ABSTRACT
This chapter contributes to recent environmentally focused Gerrard Winstanley scholarship and shows that Winstanley believed that to 'govern the earth' was to govern people through the control of the natural resources upon which they depended. It addresses labour, showing that Winstanley saw it as a means of resistance and independence, a way of reordering society and fulfilling the rights of all to their environment. The chapter presents an alternative understanding of the means by which Winstanley believed private property in land would be overthrown and explicitly develops recent discussions of the role of praxis and embodiment in his work. Within the larger literature of politics in the early modern period, it highlights a radical voice and a vision of politics in which all are capable of transforming the government of their society and emphasises the importance of controlling natural resources.
