Is The Diggers left wing or right wing?

On economic organisation The Diggers scores −09 on a scale from −10 (common ownership) to +10 (private property and markets). On social and cultural order it scores −06. A single left–right figure combines these and four further measurements that move independently, which is why the atlas reports six.

Is The Diggers authoritarian?

On the organisation of power, which measures whether authority is dispersed among institutions that can stop each other or concentrated in a single centre, The Diggers scores −08. Self-governing agrarian communes with no coercive state above them.

Atlas / Organisations / The Diggers

The Diggers

True Levellers · 1649–1650 · England · Communal / Utopian · Movement · coding confidence medium

−09ECcollective

−06CUpluralist

−08AUpluralist

−09SClocal

−05IDuniversal

+04CHcoercive

Each axis runs from −10 to +10, with zero a genuine mixed or balanced position rather than an absence of opinion. A score describes a stated position and a governing record; it is not a judgement of merit. What each score means →

Core principles

The earth as a common treasury; abolition of private landholding through peaceful occupation and cultivation.

Economic model

Common ownership of land, no wage labour, no buying and selling of the soil.

Organisation of powers

Self-governing agrarian communes with no coercive state above them.

Reading note

An early instance of the pattern where the economic and the authority axes point in opposite directions: maximally collectivist, maximally anti-state.

Check a claim about The Diggers. The interactive atlas measures the distance between any two organisations across all six axes and shows which ones carry the disagreement.

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The evidence for every score

All six cells are sourced. A rationale explains what the score is measuring and each artefact is something a third party can check without taking anyone's word for it.

EC · Economic organisation · scored −09

At the floor: the earth as a common treasury.

Programme textWinstanley's The Law of Freedom (1652) abolishes buying and selling of land and of labour.

CU · Social and cultural order · scored −06

Coded −6: hierarchy of clergy, lawyers and lords rejected together.

Programme textWinstanley attacked tithes, church courts and the professions as instruments of the same enclosure.

AU · Organisation of power · scored −08

Coded −8: no coercive state above the self-governing commune.

Programme textOfficers are annually elected and removable in Winstanley's constitution.

SC · Scale of decision · scored −09

Coded −9: the parish community as the unit.

Documented act or statuteCultivation of the commons at St George's Hill in 1649 was the method as well as the demand.

ID · Rule of membership · scored −05

Coded −5: open to all who would dig.

Programme textThe colonies invited participation without qualification of birth or property.

CH · Method and tempo · scored +04

Coded +4: occupation and cultivation rather than arms.

Documented act or statuteThe colonies were dispersed by hired men and legal action rather than by resisting force.

Nearest organisations by measured distance

Straight-line separation across all six axes, out of a maximum of 49.0. Proximity means similarity of stated position, not endorsement and not resemblance in outcome.

Countries

Britain · England

Cite this page

Scores are revised on evidence, so a citation should carry the version it refers to. Version 4.3.1 is current; the revision log records every change.

McGrath, K. (2026). The Diggers. The Political Atlas, version 4.2. https://thepoliticalatlas.com/organisations/diggers/ (accessed 2026-08-01).

Free to quote and reproduce with attribution. This is a synthesis rather than a peer-reviewed dataset — where an authoritative figure is needed, cite the Chapel Hill Expert Survey, the Manifesto Project or V-Dem.