WEBVTT NOTE New Insights on the Origins of Libertarian Theory: the English Levellers 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.000 These are some considerations on the research I am doing on primary sources at the British Library. 2 00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:15.000 My research started from something Murray Rothbard wrote on the English levelers, 3 00:00:15.000 --> 00:00:25.000 and I must confess it started here a couple of years ago from some conversation I had here at the Mises Institute. 4 00:00:25.000 --> 00:00:37.500 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. 5 00:00:37.500 --> 00:00:47.000 It has been criticized and reinterpreted, but it is still impossible to approach the English Levellers without referring to this seminal work. 6 00:00:47.000 --> 00:00:55.400 MacPherson's work is a classic example of the Marxist interpretation of the 17th century English political thought, 7 00:00:55.400 --> 00:01:05.240 and his view of the English levellers as anticipators of possessive individualism is heavily marked by the historical materialist approach. 8 00:01:05.240 --> 00:01:11.560 Although Marxist historians have been compelled to abandon the model of economic determinism, 9 00:01:11.560 --> 00:01:17.560 they developed the alternative Marxist social history of political thought. 10 00:01:17.560 --> 00:01:23.240 Gale of Kennedy and Alan Wood have recently placed the study of diggers and levelers 11 00:01:23.240 --> 00:01:26.840 in the context of the social history of political thought, 12 00:01:26.840 --> 00:01:33.880 that is to say the context of agrarian capitalism as opposed to the bourgeois paradigm. 13 00:01:33.880 --> 00:01:38.840 So Marxist historians reject the notion of a bourgeois revolution, 14 00:01:38.840 --> 00:01:45.840 and the Revolution of 1648, but only to develop an alternative Marxist social history. 15 00:01:45.840 --> 00:01:54.840 Actually, Kennedy's and Wood's views on the Levellers are not so different from the one given by Macpherson. 16 00:01:54.840 --> 00:02:00.840 In their interpretations, the Levellers are depicted as pre-Lockeans. 17 00:02:00.840 --> 00:02:09.840 But, at this point, we must take in account the prevailing theory of Locke within the Marxist school and the social history approach. 18 00:02:09.840 --> 00:02:15.840 In both contexts, Locke embodies the transition to agrarian capitalism. 19 00:02:15.840 --> 00:02:20.840 This interpretation leaves in shadow Locke's radicalism. 20 00:02:20.840 --> 00:02:28.840 Instead, Locke is seen almost as a conservative week consistent with an emerging capitalist society, 21 00:02:28.840 --> 00:02:43.840 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. 22 00:02:43.840 --> 00:02:52.840 My aim is to examine the Levellers' political theory from a different perspective through the methodology of the history of political thought. 23 00:02:52.840 --> 00:03:00.840 My hypothesis is that the protagonists of the Leveller movement, John Lilburn, Richard Averton and William Wolwyn, 24 00:03:00.840 --> 00:03:06.840 contributed to elaborate the individualistic, methodological and political paradigm 25 00:03:06.840 --> 00:03:12.840 and that they are the origin of a radical version of classical liberalism. 26 00:03:12.840 --> 00:03:21.840 The Levellers must be placed in their intellectual context, tracing to what extent they were pre-Lockean. 27 00:03:21.840 --> 00:03:38.840 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. 28 00:03:38.840 --> 00:03:53.840 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. 29 00:03:53.840 --> 00:03:58.840 These analyses of Locke's thought are too narrow. 30 00:03:58.840 --> 00:04:06.840 John Simmons, for instance, holds that Locke's consent theory is a true consent theory. 31 00:04:06.840 --> 00:04:15.840 and that the consequence of taking seriously the consent theory is philosophical anarchism. 32 00:04:15.840 --> 00:04:21.840 In Simon's view, luck is a radical wig on the edge of anarchy. 33 00:04:21.840 --> 00:04:27.840 In this sense, the Levellers are regarded as spray luckians exactly for their radicalism 34 00:04:27.840 --> 00:04:32.840 and for their political theory, which is mainly an ethic of liberty. 35 00:04:32.840 --> 00:04:39.840 The core of the Leveller's political thought is constituted by certain fundamental tenets, 36 00:04:39.840 --> 00:04:51.840 that is to say the right to self-ownership, methodological individualism, individual natural rights, sound property rights and economic freedom. 37 00:04:51.840 --> 00:04:56.840 The Levellers were familiar with the classical theory of natural law. 38 00:04:56.840 --> 00:05:12.840 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. 39 00:05:12.840 --> 00:05:27.840 In a pamphlet by Lilburn, Innocency and Truth Justified, written in 1645, we can find Lilburn's definition of natural law. 40 00:05:27.840 --> 00:05:36.840 Nature and reason are the grounds of all just laws. This is the English of the 17th century. 41 00:05:36.840 --> 00:06:06.840 The 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, 42 00:06:06.840 --> 00:06:23.840 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. 43 00:06:23.840 --> 00:06:30.840 This law reasoned, teacheth that good is to be loved, and evil to be fled. 44 00:06:30.840 --> 00:06:42.840 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. 45 00:06:42.840 --> 00:06:51.840 It may seem strange to find this kind of definition among the Levellers, but it is not so strange. 46 00:06:51.840 --> 00:06:59.840 We must keep in mind that Richard Hooker elaborated an Anglican version of Thomist law of nature. 47 00:06:59.840 --> 00:07:05.840 Richard Hooker and George Buchanan contributed to the circulation of these ideas in England 48 00:07:05.840 --> 00:07:09.840 and to the Leveller's perception of individual rights. 49 00:07:09.840 --> 00:07:19.840 The Leveller William Wolwyn read and quoted Richard Hooker, the same judicious Hooker quoted by Locke himself. 50 00:07:19.840 --> 00:07:34.840 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. 51 00:07:34.840 --> 00:07:51.840 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. 52 00:07:51.840 --> 00:07:59.840 To every individual in nature is given an individual property by nature not to be invaded or usurped by any. 53 00:07:59.840 --> 00:08:17.840 For 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. 54 00:08:17.840 --> 00:08:26.840 Moreover, the Levellers made a radical and revolutionary use of the natural right idea. 55 00:08:26.840 --> 00:08:34.840 Lilburn and Averton based the right to self-ownership on the law of nature, and from the right to self-ownership, 56 00:08:34.840 --> 00:08:41.840 they derived their defense of the individual freedom from the state in every aspect of life. 57 00:08:41.840 --> 00:08:48.240 They advocated tolerance and freedom of conscience, as well as economic freedom. 58 00:08:48.240 --> 00:08:57.840 The Levellers advocated property rights and the freedom to contract and trade against monopolies and privileges guaranteed by the state. 59 00:08:57.840 --> 00:09:09.240 They celebrated the benefit of economic freedom to society and opposed taxes, customs, excesses and regulation by the government that inhibited competition. 60 00:09:09.240 --> 00:09:16.240 Some scholars have undervalued the vindication of the right to produce and trade by the Levellers. 61 00:09:16.240 --> 00:09:22.240 Some scholars mostly concentrated on their democratic theory, 62 00:09:22.240 --> 00:09:28.240 and some of them state that the Levellers were not so much concerned with economics. 63 00:09:28.240 --> 00:09:34.240 On the contrary, in my research I found some very interesting writings 64 00:09:34.240 --> 00:09:39.920 against every kind of state intervention hindering the natural right to freely 65 00:09:39.920 --> 00:09:48.480 produce and trade and inhibiting competition. In 1652, William Walwyn 66 00:09:48.480 --> 00:09:54.960 presented to the Committee for Trade and Foreign Affairs a defense of free trade 67 00:09:54.960 --> 00:10:02.080 urging the abolition of monopolies and trade restrictions by the government. In 68 00:10:02.080 --> 00:10:08.240 In Walwyn's Conceptions for a Free Trade, the author vindicates free trade as a common 69 00:10:08.240 --> 00:10:11.240 right, conductive to common good. 70 00:10:11.240 --> 00:10:18.480 One century before Adam Smith, Walwyn directly links freedom of trading to the public good. 71 00:10:18.480 --> 00:10:24.560 Excelling the benefits of competition, he holds that the results of free trade and competition 72 00:10:24.560 --> 00:10:30.960 are more and better goods, lower prices, more ships, plenty of men becoming useful members 73 00:10:30.960 --> 00:10:35.800 of the Community, More Wealth for Active and Creative People. 74 00:10:35.800 --> 00:10:42.960 The question to discern for Walwyn is whether living foreign trade equally free to all Englishmen 75 00:10:42.960 --> 00:10:49.360 would be most profitable for the Commonwealth, and he would necessarily conclude that for 76 00:10:49.360 --> 00:10:55.440 foreign trade to be universally free to all Englishmen alike would be the most advantageous 77 00:10:55.440 --> 00:10:57.560 to the Commonwealth. 78 00:10:57.560 --> 00:11:10.560 Walwyn 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. 79 00:11:11.560 --> 00:11:23.560 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. 80 00:11:23.560 --> 00:11:29.760 Then, the author lists many advantages of free competition, the improvement of land by 81 00:11:29.760 --> 00:11:36.460 buying and transporting, occasioning profitable labour for all industrious people, increase 82 00:11:36.460 --> 00:11:43.240 of shipping, increase of mariners, increase of wealth and plenty, increase of merchants. 83 00:11:43.240 --> 00:11:49.760 Continuing his analysis of competition, Walwin notes that the numerousness of merchants will 84 00:11:49.760 --> 00:12:14.760 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. 85 00:12:14.760 --> 00:12:24.760 Lamenting to low wages, Walwyn as well as Averton and Lilburn attributed them to monopolies, hampered trade and excess. 86 00:12:26.760 --> 00:12:39.760 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, 87 00:12:39.760 --> 00:12:51.260 Freedom to Produce, Sell, Buy and Trade without License, Monopolies, Regulations and Arbitrary Taxation, that is to say, a free market economy. 88 00:12:51.260 --> 00:12:58.760 The right to trade freely was considered a natural right by Lilburn or a native liberty. 89 00:12:58.760 --> 00:13:05.760 From the theoretical supremacy of natural rights, Lilburn rejects any form of regulation of trade. 90 00:13:05.760 --> 00:13:11.160 The right to free trade is a birthright, is a legal fundamental liberty. 91 00:13:11.160 --> 00:13:23.160 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. 92 00:13:23.160 --> 00:13:30.960 Moreover, they create state privilege for bankers, aristocrats, chartered companies and corporations. 93 00:13:30.960 --> 00:13:42.840 The long parliament, and subsequently Oliver Cromwell, confirmed the most relevant monopolies, such as the right to export woolen clothes, 94 00:13:42.840 --> 00:13:51.000 privilege of the merchant adventurers and the privilege of charter companies, such as the Levant Company. 95 00:13:51.000 --> 00:13:56.520 Lilburn protested against monopolies of coal, soap and woolen clothes. 96 00:13:56.520 --> 00:14:12.360 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. 97 00:14:12.360 --> 00:14:17.960 Lilburn realized that the opposite of competition is privilege. 98 00:14:17.960 --> 00:14:27.960 But what about the government? In the agreement of the people, the power of the parliament is stated as limited. 99 00:14:27.960 --> 00:14:35.960 The agreement is a statement of natural rights and fundamental law, declaring the powers of any future government. 100 00:14:35.960 --> 00:14:42.960 It defines what a government can and cannot do. It is based on a covenant by people. 101 00:14:42.960 --> 00:14:52.480 And most important, to obtain its validity, it must be subscribed by all individual Englishmen and not by an actor parliament. 102 00:14:52.480 --> 00:14:59.000 The Leveller's Consent Theory is a true consent theory, based on the right to self-ownership. 103 00:14:59.000 --> 00:15:06.720 In their consent theory, individuals retain their natural rights. 104 00:15:06.720 --> 00:15:18.240 In 1646, Overton wrote a great Leveller Manifesto, a remonstrance of many thousand citizens. 105 00:15:18.240 --> 00:15:25.120 Here, Overton declares that the end of government is to deliver us from all kinds of bondage 106 00:15:25.120 --> 00:15:29.040 and to preserve the Commonwealth in peace and happiness. 107 00:15:29.040 --> 00:15:34.800 For affecting whereof, we possess you with the same power that was in ourselves. 108 00:15:34.800 --> 00:15:48.960 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. 109 00:15:48.960 --> 00:15:53.760 We are your principles and you our agents. 110 00:15:53.760 --> 00:16:05.240 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. 111 00:16:05.240 --> 00:16:12.440 To preserve themselves, people must exercise their inherent sovereignty and remove the tyrants. 112 00:16:12.440 --> 00:16:23.640 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. 113 00:16:23.640 --> 00:16:29.280 and Lilburn writes that the people might justify force to regain due liberty 114 00:16:29.280 --> 00:16:34.480 and to seek their own preservation by resistance and defense. 115 00:16:34.480 --> 00:16:40.080 Both Lilburn and Averton justify the right to revolution. 116 00:16:40.080 --> 00:16:45.960 Other very interesting levels of ideas are the defense of the self-government of small communities 117 00:16:45.960 --> 00:16:52.200 and the form of private production of justice, but of course I don't have the time to say everything. 118 00:16:52.200 --> 00:17:00.000 For the moment, I can conclude that, at least till now, my analysis of the original sources 119 00:17:00.000 --> 00:17:06.520 seem to validate Rothbard's views of the Levellers as the first self-conscious libertarians.