capitalism

290 Levellers
intervention was a means for the well-connected aristocracy
to exploit the common man.
See also Jefferson, Thomas; Liberalism, Classical; Minimal State
Further Readings
Leggett, William. Democratick Editorials: Essays in Jacksonian
Political Economy. Lawrence H. White, ed. Indianapolis, IN:
Liberty Press, 1984. Available from http://www.econlib.org/
library/Leggett/lgtDE.html.
White, Lawrence H. “William Leggett: Jacksonian Editorialist as
Classical Liberal Political Economist.” History of Political
Economy 18 (1986): 307–324.
LEVELLERS
LHW
The Levellers were a heterogeneous group of English radicals,
many of a quasilibertarian bent, who, as an organized
movement, were briefly active during the tumultuous
years of the English Civil War (1642–1649). The movement
surfaced in the summer of 1645, became a vocal
popular party in 1646, and, for all practical purposes, disappeared
as an organized movement during the fall of
1649. Its most prominent spokesmen were John Lilburne
(1615–1657), Richard Overton (1631–1664), and William
Walwyn (1600–1681).
As a political movement, the Leveller party’s initial concerns
centered on religious issues, first and foremost the
demand for religious freedom and separation of state and
church. These demands were soon taken up by ordinary citizens
and soldiers who opposed the Church of England, the
House of Lords, and the government of Charles I. The
Levellers were for a time associated with Oliver Cromwell,
the Independents, and the Protectorate. However, as the
Civil War progressed and it became evident that the new
Commonwealth was turning itself into a tyranny, the
Levellers quickly took on the role of Cromwell’s most vocal
and radical opponents.
The Levellers were not a uniform group sharing one
common, clearly defined political ideology, but they did
share a common viewpoint on a number of issues that
proved to adumbrate modern libertarian ideology in a great
many respects. Overton’s writings particularly provide an
overview of the Levellers’ chief concerns. Overton was not
only among the most colorful and remarkable of all the
personalities thrown up by the English upheavals of
1640–1660, but also was an influential political pamphleteer
and the most prominent ideologue of the movement. In
clear and often satirical prose, Overton endorsed a radical
voluntarist and secular version of natural law that centered
on the “principles of right reason” and a semicontractarian
limited government.
The “principles of right reason” espoused by Overton
comprised an inalienable right of individuals, and indeed a
duty, to seek their own self-preservation with whatever
means necessary, and a requirement that all relationships
with others be voluntary and based on the consent of the
parties involved. These principles are mediated through one
central analytical concept—namely, what Overton called
self-propriety, which is quite similar to what many contemporary
libertarians call self-ownership. This notion is best
captured in this passage in Overton’s pamphlet, An Arrow
against All Tyrants (1646):
To every Individuall in nature, is given an individuall property
by nature, not to be invaded or usurped by any: for
every one as he is himselfe, so he hath a selfe propriety,
else could he not be himselfe, and on this no second may
presume to deprive any of, without manifest violation and
affront to the very principles of nature, and of the Rules of
equity and justice between man and man; mine and thine
cannot be, except this be: No man hath power over my
rights and liberties, and I over no mans; I may be but an
Individuall, enjoy my selfe and my selfe propriety, and
may write my selfe no more then my selfe, or presume any
further; if I doe, I am an encroacher & an invader upon an
other mans Right, to which I have no Right. For by naturall
birth, all men are equally and alike borne to like propriety,
liberty and freedome, and as we are delivered of
God by the hand of nature into this world, every one with
a naturall, innate freedome and propriety (as it were writ in
the table of every mans heart, never to be obliterated) even
so are we to live, every one equally and alike to enjoy his
Birth-right and priviledge; even all whereof God by nature
hath made him free.
This self-propriety is inalienable, and any attempt to contravene
it would violate what is both a command of God and a
law of nature: “[F]or as by nature, no man may abuse, beat,
torment, or afflict himselfe; so by nature, no man may give
that power to another, seeing he may not doe it himself. . . .”
The second principle that Overton sets forth is that it is
legitimate to seek self-preservation by all means necessary,
irrespective of any context other than the limits set down by
the self-propriety of others, so that “[n]o man hath power
over my rights and liberties, and I over no mans.” The right
and duty of the individual to seek his self-preservation thus
naturally entails a reciprocal duty to respect a similar right
in all others—that is, “Liberty of the Person, and liberty of
Estate: which consists properly in the propriety of their
goods, and a disposing power of their possessions.”
These principles of self-propriety and a natural right to
liberty entail the right of the individual to freely dispose of
his person, his labor, and his legitimately acquired goods.
In contrast to Locke some decades later, Overton nowhere
developed a theory of how to legitimately acquire property,