Good 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.
This 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.
and 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.
All 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.
So 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.
John 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.
Again, 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.
Hayek 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.
Now 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.
No 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.
Even 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.
The 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.
Were 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.
that 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.
But 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.
So 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.