True Levellers | |
|---|---|
 Woodcut from a Levellers document by William Everard | |
| Leader | Gerrard Winstanley |
| Founded | 1649 |
| Dissolved | 1651 |
| Split from | Levellers |
| Ideology | Agrarianism Utopian Socialism Radicalism Republicanism Universal suffrage Populism |
| Religion | Dissenter Protestantism |
| Part of a series on |
| Socialism |
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The Diggers were a group of religious and political dissidents in England, associated with a political ideology and programme resembling what would later be called agrarian socialism.[1] Gerrard Winstanley and William Everard, amongst many others, were known as True Levellers in 1649, in reference to their split from the Levellers, and later became known as Diggers because of their attempts to farm on common land. Due to this and to their beliefs, the Diggers were driven from one county after another by the authorities.
The Diggers tried (by "levelling" land) to reform the existing social order with an agrarian lifestyle based on their ideas for the creation of small, egalitarian rural communities. They were one of a number of nonconformist dissenting groups that emerged around this time. Their belief in economic equality was drawn from Acts of the Apostles 4:32, which describes a community of believers that "had all things in common" instead of having personal property.
- ^ Campbell (2009), p. 129; Winstanley & Jones (2002); Stearns et al. (2001), p. 290; Johnson (2013)