Perspectives on the English Levellers

0:00Good evening to everybody, so perspectives on the English Levellers, well there is a famous book by Jérôme Tussil and the book is titled It Usually Begins with Ayn Rand, instead now I ask myself and of course I ask you did it, did it everything, did everything begin with Ayn Rand with the English Levellers, Murray Rothbard seems to think so.

0:38This paper is based on a research I am doing, an investigation of the English libertarian heritage, an investigation of the roots of the libertarian tradition. The turmoil of the English Civil War during the first half of the 17th century and the fight between King Charles I and the Parliament generated a very intense political debate on individual liberty, limited government, individual rights and the rule of law. The Leveller movement emerged from the breakdown of the Civil War. The religious background of the movement was essential.

1:27and the religious covenant of the dissenters became the paradigm of the political contract, the political contract creating the political society or the civil society, as Locke calls it. But at the same time, the Levellers went beyond their religious context and placed their arguments in a more political context. Particularly, John Lilburn, William Wolwyn and Richard Averton elaborated those principles that constitute the core doctrine of libertarian political philosophy. That is to say, the right of self-ownership, private property, religious tolerance, that the basis of all government is the consent of the governed and that all men possess certain natural rights that all governments are obliged to respect by virtue of the contract from which their political authority originally derives.

2:35All principles later elaborated by John Locke. But the major literature on the topic is marked by a very different interpretation. Noël Brailsford defines the Levellers as egalitarian democrats. In Andrew Sharpe's view, they were liberal democrats. Christopher Hill, on his side, concentrates on those Levellers who were defined the true Levellers, the millennial communist sects and communist sects such as the diggers, the renters, the fifth monarchists. According to Hill, levelers such as Lilburn, Walwyn and Overton were simply moderate and constitutionalists.

3:30So one gets the impression of the levelers as a marginal moderate group, or tends to confound all the different groups as if they were all in favor of common property of land. Even the notable Italian historian of political thought, Gaetano Mosca, wrote that the Levellers, referring to the Bible, wanted to establish an absolute equality, not only political, but even of property. My hypothesis is that the Leveller, at least some of them can be ascribed to the libertarian tradition. According to Murray Rothbard, the Levellers, quote, were the world's first self-consciously libertarian mass movement.

4:24John Lilburn, Richard Averton, and William Wolwyn worked out a remarkably consistent libertarian doctrine upholding the rights of self-ownership, Private Property, Religious Freedom for the Individual and Minimal Government Interference in Society. One of the most important of the Leveller's contribution to the theoretical foundation of the libertarian doctrine was, according to Rothbard, that they transformed the rather vague and holistic notions of natural law into the clear-cut, firmly individualistic concepts of the Natural Rights of Every Individual Human Beings. Also, Ralph Rago writes that the political history of classical liberalism begins with John Lilburn and the Levellers.

5:19Again, Alain Rahn, in his Histoire de l'Individualisme, writes that the Levellers were the first movement to profess the individualistic ideology. we owe to them the first historical statement of a natural right to self-ownership of the individual. They were at the origin of the individualistic revolution, at odds with a holistic and communitarian view. Hayek, on his side, recognizes the great importance of the English levelers. According to Hayek, the levelers developed for the first time in the English History, The Theory of a Written Constitution and the Separation of Powers.

6:10Hayek placed the English Levellers within the classical liberal tradition and within the history of the rule of law. John Lilburn, for the first time, according to Hayek, advocated the independence of the constituency power. always according to Hayek, the Leveller's ideas influenced John Locke's second treaty on civil government. Richard Averton in 1646 elaborated a sophisticated definition of the individual rights of self-ownership as the right fixing the borders between self-sovereignty and the power of the state.

6:55Now I'm going to reading you a quotation from An Arrow Against Old Tyrants by Richard Overton and I put it on PowerPoint because of course it's the English of the first half of the 17th century so maybe it's easier to follow. Overton wrote, to every individual in nature is given an individual property by nature not to be invaded or usurped by any. For everyone as he is himself so he has a self-property, else could he not be himself. Mine and time cannot be except this be.

7:44No man has power over my rights and liberties, and I over no man's. I may be but an individual, enjoy myself and my self-property. I may write myself no more than myself or presume any further. If I do so, I am an encroacher and an invader upon another man's right, to which I have no right. For by natural birth all men are equally and alike born to like property, liberty and freedom. And so we are delivered of God by the hand of nature into this world, everyone with a natural innate freedom and property.

8:29Even so are we to live, everyone equally and alike to enjoy his birthright and privilege. I think this is a truly pre-Lockean statement. And I think this is a very important statement of the right to self-ownership. And we know that the right to self-ownership is the cornerstone of the libertarian doctrine, for instance, is the cornerstone of Rothbard libertarianism. But beside this, Overton quotes the Magna Carta and Sir Edward Koch, both being the core of the tradition of the rule of law. Edward Koch is the creator of the myth of Magna Carta.

9:15The English levelers have been defined as egalitarians, as Democrats, as pre-Marxist and radicals. They were egalitarian in the sense that they defended fundamental rights, Fundamental Natural Rights for Every Human Being. They were Democrats, but they linked the right of citizenship to ownership. In an agreement of the Free People of England, one of the most important levelers manifestos is a proposal for a written constitution. They proclaim universal male suffrage, but servants and those receiving alms were excluded from the right to citizenship.

10:05Were they radicals? Of course they were, but libertarianism is a radical doctrine. They were against state-granted monopolies. They realized that controlling production and trade always meant the creation of privilege by the state. Yes, I saw it. Always in an agreement of the free people of England, they proclaimed the abolition of all kinds of privilege. They wrote that it shall not be in the power of the representative to make any laws to abridge or hinder any person from trading or merchandising.

10:55that it shall not be in their power to continue excess or customs upon any sort of food or any other goods, wares or commodities, being both of them extreme burdensome and oppressive to trade. And to conclude, they declare in the last article, we therefore agree and declare that it shall not be in the power of any representative to level man's estate, destroy property or make all things common. I found a lot of libertarian suggestions, of course, reading the level of Fratz. I found very interesting that Lilburn and Averton figure out the idea of rational, non-customary individual natural rights as opposed to a holistic conception of natural law.

11:45But at the same time, they refer to tradition, to the ancient constitution of England, to to Mania Carta and to Edward Koch, who was a champion of the rule of law. So we can say that they use both argument, rationalist and evolutionary. The second kind of argument can be ascribed to the tradition of the weak interpretation of history, a tradition Hayek belongs to. William Wolwyn on his side was a very sophisticated intellectual, very close to Montaigne. he was a skeptic and defended religious freedom on the basis of fallibilism and relativism. All these features are peculiar, distinctive of the classical liberal tradition and not of leftism, of course.

12:35So there are good reason to consider the English levelers, anticipators of Locke's arguments, and there are some good evidence to place them within the libertarian tradition. I hope to find more going on with my research, but I think I will. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much.