SOURCE: An Introduction to The Works of Gerrard Winstanley, edited by George H. Sabine, Russell & Russell, 1941, pp. 1-70.

In the following excerpt, Sabine reviews Winstanley's evolving religious and political convictions and agenda.

Gi; winstanley's Religious Argument =~ Swinstanley's Religious Argument

Winstanley nowhere set out in logical order an outline of the religious convictions which, as he believed, led inevitably to communism as their social corollary. This was in part due to the fact that his writings are pamphlets, written as occasion demanded, and in part to the fact that his convictions were in process of formation, not in the stage of being logically systematized. It is quite clear that he would have regarded this last stage, if he had reached it, as a mark of degeneration and not of progress. Winstanley's communism belonged to the class of prophetical writing, with no delusions about a "scientific" proof—the contemporary analogue...