Gerrard Winstanley
1609–1676 · Libertarian Socialism · Known
Winstanley led the Diggers, a band who in 1649 occupied common land and planted it to act out his principle that the earth is a common treasury for all. He blamed private property and wage-work on covetousness and on the Norman conquest. He wanted the land worked in common with nothing bought or sold, a commonwealth answering to the God he found inside creation as a Reason living in all things.
Signature
The position Winstanley is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Society
- leans Collectivism
- Economy
- Cooperative Commonwealth
Positions on the 5 axes the sources answer
- Society
- leans Collectivism (20 on a 0–100 scale from Collectivism to Individualism)
- Meaning
- leans Inherent (75 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Order
- leans Horizontal (86 on a 0–100 scale from Vertical to Horizontal)
- Ground of Being
- leans Immanence (18 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Polity
- leans Illiberalism (25 on a 0–100 scale from Illiberalism to Liberalism)
15 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Winstanley refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Pantheism / Panentheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Communal Order / Direct Democracy
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Freedom
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Moral Realism
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - End of Things
- Apocalyptic Renewal
What is the ultimate end of all things? - Knowledge
- Grounded in God / Sense Experience
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Natural Law
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Time
- Eschatological
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Economy
- Cooperative Commonwealth
What is the ideal organization of economic life? - Authority
- Consent of the Governed
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Law
- Natural Law / Revolutionary
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Human Nature
- Innate Good / Redeemably Corrupted
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- Humanity
What is your primary bond and loyalty?