‘What Does Gerrard Winstanley Have to Say to Us?’

What Does Gerrard Winstanley Have to Say to Us?

The great and good of his day say of Winstanley, ‘How knows this man letters, seeing he has never learned?’ And yet he has studied and learned, only not at their feet. A man of the seventeenth century, he couches his thoughts naturally in religious language, but he makes it plain that by following our own reason we can see through the deceit of the world we live in, just as he has. His knowledge brings a lonely burden to this ‘friend to love, wading through the bondage of the world,’ and yet at the same time it gives him hope. Winstanley can see that the fire of reason can consume the thorn bush, whose ashes will fertilise the ground for the olive tree.

There are two words which had not yet been coined in Winstanley’s day: ‘Capitalism,’ and ‘Socialism.’ And yet he talks to us about both across four centuries.