The Politics of Levelling: History and Theory

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Lauded alternatively as harbingers of modern democracy, socialism, communism, liberalism, libertarianism, and populism, the Levellers have been read and received in numerous different lights since their rediscovery by historians, and later political activists, at the tail end of the 19th century. Though time has swept away the specific controversies and contestations of 17th century England, in the Levellers’ thought we find the underpinnings of an idea that has come to sit at modern democracy's heart: that every human being is somehow fundamentally equal, and that this moral equality matters for our economic, political, and social arrangements.[1] This kind of ‘basic equality’ has served as the premise of egalitarian political and philosophical argument since at least the 17th century.[2] As Elizabeth Anderson has argued, in the Levellers’ thought we also find a particularly firm grasp of this basic equality as something essential to the demand for shared social and political standing opposed to hierarchical relations.[3] Against these laudatory readings, various scholars have criticized the Levellers for their exclusions of the poor, women, and enslaved African people.[4] In this light, the Levellers appear less as principled egalitarians and more as chauvinists and hypocrites whose demands for equal standing were, in fact, demands for distinction pressed at other people’s expense.[5]

Bringing together theory and history, the papers on this panel continue in seeking to interpret the logic, legacy, and theoretical opportunities presented by the Levellers’ egalitarianism. Each of the papers examines the notion of ‘levelling,’ both as it meant for 17th century political actors and as it might mean for the theorist of democracy today. Where two of the papers undertake a re-reading of the Levellers’ thought in the context of its various and diverse interpretations, the other two focus on particular historical modes of ‘levelling’.

Smith first offers an overview of the Levellers’ thought and its legacy, particularly as they relate to other political actors in the English Civil War and recent work in various histories adjacent to the political study of the Levellers. For Smith, we are still some way from understanding how the Levellers’ ideas and personnel coped with the challenges of political transformation after 1660 and 1689. Bejan’s paper follows Smith in contending with the legacy of the Levellers’ thought and activism, and in placing both in conversation with the Levellers’ contemporaries (specifically, the Diggers in their claim to being ‘true levellers’). By assessing the varieties of 'levelling’ and their association with equality in early modern English political thought, Bejan sheds light on the ambiguity of 'levelling’ both as an early modern political project and as an egalitarian concept for political theorists today.

Maniar and Schwartz turn to studying specific facets of the Levellers’ egalitarian thought. By reading the Levellers’ theory of individual rights and popular sovereignty in relation to private economic monopoly power, Maniar parses between the different modes of reasoning that undergirded various ‘levelling’ strategies. We are left both with an historical reflection on the nature of ‘economic’ power in the 17th century and its logical tension with the Levellers’ moral-political egalitarianism, and with a theoretical case for the student of democracy’s reclaiming private monopoly power as a politically relevant subject of analysis. Where Maniar touches on the claimed individual right to labour, Schwartz assesses Englishwomen’s claims to a right to petition the Commons for the redress of grievances. Schwartz’s analysis of the levelling politics of emergency illuminates the mutually generative relationship between radical ideas and political action, here with an examination of the rhetorical strategies that Leveller women employed in favor of equality against hierarchy.

The Levellers have captured scholars' imaginations for well over a century. Yet, we've still to reach a generally agreed-upon interpretation of their thought and political actions. By bringing together four papers which emphasize various facets of the Levellers’ thinking and activities, this panel proposes to continue studying and making sense of the Levellers both as historical political actors and as the theoretical progenitors of a politics of levelling that remains critical to questions of egalitarianism and democracy today.


1. Teresa Bejan, First Among Equals (forthcoming)
2. Jeremy Waldron, One Another’s Equals (2017)
3. Elizabeth Anderson, Private Government (2017)
4. See e.g., C. B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (1962); Christopher Hill, “Introduction,” in Winstanley “The Law of Freedom” and Other Writings (1983); Patricia Crawford, “‘The Poorest She’," in The Putney Debates of 1647 (2001); Carla Gardina Pestana, The English Atlantic in an Age of Revolution, 1640–1661 (2007); John Donoghue, “'Out of the Land of Bondage'," The American Historical Review (2010)
5. Supra note 1

Sub Unit

• Division 7: Politics and History

Individual Presentations

• What the Scholars Say: The Levellers and Their Future - Nigel Smith, Princeton University

• The Varieties of ‘Levelling’ in Early Modern England - Teresa M. Bejan, University of Oxford

• Levelling Power: Non-consequentialist Criticism of ‘Economic’ Monopoly - Kaarish K. Maniar, Columbia University

• A ‘Proportionable Share’: Levelling Politics of Emergency in Women’s Petitions - Justin Kyle Schwartz, King's College London

Chair

• Shannon C. Stimson Georgetown University

Discussants

• Shannon C. Stimson Georgetown University

• Richard R John Columbia University