SOURCE: "Technology in the Digger Utopia" in Dissent and Affirmation: Essays in Honor of Mulford Q. Sibley, edited by Arthur L. Kolleberg, J. Donald Moon, and Daniel R. Sabia, Jr., Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1983, pp. 118-31.

In the following essay, Farr studies the "problem of technology" in Winstanley's utopian political program. Farr demonstrates that Winstanley supported technological advancements, but only those determined to be responsible, humane, and beneficial to the utopian commonwealth.

During the bold and heady days which followed in the wake of the first English Revolution, Gerrard Winstanley the Digger wrote and published "the first socialist utopia formed in the hopes of becoming a party program."¹ The Law of Freedom in a Platform was Winstanley's last work and its design of utopian laws and institutions captured the spirit of Digger ideology—socialism, democracy, and pacifism. These were daring visions for the mid-seventeenth century, a time...