Gerrard Winstanley and the Left

Although Gerrard Winstanley and the Digger movement made only a fleeting appearance in the English Revolution, they have become among the best known groups of the period inspiring politicians, activists, authors, playwrights, musicians and film-makers. This paper examines the history of their reception by the Left. The Diggers’ popularity today owes much to the work of two left-wing scholars: the German politician and political thinker Eduard Bernstein, who is often presented as having rediscovered Winstanley in the 1890s, and the Marxist historian Christopher Hill, whose book The World Turned Upside Down made seventeenth-century radicalism accessible and inspiring to the Sixties’ generation. Yet Bernstein and Hill were by no means alone among scholars in their appreciation of the Diggers. Moreover, careful analysis of their views, and those of their contemporaries, reveals that there is no single, easily definable ‘left-wing’ interpretation of Winstanley and the Digger movement. Left-wing attitudes towards the Diggers have been far more complex and ambivalent than is often imagined. Consequently, tracing those attitudes can reveal much not just about the Diggers’ legacy, and historical interpretations of the English Revolution, but also about the complexities of left-wing historiography and the intricacies of Communist Party intellectual politics.

Art · Art history · Communism · German · Historiography · Interpretation (philosophy) · Left-wing politics · Literature · Marxist philosophy · New Left · Political radicalism · Political science · Politics · Popularity · Classics · Historical and Literary Analyses · History · Law · Philosophy

• Shared Devotion, Shared Food

  Jon Keune•Shared Devotion, Shared Food•2021

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