Talk:Diggers/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

1650

What happened after 1650? The article leaves me hanging. Sam Spade 22:04, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Captain William Thompson

I am unsure what the relevance of William Thompson is to the Wellingborough Diggers. As I have filled in verifiable details of this colonies' history I think the reference to William Thompson should be deleted. Dr V 17:49, 28 March 2006 (UCT)

Now that you have done the stirling work you have on this section, I think mention of Thompson should be moved near to the bottom of the section and not given the prominence it previously was. That he was killed near the Diggers encampment might be a coincidence, but presumably he was fleeing to somewhere after his failed Leveller mutiny. --Philip Baird Shearer 18:39, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Frances Drake

Is it appropriate to include who someone isn't in wikipedia? It doesn't seem quite right, but I felt that it was less confusing to specify.  — vijay (Talk) 18:57, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Biblical quotes

The article refers to the Book of Acts (in a related article it mentions Acts 2:44-45, detailing how the early Christians held all their property in common). Unfortunately, I think there is not one mention of the word "dig" in the Book of Acts!

Looking at the range of uses of "dig" in the Bible, my guess is that the relevant mention might be from Ezekiel 12,

2. Son of man, thou dwellest in the midst of a rebellious house, which have eyes to see, and see not; they have ears to hear, and hear not: for they are a rebellious house.

3. Therefore, thou son of man, prepare thee stuff for removing, and remove by day in their sight; and thou shalt remove from thy place to another place in their sight: it may be they will consider, though they be a rebellious house.

4. Then shalt thou bring forth thy stuff by day in their sight, as stuff for removing: and thou shalt go forth at even in their sight, as they that go forth into captivity.

5. Dig thou through the wall in their sight, and carry out thereby.

6. In their sight shalt thou bear it upon thy shoulders, and carry it forth in the twilight: thou shalt cover thy face, that thou see not the ground: for I have set thee for a sign unto the house of Israel.

7. And I did so as I was commanded: I brought forth my stuff by day, as stuff for captivity, and in the even I digged through the wall with mine hand; I brought it forth in the twilight, and I bare it upon my shoulder in their sight.

But is there evidence for this? 204.186.19.105 21:29, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

The reference is not to "diggers" -- that was a initially a derogatory label given to them by their opponents -- but to "True Levellers". You will find the line referenced in their manifesto The True Levellers Standard Advanced. The sentence in the Standard Advanced is "And when the Son of man, was gone from the Apostles, his Spirit descended upon the Apostles and Brethren, as they were waiting at Jerusalem; and the Rich men sold their Possessions and gave part to the Poor; and no man said, That ought that he possessed was his own, for they had all things Common, Act. 4. 32." The last phrase is taken from the King James Bible: Acts 4.32 "neither said any of them that ought that he possessed was his own, for they had all things Common".

The Wikipedia article on Acts of the Apostles has in the contents section "Everything is shared (4:32-37)" that links to Discourse on ostentation#Materialism.

I hope this information helps :-) BTW you wrote "in a related article ..." which related article? --Philip Baird Shearer 08:29, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

True Levellers

see Talk:Diggers (True Levellers)/Archive 1#True Levellers for the previous discussion on this.

Apart from the title of the pamphlet The True Levellers Standard A D V A N C E D Where else does Winstanley use the term "True Levellers"? He does not use the phrase anywhere else in the article. Another way or reading this is that the title (which is re-inforced by the fonts used in the printing) says "The true standard advanced by the Levellers" in which case he was not calling the Diggers "True Levellers" but is advancing ideas in this pamphlet which (all) Levellers could use to obtain their on objectives of a more egalitarian society. Philip Baird Shearer 18:43, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Can anyone name another pamphlet, or any other source anywhere else, where Winstanley used the phrase "True Levellers" apart from in the title of the pamphlet "The True Levellers Standard A D V A N C E D"? In that pamphlet the phrase only appears in the title, so were else did Winstanley use the phrase? In Archive 1 it was agreed that he and other Diggers, used term "Diggers" (See "Letter Taken at Wellingborough" -1650). I would like to source Wistanley's use of the term "True Levellers" somewhere else than in one ambigious title if we are going to use in Wikipedia articles. Philip Baird Shearer 21:44, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

There is no way The True Levellers Standard advanced can be read in the way suggested above - and no scholar has done so except the writer above. The title on the original (British Library Thomason Tract E552:5) reads as the footnoted link as The True Levellers Standard ADVANCED:OR, The State of Community opened and presented to the Sons of Men. There is no ambiguity from the use of fonts. To make this read 'The true standard advanced by the Levellers' is to commit substantial violence to the text and is just simply untenable on a cursory reading of the tract.

I think it is correct that Winstanley never uses the phrase True Levellers again. Indeed the title page to the TLSA seems to be a last minute decision tacked onto the tract which is called 'A declaration to the powers of England...'

Dr V 21:43, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

It is possible that a genitive ' has been omitted in the word Levellers. If this is the case the title could read 'The True Leveller's Standard Advanced'. The True Leveller being Jesus Christ. Abiezar Coppe at roughly the same time called Christ 'The Great Leveller'.

Elliot Vernon —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.152.248.192 (talk) 18:45, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Chumbawamba

I've removed The World Turned Upside Down, from English Rebel Songs 1381-1984, from the section "Diggers influence on literature and popular culture". My rationale is that the song itself is unconnected with the Diggers: it's from the same period, but is a broadside against Oliver Cromwell and the "banning" of Christmas, and wasn't written - so far as history records - by a Digger.

I'm mentioning this here because the situation is slightly confused: Chumbawamba did perform the Diggers' Song on English Rebel Songs (but since they didn't write it I'm not sure if it's worth noting), and Chumbawamba have performed Rosselson's "The World Turned Upside Down" (albeit with a non-pacifist spin).

Cheers, This flag once was red^propaganda_deeds 18:47, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

The Flower Child generation

I have heard that the diggers were the ones who feed the flower children, that they gathered food and did some kind of give-away. I also heard that they belived that everything should be free, whitch brought that social class to its end —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.162.140.246 (talk) 20:59, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

you're getting mixed up with the San Fransico Diggers of the 1960s. Parker1parker (talk) 11:49, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Theory

While doing some fixes in the theory section, I removed the following and bring it here for discussion:

More important was the democratic and anarchist aspect of the Diggers' beliefs. They contended that if only the common people of England would form themselves into self-supporting communes, there would be no place in such a society for the ruling classes. The ruling elite would be forced to join the communes or starve, as there would no longer be anyone left to hire to work their fields or pay rent to them for use of their property.

What is the basis for these claims? I actually believe, from the little I've read on this subject, that this is an accurate description of the Diggers' beliefs, but this has to be cited. At this point, it is POV and OR. ---RepublicanJacobite_{The'FortyFive'} 17:09, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Weren't the Diggers the source for the "anarcho-syndicalist peasants" that King Arthur met in this comedy film? 74.128.107.12 (talk) 05:16, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

"Existing social order"?

"The Diggers tried to reform (by "levelling" real property) the existing social order with an agrarian lifestyle based on their ideas for the creation of small egalitarian rural communities"

I'm surprised by the assertion that the Diggers were opposing an "existing social order". The enclosure movement only really took off in the 15th century, during the Tudor period, and it is therefore reasonable to believe that when the Diggers came around there were still plenty of people alive who still remembered life on the commons. I therefore think that this sentence is misleading since it presents the Diggers as trying to bring about an alternative system to the established one, rather than defending a way of life that had only recently come under attack. What do other people think about this? --IronChris | (talk) 02:27, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Commons were not common as you are implying. Society was much more parish based, and rights to commons was based on locality to the common. For example the lord of the manor was often entitled to the timber from a common forest, but the commoners were entitled to anything below a certain circumference. This encouraged coppicing, something that has become a problem since WWII with the lack of people exercising their common rights and managing old common woodland. The point about the diggers was not that they were farming common land and so depriving the locals of their common resource, it was that they were arguing that if everyone was to join their communities, or set up similar ones then the landlords would be forced to do so as well because they would have no rights to collect rent and tithes, and would have to farm for themselves if they were not to starve, and so there would be an egalitarian society. This would be a levelling of the existing social order with was very hierarchical. The ideas were not directly linked to enclosures because in manors which were not enclosed the same hierarchical society existed. -- PBS (talk) 10:11, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

End of the Diggers

I would like to see this section expanded. It leaves much to the imagination. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.44.23.36 (talk) 06:02, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Links

The links to the documents are dead sadly.. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pnd (talk • contribs) 20:36, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

I think I have fixed them. -- PBS (talk) 23:06, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Writings

I have removed

• The Mysterie of God concerning the whole Creation, Mankind, Gerrard Winstanley (1648)
• The Breaking of the Day of God, Gerrard Winstanley (May 20, 1648)
• The Saints Paradise, Gerrard Winstanley (Ca. 1648)

from the writings section of the artile, because a review of

The Complete Works of Gerrard Winstanley. Edited by Thomas N. Corns, Ann Hughes, and David Loewenstein. Two volumes. Pp. xii + 600 and vi + 465. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. isbn 978 0 19 957 606 7.

by J Theol Studies (2010). "Oxford Biographies on line". doi:10.1093/jts/flq111. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help), Studies writes:

The crucial word in the description of this book is complete. The edition by George Sabine of 1941 which has been the major printed source for those working on Winstanley deliberately and explicitly omitted three early works (The Mysterie of God concerning the Whole Creation, The Breaking of the Day of God, and The Saints Paradice) because "less interest attaches to books written before Winstanley’s discovery of communism" (Sabine, The Works of Gerrard Winstanley, Preface).

So these work pre-date the Diggers and although form a part of the Winstanley canon do not seem to be directly related to this article. But Studies goes on to say that some of the "many elements of the ideas which blossomed in The New Law of Righteousness and the writings of the Digger period in the earliest books" -- PBS (talk) 23:20, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Communists? Huh?

I changed this, though this can be worded better. Communism as a term did not exist at the time of the Diggers and does not represent their point of view in any way. Many interesting political ideas get submerged by being put into the modern paradigm buckets of 'Capitalism' and 'Communism' not allowing for real ideas to be understood.

Any community ideas previous to Marx should be understood within the context of the time and as unique ideas. This is also true for ideas that came after Marx as well. Co-opting ideas into predefined ideologies prevent real understanding and stops people from thinking beyond artificial confines created by special interest. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.73.153.232 (talk) 15:04, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

I've changed it back - Winstanley was explicitly a communist; see e.g. the Encylopedia Britannica http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/332849/The-Law-of-Freedom-in-a-Platform on his 'The Law of Freedom in a Platform' -- "his sketch of a communist society". The term socialism is far more of an anachronism. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.33.10.91 (talk) 02:17, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

That's a good point, and I agree with the removal of "communist" from the article. Nev1 (talk) 15:15, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

I put back communist (without the capital "C") See the citation at the end of the phrase for why communist is an appropriate description. -- PBS (talk) 17:12, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

It is not the place of individual editors to decide that a modern term as loaded as the word 'communist' can be used to describe a group that preceeded communism by several centuries. It should not be used here. Also, the link is dead.Gaius Octavius Princeps (talk) 21:39, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

"communism" with a little "c" can be easily sourced eg The Britannica Guide to Political Science and Social Movements That Changed ... by Britannica Educational Publishing p. 129. -- PBS (talk) 07:31, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. 'communist' does not mean 'Marxist'. BillMasen (talk) 15:59, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Phillip Pullman

Is there a source for the claim that His Dark Materials is heavily or indeed at all influenced by the Diggers? I've done a quick search for actual references to this on the net, and all that comes up is this article and other wikipedia articles referring to it. Seems as though this is just some communist intellectual reading what he wants into the books. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Man of Meat (talk • contribs) 03:31, 27 March 2012 (UTC)