incredibly unpopular, including with his natural allies among the aristocrats and barons. When Presbyterian Scotland rebelled in response to Charles’ attempt to impose the Anglican Church in 1640, the king was forced to go to Parliament to raise funds to fend of the attack. After eleven years Parliament chose to use Parliament as it was first intended, to air grievances. Charles duly abolished alienating his natural allies, the landed gentry, whose voice was Parliaments.
In religion also there were dramatic, often violent convulsions. When Henry VIII broke with the Catholic Church in 1531, Europe had already been in a state of violent religious upheaval for a century. Indeed, England herself was no stranger to this upheaval. Lollardism had been a persistent religious opposition since the 14th century, and was one of many. Far too complicated to give a thorough account here, with the advent of printing and the translation of the Bible out of Latin religious discussion became available to far wider populations than ever before. Central to this new reality was how Christians should relate to God and who, on Earth, has the right to speak for God. And beyond that, was God’s heaven a gift of piety, and of obedience, or a duty, an imperative of the Scriptures, to create by our own hands? Religion and politics were intimately entwined, not just in practice, but also at the level of ideas. For most people in 17th century England the Bible was the prism in which the world was viewed through. This, in combination with the emerging social and class conflicts developing in Stuart England, meant that “…the culture common to both upper and lower classes was biblical culture, which could be interpreted in two ways—to defend the existing order or to attack the existing order.” (Manning 142) The assaults by James I and Charles I on Dissenters would only add to the level of anger and militancy rising in the discourse.
The social and political landscape created was Christopher Hill called “masterless men” (Hill 16). Vagabonds and beggars wandered the countryside. The rural poor who were no longer dependent on a single lord or tied to the land by service, their future was bleak indeed. Wealthy yeoman, then purchasing the hundreds of thousands of acres sold by the Crown to finance itself, while under the thumb of the barons were not obliged to answer to them. Urban artisans, while tied to guilds and craft were no longer just in the employ of the nobility, other employers had emerged. Traders and merchants, who while working in the constraints imposed by anachronistic forms, were in the end answerable to anonymous profit, and a great deal of profit was being made, even in the financial difficulties of the mid 17th century. When the Civil War began in 1642, these forces found themselves watching the debate in Parliament largely as outsiders, the war would make them, at least briefly, participants in deciding the course of England. In some ways the Civil War, and the Revolution, would begin to make England their country for the first time.
When, on 6 January, 1645 Parliament established a new military force, The New Model Army, after being unhappy with the efforts in the war and the limits to the way in which soldiers were organized and brought to the field. The Self-Denying Ordinance of the following April, stated that no sitting member of Parliament could command in the army or the navy. The first years of the war had seen a great deal of localism, the armies being raised in the old way from the estates and coffers of the big landowners. Many of these gentry were half-hearted in their persecution of the war, some holding out for compromise with Charles’ cavaliers. A new, professional army was created. Many of those “masterless men” were impressed into service. Though pay was to be meager, this army operated differently. Some officers came to be elected, soldiers were encouraged to read and understand what they were to fight for. As Cromwell said; “I had rather have a plain, russet-coated Captain, that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than what you call a Gentleman and is nothing else” (Sabine 265).A “Soldiers Catechism” was introduced outlining the new regime. Unlike many previous armies, this professional was well supplied, often by those made rich through the expropriation of Royalist lands that occurred during the conflict.
This new army proved its effectiveness at the Battle of Nasbey on 16 June, 1645 where the Royalist forces were routed. By May of 1647 the Parliamentarians had won the first English Civil War, but that victory would expose the difference developing in the Parliamentary camp. Nowhere were those difference more pronounced than in the New Model Army itself. Regiments of the army elected agitators met with other representatives to discuss a future constitution governing the country. One wing of those gathered, known to us as the Levellers, issued and pamphlet The Agreement of the People putting forward relatively modest demands. The Grandees of the Army were opposed and in October of that year Cromwell proposed the more limited Heads of Proposals, more ore less putting of further discussion. The Army, and Cromwell, would attempt to balance the different forces; those who sought a modified return to the monarchy and those, like the Levellers, who increasingly looked to Parliament as the instrument of the government with sovereignty resting with the people (or at least some of the people). Leveller agitation was increasing and finding echo in the aspirations of many outside of the Army.
In 1649, after the defeat of the Royalists and capture of Charles II in the Second Civil War, the Levellers, another Agreement was introduced. Also a compromise, this new agreement included: The right to vote for all men over the age of 21 barring servants, beggars and Royalists. No army officer, treasurer or lawyer could be an MP, annual elections were to be held for Parliament with members allowed only one term. Equality before the law, trials by jury chosen from the community, the abolishment of the death penalty in all cases but murder, abolition of prison for debt, abolition of tithes, military conscription, monopolies and excise taxes (Sabine 445-6). Charles was executed only days after; the Agreement would not be considered. The Rump Parliament would declare a Council of State and, having defeated the Royalists, Cromwell now went after the opposition to his left. The monarchy was gone, as was the House of Lords and the power of the Bishops (all of which we live with today). The war was won. When some Army regiments mutinied over lack of pay or service in Ireland or the continued power of the big gentry in the land, Cromwell responded with great force. Leveller militants died heroically on the scaffolds or with gun in hand, their freedom’s proclamations adorning their hats in battle.
The collapse of the age old monarchy, divinely protected and sanctified by history ancient, opened minds to new possibilities. The religious revolts of the last century found worldly expression; the world might be made new again. Religious ideas had cast those possibilities into millennial providence. Religious sects proselytized, but by and large what they were demanding was of this world. Some wanted to bring those ideas down to earth as well. Gerrard Winstanely, born in Wigan, Lancashire in 1609, viewed God as the “reason” within us (Hill 213) and wrote in Law and Freedom (1652):
“this doctrine [religion] is made a cloak of policy by the subtle elder brother to cheat his simple younger brother of the freedoms of the earth….The younger brother, being weak in spirit and having not a grounded knowledge of creation nor of himself is terrified and lets go his hold in the earth and submits himself to be a slave to his brother for fear of damnation in hell after death and in hopes to get heaven thereby—so his eyes are put out and his reason is blinded… 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 birthright and what is to be done by them here on earth while they are living.” (Sabine 507)
For many of the Levellers freedom and private property were inseparable. If you had property you had, at least a modicum of, independence and the possibility to win more. If you had no property, than too your independence was determined by access to property. Freedom to own property and freedom of conscience became intertwined in a world where property had been the sole domain of the most powerful social and religious forces in the country. The Levellers, or the left wing of the Levellers, were anticipating both the French and American revolutions and found adherents among yeoman farmers, artisans, and even some peasants, still the bulk of England’s population in the 17th century. Still, in the England of the 17th century, and for many years after, these forces were to inchoate and marginal, the landed gentry still entrenched and manufacture still largely at the service of the narrowest classes of society. Even without repression, the social conditions were not yet in the favor of marginal, yet rising, classes to whom the Levellers appealed.
A different vision, one that expanded on the Levellers calls for political equality to include social equality emerged. Many of these radicals had no connections with the New Model Army. However, the tumult of ideas exploding in the years after 1645 brought many people into discussions of a breadth and level impossible in times of social peace. Literacy, expanding since Tudor times, allowed those previously outside of public discourse to follow and comment more than ever before. For some, like Winstanley and George Everard, political equality was impossible without social equality. While supporting many of the Leveller demands, the core of the Leveller argument (liberty tied to property), would perpetuate the problem rather than resolve it. Winstanley looked not just to the landless peasants, but with great prescience, he also recognized the growing role of wage labor in the society was divided and exploited. What also separated this vision with those of the Levellers is that, while the Levellers largely appealed to the powerful classes for redress, the ‘True Levellers” appealed to the disenfranchised and landless to help themselves, for “action is the life of all and if thou dost not act thou dost nothing” (Bradstock 16).
Winstanley was born into a family of clothiers in northern England and won an apprenticeship in London, ruined by the outbreak of the Civil War he moved to Surrey where is wife, Sarah, hailed from. There he got work herding other men’s cattle and scrapped by as a laborer. He has lived the vagaries of existence that those without privilege must. For the Diggers, as they came to be known, liberty and property were an anathema. The enclosures were not just depriving poor people of sustenance; they were depriving them of a natural right to the earth itself. Echoing the myth that the Norman Conquest in which a foreign power robbed a free people of their land, Winstanely wrote in the Levellers True Standard (1649):
“The power of enclosing land and owning property was brought into the creation by your ancestors by the sword; which first did murder their fellow creatures, men, and after plunder or steal away their land, and left this land successively to you, their children. And therefore, though you did not kill or thieve, yet you hold that cursed thing in … See Moreyour hand by the power of the sword; and so you justify the wicked deeds of your fathers, and that sin of your fathers shall be visited upon the head of you and your children to the third and fourth generation, and longer too, till your bloody and thieving power be rooted out of the land.” (Sabine 163)
Winstanley understood the earth in terms that most agriculturalist societies do: as the giver and sustainer of life. To be separated from the land you worked was to be deprived your true relationship with the earth. For Winstanley, private ownership of land, “the common treasury”, was the Curse, the Fall of man. The earth, like man, was a universal, indivisible body, whose artificial and competing divisions were an abomination, a crime against nature and man. Worse still was to be separated from the land all together by becoming a hired laborer. Winstanley’s abhorrence of wage labor was not just because he, in a sort of feudal response, viewed it as unnatural to a land-based peasant society, He also had a rudimentary understanding of what, by the time of Marx, Smith and Ricardo, would become known as the :labor theory of value.”:
No man can be rich, but … by his own labors or the labors of others helping him. If a man have no help from his neighbors, he shall never gather an estate of hundreds and thousands a year. If other men help him … then those riches are his neighbors as well as his, for they be the fruit of other mens’ labors as well as his own. (Sabine 246)
And again:
This Declares likewise to all Laborers, or such as are called Poor people, that they shall not dare to work for Hire, for any Landlord, or for any that is lifted up above others; for by their labours, they have lifted up Tyrants and Tyranny; and by denying to labor for Hire, they shall pull them down again. He that works for another, either for Wages, or to pay him Rent, works unrighteously, and still lifts up the Curse; but they that are resolved to work and eat together, making the Earth a Common Treasury, doth joyn hands with Christ, to lift up the Creation from Bondage, and restores all things from the Curse. (Sabine 242)
If private property were inimical to democracy, than on what basis should society organize? In previous years the call by peasants might have been to strengthen feudal rights which, at least, gave many access to land and work guaranteed by the obligations of birth. They did not just issue appeals, but as was their call, they acted. In the spring of, after publishing The New Law of Righteousness in 1649 a small band occupied the common lands of St. George’s Hill on the Surrey property of Frances Drake. They declared the land their common birthright and cleared the scrub and attempted sewed crops, though the commons were long used for wood, grazing and fallow. Not more than thirty cottages grew up in the commune, though other communes would be established around the country. Always a small and isolated trend, their radical ideas could not have aroused the suspicion of the local gentry, and powers further afield. Winstanley was calling for something like a general strike in which peasants and workers would keep the fruits of their own labors, without paying alms to the masters. In some ways it makes sense, while wage workers would not be able to act on such advice (without joining a Digger commune), agricultural workers and peasants, with access to food bearing land, might just be able to…had they been ideologically cohesive, organized and prepared. All of which were obvious impossibilities given the age.
However, materially, Winstanley was no utopian. His ideas sprang from the world around him. He proposed in the Laws of Freedom (1652):
“The earth is to be planted and the fruits reaped and carried into barns and storehouses by the assistance of every family. And if any man or family want corn or other provision, they may go to the storehouses and fetch without money. If they want a horse to ride, go into the fields in summer, or to the common stables in winter, and receive one from the keepers, and when your journey is performed, bring him where you had him, without money.”
Aside from the obvious references to money, what he proposes is, more or less, the same kind of production and activities that are already performed. Winstanley and the Diggers were not just primitive agriculturalist communards. He profoundly believed in creating abundance, opening the possibility of education to all those previously denied, and therefore unleashing the great untapped potential of so many, now enslaved by ignorance and want. In this remarkable passage (written 350 years ago) in the Laws of Freedom Winstanley writes:
In every trade, art and science, whereby they may find out the secrets of the creation, and that they may know how to govern the earth in right order…there is traditional knowledge, which is attained by reading or by the instruction of others, and not practical but leads to an idle life; and this is not good…Therefore to prevent idleness and the danger of Machiavellian cheats, it is profitable for the commonwealth that children be trained lip in trades and some bodily employment,-as well as in learning languages or the histories of former ages. And if this course were taken, there would be no idle person nor beggars in the land, and much work would be done by that now lazy generation for the enlarging of the common treasuries. And in the managing of any trade, let no young wit be crushed in his invention; for if any man desire to make a new trial of his skill in any trade or science, the overseers shall not hinder him, but encourage him therein: that so the spirit of knowledge may have his full growth in man, to find out the secret in every art. And let everyone who finds out a new invention have a deserved honour given him; and certainly, 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 (the spirit of the whole creation) in all his works; for fear of want, and care to pay rent to taskmasters, hath hindered many rare inventions. (Sabine 521-3)
The Diggers were not to last. The local landlords called in the Army and Lord Fairfax arrived, but found they were doing no harm and urged the landlords to use the court to evict the commons. Gangs were set on the communes; houses burnt, members assaulted and equipment destroyed. The court would find that, after the peace of the commune was assaulted, that the communards were disrupting the peace and ordered them removed. Some set up again at nearby Little Heath, but everywhere radicals, Ranters and Diggers were being repressed.
The revolutionary waves of 1647-49 were receding and power was passing to the Protectorate. Winstanley would change course, after the failure of the Digger communes he appealed to Cromwell, who as victor against the old regime Winstanley was deeply respectful, to force the issue through the power of the Army. Winstanley, failing to win against the local landlords by winning enough peasants by persuasion and deed, now tried to persuade Cromwell and the Army. No longer a pacifist, Winstanley realized, perhaps through the injustice offered by the courts, that force would would be necessary. His address to Cromwell was open and, in some ways rhetorical, though he gives us here his clearest vision of the future society. The Laws of Freedom remain to this a powerful revolutionary screed to this day. Winstanley is many things, one of them is a marvelous, logical and ironic writer steeped in Biblical verse. A joy to read and still startling in its conclusions.
Winstanley himself would later (seem) to come to terms with the new regime and even the return of the monarchy in Charles II in 1660, finding himself occupying minor borough positions in the very area where a decade and half before he led Europe’s first communist movement of the modern era. Winstanley belongs with others of that crucial period, like Shakespeare and Milton, who lived and defined the change of eras. Hardly an agrarian mystic, Winstanley presaged The Age of Reason and the horrors of the Industrial Revolution.
While the Diggers remain a footnote and their ideas, even now, translated into the realties of today seem marginal; they retain a kind of prophetic potency. It is for this reason that, since they were rediscovered in the 1890s, the Diggers have become an inspiration for those still looking beyond the impasse of class division and the alienations of lives without access to power, even over themselves. Karl Marx never read Winstanley and even his knowledge of the radical movement of 17th century was clouded by time and the official histories. In Volume III of Capital, Marx wrote:
“The realm of freedom…can only consist in socialized man, the associated producers rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind force of Nature, and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favorable to, and worthy of, their human nature…” (Marx 820)
While Winstanley was no proto-Marxist, nor would he be recognized today as a socialist as we understand the term, he was most certainly a communist. Who can not be see the same vision, embraced with the same élan born of men eager to “turn the world upside down” in both men? Those notions of social solidarity, feeding our needs; physical, intellectual and emotional; healing the “metabolic rift” with the earth, inaugurated by private property and augmented by wage labor; the common ownership, not just of land and produce, but of ourselves and our future.
“I am assured that if it be rightly searched into, the inward bondages of the minde, as covetousness, pride, hypocrisie, envy, sorrow, fears, desperation, and madness are all occasioned by the outward bondage that one sort of people lay upon another.” Winstanely wrote in 1649. That we should break those ties of bondage, internal and external, these are hopes of the ages. Hopes which Winstanley, the Diggers and those like them, lit a flame in their day snuffed out, only to be rekindled by generations since, still living in dark oppression. The dim flickers of old fires are often all the warmth a wearied people seeking freedom have. The Diggers, who planted their green flag on St. George’s Hill in 1649, will continue to be such a candle in the dark.
from the film Winstanley: continues here and here.
How to describe the horror visited on the families of the Montcoal miners? Appalachian miners are right up there with immigrant fruit pickers as expendable labor powers for vermin capitalists like Don Blankenship. When your bottom line is profit, and you have every motive to circumvent regulations, than “accidents” are bound to happen. Regulations are just so many obstacles to be overcome; the way it works now they may even help to make some mines more dangerous. Until you make the bottom line safety, safety will always come later. But that’s not the world we live in; profit rules the day. It is, after all, why we do business. My guess is that if the folks going into the mine were the folks making the decisions, safety would come first. Over the years one hundred thousand miners in this country have died in such disasters at the service of someone else’s capital accumulation. More than a few of them are in the Rustbelt’s family tree (among them my great grandfather killed in a Murray City, Ohio disaster in 1917). I grew up with stories of miners, cave-ins, unions and strikes. Years after my family left the mines when there was news of a disaster on the television, no matter where, my grandparents would always anxiously follow it like those affected were of their own. I find myself doing the same.
Dwight Yoakam, of Kentucky miners stock, doing Miner’s Prayer and Hazel Dickens of West Virginia doing Coal Miner’s Grave.
The Rustbelt Radical is a personal blog. It is revolutionary, socialist and internationalist. It comes straight from the ravaged middle of the post-industrial American Midwest and yearns for the refounding of the Marxist project. The landscapes of radical history are my main interest, but other topics might include politics, economy, work, culture, war, theory, travel, music and frequent tubthumping for the free association of producers. Let me know of needed or broken links.
email: rustbeltradical@hotmail.com
"The realm of freedom...can only consist in socialized man, the associated producers rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind force of Nature, and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favorable to, and worthy of, their human nature..."
Karl Marx, Capital, Volume III, p. 820.
Easy. I encourage readers to comment, but as per The Big Lebowski you don't come into The Dude's home and piss on his rug. After your first comment is approved you can comment as you will. Anonymous posts, spam or comments of someone whose sole reason for writing is to be a jerk don't get approved. And no personal abuse; we're all better than that. Other than that fire away.
One of the many claims made for the peace process was that it would allow “normal politics” to assert itself in the north. This was underpinned by the assumption that the political settlement had resolved the constitutional question and weakened the communal based politics that had been dominant for so long. Since the Good Friday Agreement, and through subsequent agreements and negotiations, we have been have been assured by a range of range groups in society, most notably the trade union movement, that the advent of “normal politics” was at hand. What normal politics was defined as ranged from a focus by existing parties on economic and social issues to a complete realignment along left/right lines. This perspective even included some socialist groups who held out the hope for the development of class politics.
Despite all the evidence we were still being asked to believe that the current general election was going to herald a new form of politics. Much of this focused on the linkup between the Ulster Unionists and the Conservative Party. However, the Conservative’s promise to bring “non-sectarian normal politics” into the north and its commitment not to “enter any sectarian pact” was looking shaky even before the election was called. In the run up to the election, during the negotiations over the transfer of policing and justice powers, it was revealed that the Conservatives had sponsored secret talks between the DUP and the Unionists. It was reported that the agenda included the establishment of a new unionist formation in the north and the terms under which unionist MPs would support a post election Conservative government. The Conservatives were also giving indications that they would be prepared to change the workings of the Assembly to further favour unionism, and to peruse an explicitly pro-unionist line when dealing with the north. David Cameron publicly renounced the statement by former Conservative Prime Minister John Major that Britain had no economic or strategic interest in the north. (It should be remembered that this was part of the Downing Street Declaration, and had been one of the main points on which Sinn Fein promoted the peace process among its supporters.)
The initial response of nationalists was to denounce the unionist pact as sectarian. But this soon gave way to their own form of sectarianism, with Gerry Adams calling on the SDLP to enter a pact with Sinn Fein to counter that of the unionists. His only justification for this was the claim that Sinn Fein was responding to what its members had “been getting on the doorsteps”. When Margaret Ritchie rejected his proposal Adams accused her of having “failed her first leadership test”. But what does it say of the leadership of Sinn Fein that they should pander to the base sectarian attitude of keeping the other lot out. Is this really so different to the motivation of the unionists? The call for a nationalist pact demonstrates the complete decay of Sinn Fein as a political party. Even the basic ideal of Irish Republicanism, of uniting Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter, has been abandoned in favour of mobilising people on a communal basis. However, such a trajectory is inevitable once it has been accepted that the struggle in Ireland is not one for self-determination but between two communities.
In many ways the election within nationalism is an irrelevance, as it will not change anything no matter who comes out on top. The only dynamic is the battle within unionism and how well the anti-power sharing TUV performs. A good election for them, in which they may not win seats but do establish themselves as a major force within unionism, will have a destabilising affect on the DUP and their ability to maintain support among their ranks for a continuation of power sharing. The general election will also serve as an indictor of the next year’s Assembly election. I f the results suggest a three way split within unionism the prospects for the continuation of the Assembly and executive in their current form are poor. What unionist leader would serve under a Sinn Fein first minister? In these circumstances there would be pressure to push the system towards “voluntary coalition” and then unionist majority rule. Indeed, the Conservatives, who are likely to be in Government at the time, and possibly dependent on the support of the UUP and DUP, have already indicted that they are prepared to introduce such changes.
So much for new politics coming through in the general election. If anything the north is sinking back into the political divisions that marked the old Stomont. This is even more the case now that the cross community Alliance party, which had styled itself as the official opposition, has joined the executive. 27 April 2010
At last weekend’s 
people themselves. They demanded a world without kings or barons as a precondition to the redress of their grievances. The masses: laborers, peasants, the property-less, urban artisans all were entering history in their own name and in their own interests. However divided and contradictory those interests might be the gentry squires, barons, clergy and monarchy would no longer be alone in asserting their rights. The actions of the Restoration notwithstanding, even now the nature and limits of democracy in a society divided by class have yet to be solved.
When, on 6 January, 1645 Parliament established a new military force, The New Model Army, after being unhappy with the efforts in the war and the limits to the way in which soldiers were organized and brought to the field. The Self-Denying Ordinance of the following April, stated that no sitting member of Parliament could command in the army or the navy. The first years of the war had seen a great deal of localism, the armies being raised in the old way from the estates and coffers of the big landowners. Many of these gentry were half-hearted in their persecution of the war, some holding out for compromise with Charles’ cavaliers. A new, professional army was created. Many of those “masterless men” were impressed into service. Though pay was to be meager, this army operated differently. Some officers came to be elected, soldiers were encouraged to read and understand what they were to fight for. As Cromwell said; “I had rather have a plain, russet-coated Captain, that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than what you call a Gentleman and is nothing else” (Sabine 265).A “Soldiers Catechism” was introduced outlining the new regime. Unlike many previous armies, this professional was well supplied, often by those made rich through the expropriation of Royalist lands that occurred during the conflict.
In 1649, after the defeat of the Royalists and capture of Charles II in the Second Civil War, the Levellers, another Agreement was introduced. Also a compromise, this new agreement included: The right to vote for all men over the age of 21 barring servants, beggars and Royalists. No army officer, treasurer or lawyer could be an MP, annual elections were to be held for Parliament with members allowed only one term. Equality before the law, trials by jury chosen from the community, the abolishment of the death penalty in all cases but murder, abolition of prison for debt, abolition of tithes, military conscription, monopolies and excise taxes (Sabine 445-6). Charles was executed only days after; the Agreement would not be considered. The Rump Parliament would declare a Council of State and, having defeated the Royalists, Cromwell now went after the opposition to his left. The monarchy was gone, as was the House of Lords and the power of the Bishops (all of which we live with today). The war was won. When some Army regiments mutinied over lack of pay or service in Ireland or the continued power of the big gentry in the land, Cromwell responded with great force. Leveller militants died heroically on the scaffolds or with gun in hand, their freedom’s proclamations adorning their hats in battle.
A different vision, one that expanded on the Levellers calls for political equality to include social equality emerged. Many of these radicals had no connections with the New Model Army. However, the tumult of ideas exploding in the years after 1645 brought many people into discussions of a breadth and level impossible in times of social peace. Literacy, expanding since Tudor times, allowed those previously outside of public discourse to follow and comment more than ever before. For some, like Winstanley and George Everard, political equality was impossible without social equality. While supporting many of the Leveller demands, the core of the Leveller argument (liberty tied to property), would perpetuate the problem rather than resolve it. Winstanley looked not just to the landless peasants, but with great prescience, he also recognized the growing role of wage labor in the society was divided and exploited. What also separated this vision with those of the Levellers is that, while the Levellers largely appealed to the powerful classes for redress, the ‘True Levellers” appealed to the disenfranchised and landless to help themselves, for “action is the life of all and if thou dost not act thou dost nothing” (Bradstock 16).
If private property were inimical to democracy, than on what basis should society organize? In previous years the call by peasants might have been to strengthen feudal rights which, at least, gave many access to land and work guaranteed by the obligations of birth. They did not just issue appeals, but as was their call, they acted. In the spring of, after publishing The New Law of Righteousness in 1649 a small band occupied the common lands of St. George’s Hill on the Surrey property of Frances Drake. They declared the land their common birthright and cleared the scrub and attempted sewed crops, though the commons were long used for wood, grazing and fallow. Not more than thirty cottages grew up in the commune, though other communes would be established around the country. Always a small and isolated trend, their radical ideas could not have aroused the suspicion of the local gentry, and powers further afield. Winstanley was calling for something like a general strike in which peasants and workers would keep the fruits of their own labors, without paying alms to the masters. In some ways it makes sense, while wage workers would not be able to act on such advice (without joining a Digger commune), agricultural workers and peasants, with access to food bearing land, might just be able to…had they been ideologically cohesive, organized and prepared. All of which were obvious impossibilities given the age.
ft” with the earth, inaugurated by private property and augmented by wage labor; the common ownership, not just of land and produce, but of ourselves and our future.
Rustbelt Radical 