Tuesday, February 12, 2019
What were they thinking?
As with many other such social movements, I have to question whether the Diggers thought their communities would actually last. As shown in multiple literary examples, a utopian society can only come to be under specific conditions, including the absence of another social order. The Diggers still had to contend with the existing authority of English government at the time. Obviously they anticipated resistance from the landowners, but did they think their movement would outlast those objections?
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I bet they knew exactly what they were getting into, up against English hegemony. And who knows if they REALLY expected to make a society that stood until the end of history, but they probably at least wanted to make a statement against that hegemony with what they believed.
ReplyDeleteAnd in a way, their movement has outlasted those objections: it has morphed, sure, seeing as there aren't exactly Lords and Kings to contend with anymore. But what else could all modern leftist counterculture movements be—hippies, Occupy, who knows: veganism?— but evidence of the Diggers' success?
I agree with Alex in that I think the Digger movement, like most movements, was more focused on the effort than the chances of that effort resulting in tangible results. This may just be me projecting a bit, but I feel like the point of making a statement is that you have to do something, anything, in order to stand up for your values. You won’t necessarily succeed, but the point is that you did what you could and stuck strongly to your own morals.
DeleteYeah, I really think they were just trying to survive and expose their society for what it really was, especially with all that extra, unused common land, and how it was letting its people starve when they obviously had the resources to allow for their survival. But, the fact that someone even got to make that decision is pretty sad.
DeleteI agree with the other responses. I think being apart of a social movement is more about standing up for what you believe is right despite having the odds stacked against you. I don’t think people are ever completely sure that their ideas or plans will work out in their favor or that they will “win” so to speak, but they put all their effort and hope into it the battle in order to stand up for their beliefs.
ReplyDeleteDo capitalists and monarchies think that their societies will last? Maybe they'll last longer than what the Diggers had going, but that's only because the land that they existed on was "owned" by a different "state." Their other option was to do nothing, which I think would have failed to capitalize on the current political situation in England. I think that's what's different about the two societies: anarchist communes will continue to exist as long as everyone's cool with it, but capitalist societies often suppress these kinds of alternatives because of the power the state has over the people. The Diggers were smart and knew their land was capitalist turf, so even if they knew it wouldn't last, they made a statement by challenging the status quo.
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