AHC: Leveller Victory

The Levellers, a group of English dissidents in the 1640's, "called for an extension of suffrage to include almost all the adult male population, electoral reform, biennial elections, religious freedom, and an end to imprisonment for debt."

They were ultimately crushed by Oliver Cromwell in 1649 IOTL, and for the most part receded into history, but they retain the distinction of being the first political movement organized around contemporary democratic ideas.

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is for the Levellers to achieve power and succeed in enacting the reforms listed above. Bonus points for further speculation on what an English democracy with universal male suffrage would look like in the late 1600's.
 
The Levellers probably needed some sort of unified army to be able to compete with any of the major factions - and it will be hard to convince any of them that they need one. Alternatively, they could try to get Parliamentary backing, but as their revolts against the establishment made them unappealing, they would have to become a peaceful movement. This could result in something like the reforms of the 1800's, but many of they wealthy and influential would be scared of the potential consequences. And even if they do manage to get their ideas accepted, the Royalists could just reverse them if and when they retake the country. In short, I don't see any way the Levellers could win, short of some really good luck (which is a possibility).
 
The Levellers probably needed some sort of unified army to be able to compete with any of the major factions - and it will be hard to convince any of them that they need one. Alternatively, they could try to get Parliamentary backing, but as their revolts against the establishment made them unappealing, they would have to become a peaceful movement. This could result in something like the reforms of the 1800's, but many of they wealthy and influential would be scared of the potential consequences. And even if they do manage to get their ideas accepted, the Royalists could just reverse them if and when they retake the country. In short, I don't see any way the Levellers could win, short of some really good luck (which is a possibility).

I think some good luck is definitely a necessity. One of the most significant Leveller constituencies was in the New Model Army, so their gaining some military power is not out of the question.

Your talk of the eventual Royalist revival actually gives me an idea. How about this scenario: Thomas Rainsborough, military officer, MP, and Leveller, avoids being murdered in 1648. He stays around and plays a role in the overthrow of Charles I, and manages to prevent the elimination of the right of soldiers to petition parliament. Without this wedge between parliament and Levellers in the military, the purges that wiped out a lot of their strength don't take place. Instead, they manage to survive into the somewhat more peaceful 1650's, continue publishing their newspaper, and steadily gain influence.

Fast forward to Cromwell's death in 1658. IOTL this of course lead to the Restoration, but in a TL where agitation for a more democratic government has been ongoing for a decade, maybe we get a different outcome. Perhaps by this point some more Levellers have attained high military rank, and they have more support on the street.

Two options present themselves: first, that it's the Levellers rather than the Royalists who rise up to end the Protectorship. Second, that the Royalist uprising goes similarly to OTL, but rather than mass desertion and a quick defeat for government forces, the Levellers stay loyal, defeat the Royalists, and are then able to use their newly strengthened position to enact their agenda.
 
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TFSmith121

Banned
The Agreement of the People was definitely ahead of

The Agreement of the People was definitely ahead of its time; in various iterations, it included religious liberty, the franchise, lack of property requirements, and a host of other reforms that would look very familiar to anyone looking at various Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century constitutions.

Lilliburne is another possibility, along with Rainsborough. Basically it takes a more "revolutionary" Army - one possibility would be a successful civil war, but resistance builds within the resulting Commonwealth to one-man rule by Cromwell or an equivalent.

It's a stretch, but not beyond the realm of the possible.

Best,
 
Part of your problem is money.

The Levellers, IIRC, wanted to eliminate the powers of the aristocracy, and (maybe the merchant class?). However, cavalry was still an effective arm of the military, and required rich men with horses who could ride well. This the Levellers certainly won't have.

OK, so how about 'the New Model Army' that the Parliamentarians ran. How about it? It still took money, lots of money, to equip, train, feed and supply such an army. The Parliamentarians could do it because they had London and the support of the wealthy middle class merchants. Did/could the Levellers have such support? My impression has always been of them being rather more an anarchic peasant revolt than an organized army.

Of course, I may be misremembering totally.
 
EdT's The Bloody Man has Rainsborough and others playing a prominent role- and a very Leveller-esque Commonwealth (Cromwell is instead in New England)
 
Part of your problem is money.

The Levellers, IIRC, wanted to eliminate the powers of the aristocracy, and (maybe the merchant class?). However, cavalry was still an effective arm of the military, and required rich men with horses who could ride well. This the Levellers certainly won't have.

OK, so how about 'the New Model Army' that the Parliamentarians ran. How about it? It still took money, lots of money, to equip, train, feed and supply such an army. The Parliamentarians could do it because they had London and the support of the wealthy middle class merchants. Did/could the Levellers have such support? My impression has always been of them being rather more an anarchic peasant revolt than an organized army.

Of course, I may be misremembering totally.

The anarchic peasant revolt thing was more the Diggers, a related but separate group whose main focus was on communal use of agricultural land. The Levellers had their base in London and the military.

You have a good point that access to independent financial resources is a major constraint. If they ever managed to take power, the Levellers could of course simply use tax revenue, but in a turbulent revolutionary situation it's definitely important to be able to come up with some fast cash on your own. Still, given a solid power base in the military it doesn't seem like an insurmountable obstacle: nothing helps raise money like broke soldiers.
 
Thinking about why it is that movements with such a comprehensive liberal program could progress and prevail in the 19th century but not the 17th, I suspect that it is a matter of the degree to which the plebeian classes who would obviously be the backbone of the Leveller program had bought in to capitalism as the prevailing normality, and the degree to which the monied upper classes perceived they had done so.

In the 19th century such a radical political program proved (although doubters among the ruling classes were many, and their resistance died hard) compatible with the ongoing power and privilege of wealth, and the continued capitalist organization of the economy which meant the nations revolutionized thus politically remained in the mainstream of the Euro-Atlantic-Global economy. This meant both that powerful toes were not trodden on too hard and that the industrial strength of these nations continued to grow, to remain competitive with their less progressive rivals and also integrated with them by trade.

Now look at the Levellers of England, look at their very name! (I don't know to what extent that was a name they gave themselves, and to what degree it was an insult by their enemies that they turned around to adopt with pride). It might be, that if the monied powers of England had only given them a chance, that they too would prove like their more numerous spiritual descendants some centuries hence quite willing after all to leave great wealth in the hands of the greatly wealthy; to hold that factory working conditions were the outcome of a free bargain between a master and free workers, to regard capitalism as the legitimate and natural outcome of "the pursuit of happiness" as Jefferson euphemistically put it. Perhaps. But does it seem likely? Whoever called them "Levellers" apparently didn't think so!

The Levellers, in context, are not so much proto-liberals as proto-socialists. It is probably valid and certainly interesting to speculate on whether they could have seized power, but if they did it would be after a tougher fight than their latter-day apparent echoes had in the 19th and 20th centuries, and the outcome would be quite different, probably, than something like the French Third Republic. I imagine that these Levellers would, correctly, regard the concentrated power of wealth as one and the same with the concentrated power of aristocratic government they were openly attacking. And whether or not their leaders could be persuaded to let concentrations of private wealth alone, the owners of that wealth would not want to take any chances and would fight the Levellers, with the considerable resources they had. If the Levellers somehow won, it would be over the smoking ruins of the workshops and rented farms and (overseas) plantations of these magnates, and whatever open-mindedness individual Levellers may have started with about the rich, they'd have changed and closed those minds long ago in the bitter struggle. They are not going to see capitalism reinstated; parallel to their ideas of political equality they will believe in economic equality as well, living up to their name in redistributing the wealth of English landholdings and the franchise for urban craftwork evenly among the working people.

Now if they do that in a simple and straightforward way, they will create a peasant Utopia for one generation, that will start to come apart at the seams before the next has fully matured. Some farmers (in the American, not British, sense) will be more successful than others, and so will some craftsmen. Should they be allowed to use their wealth to transform the manner in which work is done, or must they continue to work as their neighbors do? All around them in Europe, great fortunes are made by using capital to hire workers to produce more efficiently and under control of their wage-paying master; if this path is forbidden by political vigilance by the Levellers (and not allowed in disguise by a corruptible regime) can the democratic English find another path to reorganizing labor so as to produce more efficiently (but unlike under capitalism, for the good of the community as a whole)? Or will England slip behind, becoming poorer per capita (the more so because the buccaneering capitalists of London have been preempted from muscling into the East India trade and the slave plantations of the West Indies) and the nation of England weaker militarily for lack of revenues and resources? Can the Levellers have not only the political and moral but technological vision to develop industrial technology on the basis of democratic fairness, or must the power that capitalism brought to the holders of capital always come at the price of mass exploitation and immiserization?

These questions did not arise in the 19th century because by then the potential of a nominally liberal, notionally equal populace to nevertheless participate in the capitalist game without too much quibbling and quarreling had been demonstrated. It was widely known that a nation could profess such sweeping theories of equality and yet host the full spectrum of class stratification that capitalism assumes and runs under. Well actually I'd say they sort of did arise, in that extreme reactionaries were able to point to more radical ideologies that arose in response to the injustices of a nominally liberal order, and that therefore the larger mob who today might be pleased to have a vote and abolition of invidious class degradations, and then placidly show up to work in the fields as hired hands or in factories as workers, might tomorrow decide they had been fooled and they ought to be upping the stakes. Resistance to even basic liberal rights was based on the fear that in the end it was only open class repression that kept the social order in shape, and each concession just made the task of the inevitably necessary mass disciplinary actions that much harder.

But nominally liberal societies were the most powerful in the 19th and early 20th century, and this was no accident, so despite the misgivings of reactionaries, the "Leveller" agenda was the norm then.

I don't think the Levellers of the 17th century had learned to make the accommodation with their monied betters they needed to do, so the problem of their takeover and the style with which they'd have run things seems entirely a different question than what Victorian era populaces actually did with their power.
 
Thinking about why it is that movements with such a comprehensive liberal program could progress and prevail in the 19th century but not the 17th, I suspect that it is a matter of the degree to which the plebeian classes who would obviously be the backbone of the Leveller program had bought in to capitalism as the prevailing normality, and the degree to which the monied upper classes perceived they had done so.

In the 19th century such a radical political program proved (although doubters among the ruling classes were many, and their resistance died hard) compatible with the ongoing power and privilege of wealth, and the continued capitalist organization of the economy which meant the nations revolutionized thus politically remained in the mainstream of the Euro-Atlantic-Global economy. This meant both that powerful toes were not trodden on too hard and that the industrial strength of these nations continued to grow, to remain competitive with their less progressive rivals and also integrated with them by trade.

Now look at the Levellers of England, look at their very name! (I don't know to what extent that was a name they gave themselves, and to what degree it was an insult by their enemies that they turned around to adopt with pride). It might be, that if the monied powers of England had only given them a chance, that they too would prove like their more numerous spiritual descendants some centuries hence quite willing after all to leave great wealth in the hands of the greatly wealthy; to hold that factory working conditions were the outcome of a free bargain between a master and free workers, to regard capitalism as the legitimate and natural outcome of "the pursuit of happiness" as Jefferson euphemistically put it. Perhaps. But does it seem likely? Whoever called them "Levellers" apparently didn't think so!

The Levellers, in context, are not so much proto-liberals as proto-socialists. It is probably valid and certainly interesting to speculate on whether they could have seized power, but if they did it would be after a tougher fight than their latter-day apparent echoes had in the 19th and 20th centuries, and the outcome would be quite different, probably, than something like the French Third Republic. I imagine that these Levellers would, correctly, regard the concentrated power of wealth as one and the same with the concentrated power of aristocratic government they were openly attacking. And whether or not their leaders could be persuaded to let concentrations of private wealth alone, the owners of that wealth would not want to take any chances and would fight the Levellers, with the considerable resources they had. If the Levellers somehow won, it would be over the smoking ruins of the workshops and rented farms and (overseas) plantations of these magnates, and whatever open-mindedness individual Levellers may have started with about the rich, they'd have changed and closed those minds long ago in the bitter struggle. They are not going to see capitalism reinstated; parallel to their ideas of political equality they will believe in economic equality as well, living up to their name in redistributing the wealth of English landholdings and the franchise for urban craftwork evenly among the working people.

Now if they do that in a simple and straightforward way, they will create a peasant Utopia for one generation, that will start to come apart at the seams before the next has fully matured. Some farmers (in the American, not British, sense) will be more successful than others, and so will some craftsmen. Should they be allowed to use their wealth to transform the manner in which work is done, or must they continue to work as their neighbors do? All around them in Europe, great fortunes are made by using capital to hire workers to produce more efficiently and under control of their wage-paying master; if this path is forbidden by political vigilance by the Levellers (and not allowed in disguise by a corruptible regime) can the democratic English find another path to reorganizing labor so as to produce more efficiently (but unlike under capitalism, for the good of the community as a whole)? Or will England slip behind, becoming poorer per capita (the more so because the buccaneering capitalists of London have been preempted from muscling into the East India trade and the slave plantations of the West Indies) and the nation of England weaker militarily for lack of revenues and resources? Can the Levellers have not only the political and moral but technological vision to develop industrial technology on the basis of democratic fairness, or must the power that capitalism brought to the holders of capital always come at the price of mass exploitation and immiserization?

These questions did not arise in the 19th century because by then the potential of a nominally liberal, notionally equal populace to nevertheless participate in the capitalist game without too much quibbling and quarreling had been demonstrated. It was widely known that a nation could profess such sweeping theories of equality and yet host the full spectrum of class stratification that capitalism assumes and runs under. Well actually I'd say they sort of did arise, in that extreme reactionaries were able to point to more radical ideologies that arose in response to the injustices of a nominally liberal order, and that therefore the larger mob who today might be pleased to have a vote and abolition of invidious class degradations, and then placidly show up to work in the fields as hired hands or in factories as workers, might tomorrow decide they had been fooled and they ought to be upping the stakes. Resistance to even basic liberal rights was based on the fear that in the end it was only open class repression that kept the social order in shape, and each concession just made the task of the inevitably necessary mass disciplinary actions that much harder.

But nominally liberal societies were the most powerful in the 19th and early 20th century, and this was no accident, so despite the misgivings of reactionaries, the "Leveller" agenda was the norm then.

I don't think the Levellers of the 17th century had learned to make the accommodation with their monied betters they needed to do, so the problem of their takeover and the style with which they'd have run things seems entirely a different question than what Victorian era populaces actually did with their power.

Very interesting take, thanks. It's an interesting notion that the Levellers would not have moderated themselves as much upon seizing power as later groups did because of a lack of general acceptance of capitalism. Still, it's hard for me to imagine that they'd actually succeed in derailing the ongoing transformation of British society, especially without much of a consistent ideological platform to base their economics on. If they did manage to take power there would probably be some economic reforms to go along with the political ones, but I doubt they'd be able to resist the pressure to allow capital accumulation.

The term "Leveller" was indeed, as you hypothesized, originally coined by their enemies and only somewhat reluctantly adopted by the actual Levellers, who preferred the term "Agitators". The word originally referred to rural rebels who would "level" hedges planted around newly enclosed land, rather than anything to do with "levelling" society.

By the way, I just happened to read The Dispossessed halfway through my long slog through Male Rising, and had a nice revelation about your username after I'd already been enjoying your posts. Good stuff.
 
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