New Insights on the Origins of Libertarian Theory: the English Levellers

0:00These are some considerations on the research I am doing on primary sources at the British Library. My research started from something Murray Rothbard wrote on the English levelers, and I must confess it started here a couple of years ago from some conversation I had here at the Mises Institute. So, MacPherson's The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism had remained a central work among the interpretations of the role of the Levellers within the history of political thought. It has been criticized and reinterpreted, but it is still impossible to approach the English Levellers without referring to this seminal work.

0:47MacPherson's work is a classic example of the Marxist interpretation of the 17th century English political thought, and his view of the English levellers as anticipators of possessive individualism is heavily marked by the historical materialist approach. Although Marxist historians have been compelled to abandon the model of economic determinism, they developed the alternative Marxist social history of political thought. Gale of Kennedy and Alan Wood have recently placed the study of diggers and levelers in the context of the social history of political thought, that is to say the context of agrarian capitalism as opposed to the bourgeois paradigm.

1:33So Marxist historians reject the notion of a bourgeois revolution, and the Revolution of 1648, but only to develop an alternative Marxist social history. Actually, Kennedy's and Wood's views on the Levellers are not so different from the one given by Macpherson. In their interpretations, the Levellers are depicted as pre-Lockeans. But, at this point, we must take in account the prevailing theory of Locke within the Marxist school and the social history approach. In both contexts, Locke embodies the transition to agrarian capitalism. This interpretation leaves in shadow Locke's radicalism.

2:20Instead, Locke is seen almost as a conservative week consistent with an emerging capitalist society, According to McPherson, but also according to Kennedy and Wood, the Levellers paved the way to Locke's possessive individualism, and also in this case, the Levellers' radicalism is misconceived and undervalued. My aim is to examine the Levellers' political theory from a different perspective through the methodology of the history of political thought. My hypothesis is that the protagonists of the Leveller movement, John Lilburn, Richard Averton and William Wolwyn, contributed to elaborate the individualistic, methodological and political paradigm and that they are the origin of a radical version of classical liberalism.

3:12The Levellers must be placed in their intellectual context, tracing to what extent they were pre-Lockean. and, of course, they were pre-Lockian. But in considering the Levellers as pre-Lockian, I have in mind the interpretation of John Locke given by Richard Hashcraft, John Simmons and Rothbard, of course. Basically, these studies emphasize the radicalism of Lockean political thought in contrast with MacPherson's view and with those following interpretations that to some extent refer to MacPherson's work. These analyses of Locke's thought are too narrow.

3:58John Simmons, for instance, holds that Locke's consent theory is a true consent theory. and that the consequence of taking seriously the consent theory is philosophical anarchism. In Simon's view, luck is a radical wig on the edge of anarchy. In this sense, the Levellers are regarded as spray luckians exactly for their radicalism and for their political theory, which is mainly an ethic of liberty. The core of the Leveller's political thought is constituted by certain fundamental tenets, that is to say the right to self-ownership, methodological individualism, individual natural rights, sound property rights and economic freedom.

4:51The Levellers were familiar with the classical theory of natural law. This is evinced by their statements that all men have an essential equal structure and that norms or moral laws are derived from man's nature and from his efforts to achieve the fulfillment of human inclinations. In a pamphlet by Lilburn, Innocency and Truth Justified, written in 1645, we can find Lilburn's definition of natural law. Nature and reason are the grounds of all just laws. This is the English of the 17th century.

5:36The law of nature, specially considered, which is so-called law of reason, pertaineth only to creatures reasonable, that is man, which is created in the image of God, and this law is always good and righteous, steering and inclining a man to good, and aborting evil, and as to the ordering of the deeds of man, and it is written in the heart of every man, teaching him what is to be done and want to be fled, It is written in the heart, therefore, it may not be put away, nor it is never changeable, by no diversity of place, not times, and therefore, against this law, prescriptions, statutes, not customs, may not prevail.

6:23This law reasoned, teacheth that good is to be loved, and evil to be fled. This is a very interesting definition because this is a definition of the classical, ancient Aristotelian Thomist law of nature, the scholastic law of nature. It may seem strange to find this kind of definition among the Levellers, but it is not so strange. We must keep in mind that Richard Hooker elaborated an Anglican version of Thomist law of nature. Richard Hooker and George Buchanan contributed to the circulation of these ideas in England and to the Leveller's perception of individual rights.

7:09The Leveller William Wolwyn read and quoted Richard Hooker, the same judicious Hooker quoted by Locke himself. But as Rothbard and Alain Laurent underline, the Levellers added methodological individualism to the ancient doctrine of natural law, originating the paradigm of political individualism. Richard Averton, in 1646, in An Arrow Against All Tyrants, elaborated one of the first and most sophisticated definitions of the individual's rights to self-ownership. To every individual in nature is given an individual property by nature not to be invaded or usurped by any.

7:59For everyone, as he is himself, so he has a self-property. Else could he not be himself. For, by natural birth, all men are equally and alike born to like property, liberty and freedom. Moreover, the Levellers made a radical and revolutionary use of the natural right idea. Lilburn and Averton based the right to self-ownership on the law of nature, and from the right to self-ownership, they derived their defense of the individual freedom from the state in every aspect of life. They advocated tolerance and freedom of conscience, as well as economic freedom.

8:48The Levellers advocated property rights and the freedom to contract and trade against monopolies and privileges guaranteed by the state. They celebrated the benefit of economic freedom to society and opposed taxes, customs, excesses and regulation by the government that inhibited competition. Some scholars have undervalued the vindication of the right to produce and trade by the Levellers. Some scholars mostly concentrated on their democratic theory, and some of them state that the Levellers were not so much concerned with economics. On the contrary, in my research I found some very interesting writings against every kind of state intervention hindering the natural right to freely produce and trade and inhibiting competition. In 1652, William Walwyn presented to the Committee for Trade and Foreign Affairs a defense of free trade urging the abolition of monopolies and trade restrictions by the government. In In Walwyn's Conceptions for a Free Trade, the author vindicates free trade as a common right, conductive to common good.

10:11One century before Adam Smith, Walwyn directly links freedom of trading to the public good. Excelling the benefits of competition, he holds that the results of free trade and competition are more and better goods, lower prices, more ships, plenty of men becoming useful members of the Community, More Wealth for Active and Creative People. The question to discern for Walwyn is whether living foreign trade equally free to all Englishmen would be most profitable for the Commonwealth, and he would necessarily conclude that for foreign trade to be universally free to all Englishmen alike would be the most advantageous to the Commonwealth.

10:57Walwyn criticizes the present parliament for carrying on the oppression and grievances of the Crown, maintaining all the monopolies and the privilege granted by the State in the field of trade. The right to trade freely, Walwyn maintains, is an ancient, natural claim right of all the Englishmen, and it is much more profitable than any government restrictions and privileges. Then, the author lists many advantages of free competition, the improvement of land by buying and transporting, occasioning profitable labour for all industrious people, increase of shipping, increase of mariners, increase of wealth and plenty, increase of merchants.

11:43Continuing his analysis of competition, Walwin notes that the numerousness of merchants will And he underlines the advantages for the worker, for competition will produce greater price for work, whereas merchants in companies have no need of such diligence and workmen must work at what rate they please. Lamenting to low wages, Walwyn as well as Averton and Lilburn attributed them to monopolies, hampered trade and excess. The levellers were concerned with economic rights and these economic rights were a direct consequence of the right to self-ownership and included sound individual property rights, Freedom to Produce, Sell, Buy and Trade without License, Monopolies, Regulations and Arbitrary Taxation, that is to say, a free market economy.

12:51The right to trade freely was considered a natural right by Lilburn or a native liberty. From the theoretical supremacy of natural rights, Lilburn rejects any form of regulation of trade. The right to free trade is a birthright, is a legal fundamental liberty. Lilburn considers monopolies illegal from an ethical standpoint because they are a violation of the equal natural rights of the individual to freely produce and exchange. Moreover, they create state privilege for bankers, aristocrats, chartered companies and corporations. The long parliament, and subsequently Oliver Cromwell, confirmed the most relevant monopolies, such as the right to export woolen clothes, privilege of the merchant adventurers and the privilege of charter companies, such as the Levant Company.

13:51Lilburn protested against monopolies of coal, soap and woolen clothes. The economic concessions by public authorities pave the way to the creation of privileged positions of supremacy in public institutions and in the violation of the individual birthright to equal opportunity to compete freely. Lilburn realized that the opposite of competition is privilege. But what about the government? In the agreement of the people, the power of the parliament is stated as limited. The agreement is a statement of natural rights and fundamental law, declaring the powers of any future government. It defines what a government can and cannot do. It is based on a covenant by people.

14:42And most important, to obtain its validity, it must be subscribed by all individual Englishmen and not by an actor parliament. The Leveller's Consent Theory is a true consent theory, based on the right to self-ownership. In their consent theory, individuals retain their natural rights. In 1646, Overton wrote a great Leveller Manifesto, a remonstrance of many thousand citizens. Here, Overton declares that the end of government is to deliver us from all kinds of bondage and to preserve the Commonwealth in peace and happiness.

15:29For affecting whereof, we possess you with the same power that was in ourselves. But, you are to remember, this was only for us but a power of trust, which is ever revocable and cannot be otherwise, and to be employed to no other end than our own well-being. We are your principles and you our agents. But among the principles of right reason are that men should preserve themselves and that all entrusted powers, if forfeited, must return to the people. To preserve themselves, people must exercise their inherent sovereignty and remove the tyrants. In this case, the people are dissolved into the original law of nature, in which every man is bound to preserve and defend himself the best he can.

16:23and Lilburn writes that the people might justify force to regain due liberty and to seek their own preservation by resistance and defense. Both Lilburn and Averton justify the right to revolution. Other very interesting levels of ideas are the defense of the self-government of small communities and the form of private production of justice, but of course I don't have the time to say everything. For the moment, I can conclude that, at least till now, my analysis of the original sources seem to validate Rothbard's views of the Levellers as the first self-conscious libertarians.