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Quantiki | Quantum Information Portal and Wiki

Posted on December 6, 2022 by Danzig

Welcome to Quantiki

Welcome to Quantiki, the world's leading portal for everyone involved in quantum information science. No matter if you are a researcher, a student or an enthusiast of quantum theory, this is the place you are going to find useful and enjoyable! While here on Quantiki you can: browse our content, including fascinating and educative articles, then create your own account and log in to gain more editorial possibilities.

Add new content, such as information about upcoming quantum events, open positions for quantum scientists and existing quantum research groups. We also encourage to follow us using social media sites.

EDF Lab is opening a position in Quantum Combinatorial Optimization.You'll be a part of one of the most active quantum player in french industry and you'll be involved in the development of algorithms, their tests, thair applications to real machines.Contact me for further details or apply in the following link :

https://www.edf.fr/edf-recrute/offre/detail/2022-58062

Have you ever wanted to take part in the development of top photonic quantum technologies which will change our future? Are you eager to work side by side and learn from with the best quantum scientists, space agencies and high-tech companies? Do you want to boost your career in academia or business R&D in Europe and beyond? If your answer is yes, you are highly creative and hold a PhD in physics, computer science or mathematics or you will graduate in the next few months, then join our multi-national Quantum Technologies Research Group led by Prof. Magdalena Stobiska at the University of Warsaw. We have now 3 open positions which we plan to fill as soon as possible.

Two postdoctoral positions are available at the Institute for Quantum Computing (https://uwaterloo.ca/institute-for-quantum-computing/), University of Waterloo, in the field of superconducting devices. The positions are with the Superconducting Quantum Devices group and will be supervised by Adrian Lupascu.

Ph.D. Thesis: Optimized Hardware Designs for Quantum LDPC Decoders(Partially founded by European QuantERA programme, an international consortium involving partners in France, Germany, Spain and Finland https://quantera.eu/equip/)

PhD positions supervised by Ryan LaRose (https://www.ryanlarose.com/) are available at MSU-Q (https://msuq.natsci.msu.edu/) in the broad areas of quantum computing theory, quantum algorithms, and scientific computing in quantum information. Successful applicants will be motivated learners seeking to contribute novel research to advance the theory and applications of quantum information science.

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New Treatments for Retinitis Pigmentosa – American Academy of …

Posted on December 6, 2022 by Danzig

Hope may be on the horizon for people with retinitis pigmentosa, a rare inherited eye disease with no cure. Existing treatments only help a fraction of the estimated 100,000 Americans with this condition. But advances in gene therapy may soon help restore vision to a greater number of people.

Retinitis pigmentosa causes light-detecting cells in the retina to break down over time, destroying vision. Mutations in more than 60 different genes can contribute to this condition.

If you are diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, its vital to undergo genetic testing to identify your underlying mutation," says Ninel Gregori, M.D., an Academy member and a professor of clinical ophthalmology at Bascom Palmer Eye Institute.

That's because people with certain genetic mutations may qualify to participate in a clinical trial of a new treatment before it's widely available.

"Knowing which gene causes your disease and asking your ophthalmologist about options to join a clinical trial may help save your vision, Gregori says.

Two treatments are currently available for patients with retinitis pigmentosa.

The gene therapy Luxturna is only for patients with a mutation in both copies of the RPE65 gene. Because of this mutation, the retina doesn't respond properly to light. A single injection of Luxturna delivers a healthy copy of the RPE65 gene directly to the retina. This restores the retina's ability to respond to light.

If patients receive the treatment early enough after diagnosis, Luxturna can improve night vision and help patients better navigate in low-light conditions.

Luxturna was developed by Spark Therapeutics and approved in 2017 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It costs $850,000 for both eyes, which may be covered by insurance.

Patients with advanced retinitis pigmentosa may experience some minor improvements in vision using the Argus II bionic eye. Patients who benefit from this treatment often have very low visual acuity, and may only be able to perceive light. A surgery is required to place a small electronic device on the retina. Patients must also wear a special pair of glasses mounted with a video processing technology. The glasses send images to the device, which stimulates light-sensing cells in the retina and transmits these images to the brain.

Earlier this year, Second Sight Medical Products announced a redesigned set of glasses for use with previously implanted Argus II systems, but the glasses are not yet commercially available. Although new Argus II implants are no longer available, a different implant is in early development in Australia.

Several new treatments on the horizon aim to benefit people with retinitis pigmentosa. Many of these therapies are still being tested, and it will likely be several years before they become available to patients. But the results so far are promising. Ask your ophthalmologist whether you qualify for a clinical trial.

GenSight Therapeutics is testing a treatment that has the potential to help people with retinitis pigmentosa regardless of their genetic mutation. Treatments that use light as a tool to control cells are known as optogenetic therapies.

The optogenetic therapy from GenSight combines an eye injection with the use of high-tech goggles. The injection delivers a gene that helps retinal cells respond to light. The goggles allow these cells to send electrical signals to the brain. Together, the injection and goggles attempt to replicate the work of light-sensing cells called photoreceptors, which don't work well in people with retinitis pigmentosa.

Patients must train for several months to learn how to use the goggles. So far, five patients have had the treatment. Some have gained the ability to distinguish high-contrast objects on a table and identify crosswalk lines on the street. They are still not able to read, recognize faces or drive. Other companies pursuing optogenetic therapies include Retrosense Therapeutics (Allergan), Nanoscope Therapeutics, and Vedere Bio, Inc. (Novartis).

People with an aggressive form called X-linked retinitis pigmentosa may benefit from experimental gene therapies in development by three companies: Meira GTX, Applied Genetic Technologies and BioGen. This condition is caused by a mutation in the RPGR gene and typically affects men.

All three treatments involve a procedure called vitrectomy and an eye injection that delivers healthy copies of the RPGR gene to a part of the retina called the macula. Some patients in the clinical trials who received treatment in one eye experienced improvements in their field of vision, light sensitivity and ability to navigate in a dark room. A company called 4D Molecular Therapeutics is testing another type of gene therapy that does not require a vitrectomy.

ProQR Therapeutics is developing a gene therapy that could stop vision loss in people with retinitis pigmentosa and Usher syndrome caused by a mutation in the USH2Agene. This mutation prevents patients from making the USH2A protein, which is essential for vision. The therapy, called QR-421a, is injected into the retina and allows cells to produce a healthier version of the USH2A protein. So far, patients with both advanced and early-moderate disease experienced improvements in both visual acuity and field of vision. ProQR Therapeutics expects to test the therapy in a phase 2-3 clinical trial in the fall of 2021.

Another study by ProQR Therapeutics is testing a treatment for people who have retinitis pigmentosa due to a mutation in the RHOgene. This is also known as RP4. This mutation causes patients to produce a faulty version of the rhodopsin protein, which normally converts light into an electrical signal. The faulty protein becomes toxic to the retina over time. The new treatment, QR-1123, is delivered by an eye injection and prevents the faulty protein from being made. This allows the normal version of the protein to rule the retina again. This therapy is currently being studied in a phase 1-2 clinical trial.

Leber congenital amaurosis is a form of retinitis pigmentosa that affects infants. This disease destroys light-sensing cells in the retina. Type 10 disease is caused by a defect in the CEP290 gene that leads to progressive vision loss and, in many cases, legal blindness.

There are two promising treatments in development for this treatment.

Scientists have developed a gene-editing tool called CRISPR to try to remove the genetic defect. The treatment is delivered to the retina during an eye injection. Researchers hope the tool will help the retina produce a protein that keeps cells from dying and also revives some dead cells. This could help patients regain some vision. Allergan and Editas Medicine are leading the phase 1-2 BRILLIANCE clinical trial with 18 patients to test this treatment.

ProQR Therapeutics is testing a type of gene therapy known as RNA antisense oligonucleotide therapy. This treatment is delivered via an eye injection, and it allows production of a protein needed for vision. Patients in an ongoing phase 2-3 clinical trial are experiencing significant improvements in vision and retinal structure several months after injection.

These treatments could help patients avoid debilitating vision loss due to retinitis pigmentosa.

Gene therapy for some forms of retinitis pigmentosa offer the potential of halting the otherwise relentless progressive loss of vision and visual field. In some patients, it may actually improve vision, light sensitivity, and ability to see and navigate in the dark, says Christine Kay, MD, director of retinal genetics at Vitreoretinal Associates in Gainesville, FL.

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Fact Check-mRNA vaccines are distinct from gene therapy … – Reuters

Posted on December 6, 2022 by Danzig

Vaccines that use mRNA technology are not gene therapy because they do not alter your genes, experts have told Reuters after contrary claims were posted online.

Thousands of social media users have shared such posts since the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines began (here) and have continued to do so through August.

Its not a vaccine. Its gene therapy! wrote one Facebook user on Aug. 9, noting that gene therapy manipulates genetic code (here and here).

Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna have both developed shots that use a piece of genetic code from SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, to prompt an immune response in recipients (here). However, experts told Reuters that this is not the same as gene therapy.

As mRNA is genetic material, mRNA vaccines can be looked at as a genetic-based therapy, but they are classified as vaccines and are not designed to alter your genes, said Dr Adam Taylor, a virologist and research fellow at the Menzies Health Institute, Queensland, Griffith University.

Gene therapy, in the classical sense, involves making deliberate changes to a patients DNA in order to treat or cure them. mRNA vaccines will not enter a cells nucleus that houses your DNA genome. There is zero risk of these vaccines integrating into our own genome or altering our genetic makeup.

Taylor explained that mRNA enters cells shortly after vaccination and instructs them to create a SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, prompting the immune response.

He added that unlike gene therapy, mRNA vaccines are then rapidly degraded by the body.

In fact, because mRNA is degraded so quickly chemical modifications can be made to mRNA vaccines to make them a little more stable than regular mRNA.

Gene therapy, on the other hand, involves a process whereby an individuals genetic makeup is deliberately modified to cure or treat a specific genetic condition (here).

It can be done in several ways, such as replacing a disease-causing gene with a healthy alternative, disabling a disease-causing gene or introducing a new gene to help treat a disease, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) (here).

If we suffer from an inherited blood disease then the defect in our genes can be corrected in blood cells and then we can be cured, said David Schaffer, professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Director of the Berkeley Stem Cell Center at the University of California, Berkeley, in an email to Reuters.

In most cases, the DNA is therapeutic because it encodes a mRNA, which encodes a protein that has a beneficial effect on a patient. So, if someone has a disease where the gene encoding an important protein is mutated - such as hemophilia, cystic fibrosis, retinitis pigments - then it can be possible to deliver the DNA encoding the correct copy of that protein in order to treat the disease.

He added: Because DNA has the potential to persist in the cells of a patient for years, this raises the possibility of a single gene therapy treatment resulting in years of therapeutic benefit.

Moderna, which has developed one of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines used across the world, explained in a fact sheet that mRNA and gene therapy take fundamentally different approaches.

Gene therapy and gene editing alter the original genetic information each cell carries, the company writes. The goal is to produce a permanent fix to the underlying genetic problem by changing the defective gene. Moderna is taking a different approach to address the underlying cause of MMA and other diseases. mRNA transfers the instructions stored in DNA to make the proteins required in every living cell. Our approach aims to help the body make its own missing or defective protein (www.modernatx.com/about-mrna).

Reuters has in the past debunked claims that COVID-19 vaccines can genetically modify humans here and here .

Missing context. Scientists told Reuters that while mRNA vaccines can be considered genetic-based therapy because they use genetic code from COVID-19, they are not technically gene therapy. This is because the mRNA does not change the bodys genetic makeup.

This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our work to fact-check social media postshere .

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Fact Check-mRNA vaccines are distinct from gene therapy ... - Reuters

The Era of One-Shot, Multimillion-Dollar Genetic Cures Is Here – WIRED

Posted on December 6, 2022 by Danzig

The Era of One-Shot, Multimillion-Dollar Genetic Cures Is Here WIRED
Despite Eye-Popping $3.5 Million Price Tag For Gene Therapy Hemgenix, Budget Impact For Most Payers Will Be Relatively Small Forbes
FDA approves first haemophilia B gene therapy Nature.com
FDA Approves $3.5 Million Hemophilia B Gene Therapy BioPharm International
A $3.5M 'bargain'? CSL's hemophilia B drug sets new pricing benchmark, as gene therapy costs mount MM+M Online
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Elon Musk Is Finding Out That Free Speech Isnt Rocket Science – The New York Times

Posted on December 6, 2022 by Danzig

Elon Musk Is Finding Out That Free Speech Isnt Rocket Science The New York Times
Twitter Thrills Far-Right Trolls by Silencing Left-Wing Voices The Intercept
Elon Has Restored Nearly 12000 Banned Twitter Accounts, Data Shows Gizmodo
Twitter-watcher claims 12k accounts revived as Musk's drive for free speech continues CyberNews.com
Elon Musk listens to professional troll Andy Ngo and bans anarchist publisher from Twitter. Literary Hub
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Elon Musk Is Finding Out That Free Speech Isnt Rocket Science - The New York Times

Bob Black – Wikipedia

Posted on December 6, 2022 by Danzig

American anarchist (born 1951)

Bob Black

Robert Charles Black Jr.

Main interests

Notable ideas

Robert Charles Black Jr. (born January 4, 1951) is an American anarchist and author. He is the author of the books The Abolition of Work and Other Essays, Beneath the Underground, Friendly Fire, Anarchy After Leftism, and Defacing the Currency, and numerous political essays.

Black graduated from the University of Michigan and Georgetown Law School. He later took M.A. degrees in jurisprudence and social policy from the University of California, Berkeley and criminal justice from the University at Albany, SUNY, and an LL.M in criminal law from the University at Buffalo Law School.

During his undergraduate studies (19691973), he became disillusioned with the New Left of the 1970s and undertook extensive readings in anarchism, utopian socialism, council communism, and other left tendencies critical of both MarxismLeninism and social democracy. He found some of these sources at the Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan, a major collection of radical, labor, socialist, and anarchist materials which is now the repository for Black's papers and correspondence. He was soon drawn to Situationist thought, egoist communism, and the anti-authoritarian analyses of John Zerzan and the Detroit magazine Fifth Estate. He produced a series of ironic political posters signed "The Last International", first in Ann Arbor, Michigan, then in San Francisco where he moved in 1978. In the Bay Area he became involved with the publishing and cultural underground, writing reviews and critiques of what he called the "marginals milieu". Since 1988, he has lived in upstate New York.[3]

Black is best known for penning a 1985 essay, "The Abolition of Work", which has been widely reprinted and translated into at least thirteen languages (most recently, Urdu). In it, he argues that work is a fundamental source of domination, comparable to capitalism and the state, which should be transformed into voluntary "productive play". Black acknowledged among his inspirations the French utopian socialist Charles Fourier, the British utopian socialist William Morris, the Russian anarcho-communist Peter Kropotkin, and the Situationists. The Abolition of Work and Other Essays, published by Loompanics in 1986, included, along with the title essay, some of his short Last International texts, and some essays and reviews reprinted from his column in San Francisco's Appeal to Reason, a leftist and counter-cultural tabloid published from 1980 to 1984.

Two more essay collections were later published as books, Friendly Fire (Autonomedia, 1992) and Beneath the Underground (Feral House, 1994), the latter devoted to the do-it-yourself/fanzine subculture of the '80s and '90s which he called "the marginals milieu" and in which he had been heavily involved. Anarchy after Leftism (C.A.L. Press, 1996) is a more or less point-by-point rebuttal of Murray Bookchin's Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm (A.K. Press, 1996), which had criticized as "lifestyle anarchism" various nontraditional tendencies in contemporary anarchism. Black's short book ("about an even shorter book", as he put it) was succeededas an E-book published in 2011 at the online Anarchist Libraryby Nightmares of Reason, a longer and more wide-ranging critique of Bookchin's anthropological and historical arguments, especially Bookchin's espousal of "libertarian municipalism" which Black ridiculed as "mini-statism". Black's most recent book, Instead of Work (2015), collects his writings about work from 1985 to 2015.

Since 2000, Black has focused on topics reflecting his education and reading in the sociology and the ethnography of law, resulting in writings often published in Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed. His recent interests have included the anarchist implications of dispute resolution institutions in stateless primitive societies (arguing that mediation, arbitration, etc., cannot feasibly be annexed to the U.S. criminal justice system, because they presuppose anarchism and a relative social equality not found in state/class societies). At the 2011 annual B.A.S.T.A.R.D. anarchist conference in Berkeley, California, Black presented a workshop where he argued that, in society as it is, crime can be an anarchist method of social control, especially for people systematically neglected by the legal system. An article based on this presentation appeared in Anarchy magazine and in his 2013 book, Defacing the Currency: Selected Writings, 19922012.

Black is a longtime critic of democracy, which he regards as antithetical to anarchism. He has criticized democracy since the 1970s. Murray Bookchin, when he identified as an anarchist, was the most prominent advocate of anarchism as democracy. For Bookchin, democracythe "direct democracy" of face-to-face assemblies of citizensis anarchism. A few contemporary anarchists agree, including the academics Cindy Milstein, David Graeber, and Peter Staudenmeier. Black, however, has always rejected the idea that democracy (direct or representative) is anarchist. He made this argument at a presentation at the Long Haul Bookshop (in Berkeley) in 2008. In 2011, C.A.L. Press published as a pamphlet Debunking Democracy, elaborating on the speech and providing citation support. This too is reprinted in Defacing the Currency.

Black was formerly a member of the Church of the SubGenius.[4]

Some of his work from the early 1980s includes (anthologized in The Abolition of Work and Other Essays) highlights his critiques of the nuclear freeze movement ("Anti-Nuclear Terror"), the editors of Processed World ("Circle A Deceit: A Review of Processed World"), radical feminists ("Feminism as Fascism"), and right-wing libertarians ("The Libertarian As Conservative"). Some of these essays previously appeared in "San Francisco's Appeal to Reason" (19811984), a leftist and counter-cultural tabloid newspaper for which Black wrote a column.

To demonize state authoritarianism while ignoring identical albeit contract-consecrated subservient arrangements in the large-scale corporations which control the world economy is fetishism at its worst ... Your foreman or supervisor gives you more or-else orders in a week than the police do in a decade.

Bob Black, The Libertarian As Conservative, 1984

The Abolition of Work and Other Essays (1986) draws upon some ideas of the Situationist International, the utopian socialists Charles Fourier and William Morris, anarchists such as Paul Goodman, and anthropologists such as Richard Borshay Lee and Marshall Sahlins. Black criticizes work for its compulsion, and, in industrial society, for taking the form of "jobs"the restriction of the worker to a single limited task, usually one which involves no creativity and often no skill. Black's alternative is the elimination of what William Morris called "useless toil" and the transformation of useful work into "productive play", with opportunities to participate in a variety of useful yet intrinsically enjoyable activities, as proposed by Charles Fourier. Beneath the Underground (1992) is a collection of texts relating to what Black calls the "marginals milieu"the do-it-yourself zine subculture which flourished in the '80s and early '90s. Friendly Fire (1992) is, like Black's first book, an eclectic collection touching on many topics including the Art Strike, Nietzsche, the first Gulf War and the Dial-a-Rumor telephone project he conducted with Zack Replica (19811983).

Defacing the Currency: Selected Writings, 19922012 was published by Little Black Cart Press in 2013. It includes a lengthy (113 pages), previously unpublished critique of Noam Chomsky, "Chomsky on the Nod". A similar collection has been published, in Russian translation, by Hylaea Books in Moscow. Black's most recent book, also from LBC Books, is Instead of Work, which collects "The Abolition of Work" and seven other previously published texts, with a lengthy new update, "Afterthoughts on the Abolition of Work". The introduction is by science fiction writer Bruce Sterling.

Anthropologist and activist David Graeber cited Black as encapsulating the spirit of American radical politics in the 1980s and 1990s. Graeber called this the "Bob Black period of anarchism" in which "everyone was a political sect of one, yelling and condemning each other".[5]

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Bob Black - Wikipedia

#Meta Announced That It Has Expanded Its Artificial Intelligence Face-scanning Tool … – Latest Tweet by – LatestLY

Posted on December 6, 2022 by Danzig

#Meta Announced That It Has Expanded Its Artificial Intelligence Face-scanning Tool ... - Latest Tweet by LatestLY

Conservatives See Soft Spot in Trumps Populist Armor: Handling of COVID – RealClearPolitics

Posted on December 6, 2022 by Danzig

Conservatives See Soft Spot in Trumps Populist Armor: Handling of COVID RealClearPolitics

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Conservatives See Soft Spot in Trumps Populist Armor: Handling of COVID - RealClearPolitics

Terraforming Mars Board Game Set For Screen Adaptation From Cobalt Knight – Deadline

Posted on December 6, 2022 by Danzig

Terraforming Mars Board Game Set For Screen Adaptation From Cobalt Knight Deadline
Terraforming Mars Sci-Fi Board Game Optioned for Film Gizmodo
Terraforming Mars Board Game Optioned for Movie ComicBook.com
Terraforming Mars Board Game Set For Screen Adaptation - STARBURST Starburst Magazine
The TERRAFORMING MARS Board Game is Being Adapted as a Feature Film GeekTyrant GeekTyrant
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Terraforming Mars Board Game Set For Screen Adaptation From Cobalt Knight - Deadline

Non-aggression principle – Wikipedia

Posted on December 6, 2022 by Danzig

Core concept in libertarianism in the United States

The non-aggression principle (NAP), also called the non-aggression axiom, is a concept in which aggression, defined as initiating or threatening any forceful interference (violating or breaching conduct) against either an individual, their property[note 1] or against promises (contracts) for which the aggressor is liable and in which the individual is a counterparty, is inherently wrong.[1][2] There is no single or universal interpretation or definition of the NAP, with different definitions varying in regards to how to treat intellectual property, force, abortion, and other topics.

It is considered by some to be a defining principle of libertarianism in the United States[3][bettersourceneeded] and is a prominent idea in libertarianism, anarcho-capitalism and minarchism,[4][5][6][7] and in legal concepts like breach of contract and breach of property (trespass to land, trespass to chattels) and, in cases applied to the sovereign state instead of the sovereign individual, in just war theory. In contrast to pacifism, the NAP does not forbid forceful defense.[3][bettersourceneeded]

The principle has been derived by various philosophical approaches, including:

Both libertarian supporters and opponents of abortion rights justify their position on NAP grounds. One question to determine whether or not abortion is consistent with the NAP is at what stage of development a fertilized human egg cell can be considered a human being with the status and rights attributed to personhood. Some supporters of the NAP argue this occurs at the moment of conception while others argue that since the fetus lacks sentience until a certain stage of development, it does not qualify as a human being and may be considered property of the mother. On the other hand, opponents of abortion state that sentience is not a qualifying factor. They refer to the animal rights discussion and point out the argument from marginal cases that concludes the NAP also applies to non-sentient (i.e. mentally handicapped) humans.[14]

Another question is whether an unwelcome fetus should be considered to be an unauthorized trespasser in its mother's body.[15] The non-aggression principle does not protect trespassers from the owners of the property on which they are trespassing.[16]

Objectivist philosopher Leonard Peikoff has argued that a fetus has no right to life inside the womb because it is not an "independently existing, biologically formed organism, let alone a person".[17] Pro-choice libertarian Murray Rothbard held the same stance, maintaining that abortion is justified at any time during pregnancy if the fetus is no longer welcome inside its mother.[18] Similarly, other pro-choice supporters base their argument on criminal trespass.[19] In that case, they claim that the NAP is not violated when the fetus is forcibly removed, with deadly force if need be, from the mother's body, just as the NAP is not violated when an owner removes from the owner's property an unwanted visitor who is not willing to leave voluntarily. Libertarian theorist Walter Block follows this line of argument with his theory of evictionism, but he makes a distinction between evicting the fetus prematurely so that it dies and actively killing it. On the other hand, the theory of departurism permits only the non-lethal eviction of the trespassing fetus during a normal pregnancy.[20]

Anti-abortion libertarians such as Libertarians for Life argue that because the parents were actively involved in creating a new human life and that life has not consented to his or her own existence, that life is in the womb by necessity and no parasitism or trespassing in the form of legal necessity is involved. They state that as the parents are responsible for that life's position, the NAP would be violated when that life is killed with abortive techniques.[21]

The NAP has been defined[citation needed] as applicable to any unauthorized actions towards a person's physical property. Supporters of the NAP disagree on whether it should apply to intellectual property rights as well as physical property rights.[22] Some argue that because intellectual concepts are non-rivalrous, intellectual property rights are unnecessary[23] while others argue that intellectual property rights are as valid and important as physical ones.[24]

Although the NAP is meant to guarantee an individual's sovereignty, libertarians greatly differ on the conditions under which the NAP applies. Especially unsolicited intervention by others, either to prevent society from being harmed by the individual's actions or to prevent an incompetent individual from being harmed by his own actions or inactions, is an important issue.[to whom?][25] The debate centers on topics such as the age of consent for children,[26][27][28] intervention counseling (i.e. for addicted persons, or in case of domestic violence),[29][30] involuntary commitment and involuntary treatment with regards to mental illness,[31] medical assistance (i.e. prolonged life support vs euthanasia in general and for the senile or comatose in particular),[32][33] human organ trade,[34][35][36] state paternalism (including economic intervention)[37][38][39] and foreign intervention by states.[40][41] Other discussion topics on whether intervention is in line with the NAP include nuclear weapons proliferation,[42][43] human trafficking and immigration.[44][45][46]

Randian author Ronald Merill states that use of force is subjective, saying: "There's no objective basis for controlling the use of force. Your belief that you're using force to protect yourself is just an opinion; what if it is my opinion that you are violating my rights?"[47]

Some libertarians justify the existence of a minimal state on the grounds that anarcho-capitalism implies that the non-aggression principle is optional because the enforcement of laws is open to competition.[48] They claim competing law enforcement would always result in war and the rule of the most powerful.[citation needed]

Anarcho-capitalists usually respond to this argument that this presumed outcome of what they call "coercive competition" (e.g. private military companies or private defense agencies that enforce local law) is not likely because of the very high cost, in lives and economically, of war. They claim that war drains those involved and leaves non-combatant parties as the most powerful, economically and militarily, ready to take over.[49][50][51] Therefore, anarcho-capitalists claim that in practice, and in more advanced societies with large institutions that have a responsibility to protect their vested interests, disputes are most likely to be settled peacefully.[52][53] Anarcho-capitalists also point out that a state monopoly of law enforcement does not necessarily make NAP present throughout society as corruption and corporatism, as well as lobby group clientelism in democracies, favor only certain people or organizations. Anarcho-capitalists aligned with the Rothbardian philosophy generally contend that the state violates the non-aggression principle by its very nature because, it is argued, governments necessarily use force against those who have not stolen private property, vandalized private property, assaulted anyone, or committed fraud.[52][54][55]

Some proponents of the NAP see taxes as a violation of NAP, while critics of the NAP argue that because of the free-rider problem in case security is a public good, enough funds would not be obtainable by voluntary means to protect individuals from aggression of a greater severity. The latter therefore accept taxation, and consequently a breach of NAP with regard to any free-riders, as long as no more is levied than is necessary to optimise protection of individuals against aggression.[citation needed] Geolibertarians, who following the classical economists and Georgists adhere to the Lockean labor theory of property, argue that land value taxation is fully compatible with the NAP.[citation needed]

Anarcho-capitalists argue that the protection of individuals against aggression is self-sustaining like any other valuable service, and that it can be supplied without coercion by the free market much more effectively and efficiently than by a government monopoly.[56] Their approach, based on proportionality in justice and damage compensation, argues that full restitution is compatible with both retributivism and a utilitarian degree of deterrence while consistently maintaining NAP in a society.[50][57][58] They extend their argument to all public goods and services traditionally funded through taxation, like security offered by dikes.[59]

Supporters of the NAP often appeal to it in order to argue for the immorality of theft, vandalism, sexual assault, assault, and fraud. Compared to nonviolence, the non-aggression principle does not preclude violence used in self-defense or defense of others.[60] Many supporters argue that NAP opposes such policies as victimless crime laws, taxation, and military drafts. NAP is the foundation of libertarian philosophy.[8]

NAP faces two kinds of criticism: the first holds that the principle is immoral, and the second argues that it is impossible to apply consistently in practice; respectively, consequentialist or deontological criticisms, and inconsistency criticisms. Libertarian academic philosophers have noted the implausible results consistently applying the principle yields: for example, Professor Matt Zwolinski notes that, because pollution necessarily violates the NAP by encroaching (even if slightly) on other people's property, consistently applying the NAP would prohibit driving, starting a fire, and other activities necessary to the maintenance of industrial society.[61]

The NAP also faces definitional issues regarding what is understood as forceful interference and property, and under which conditions does it apply.[62][63][64][65][66][67][68] The NAP has been criticized as circular reasoning and a rhetorical obfuscation of the coercive nature of right-libertarian property law enforcement because the principle redefines aggression in their own terms.[69]

Critics argue that the non-aggression principle is not ethical because it opposes the initiation of force even when they would consider the results of such initiation to be morally superior to the alternatives that they have identified. In arguing against the NAP, philosopher Matt Zwolinski has proposed the following scenario: "Suppose that by imposing a very, very small tax on billionaires, I could provide life-saving vaccination for tens of thousands of desperately poor children. Even if we grant that taxation is aggression, and that aggression is generally wrong, is it really so obvious that the relatively minor aggression involved in these examples is wrong, given the tremendous benefit it produces?"[61]

Zwolinski also notes that the NAP is incompatible with any practice that produces any pollution, because pollution encroaches on the property rights of others. Therefore, the NAP prohibits both driving and starting fires. Citing David D. Friedman, Zwolinski notes that the NAP is unable to place a sensible limitation on risk-creating behavior, arguing:

Of course, almost everything we do imposes some risk of harm on innocent persons. We run this risk when we drive on the highway (what if we suffer a heart attack, or become distracted), or when we fly airplanes over populated areas. Most of us think that some of these risks are justifiable, while others are not, and that the difference between them has something to do with the size and likelihood of the risked harm, the importance of the risky activity, and the availability and cost of less risky activities. But considerations like this carry zero weight in the NAP's absolute prohibition on aggression. That principle seems compatible with only two possible rules: either all risks are permissible (because they are not really aggression until they actually result in a harm), or none are (because they are). And neither of these seems sensible.[61]

Some critics use the example of the trolley problem to invalidate NAP. In case of the runaway trolley, headed for five victims tied to the track, NAP does not allow a trolley passenger to flip the switch that diverts the trolley to a different track if there is a person tied to that track. That person would have been unharmed if nothing was done, therefore by flipping the switch NAP is violated. Another example often cited by critics is human shields.[citation needed]

Some supporters argue that no one initiates force if their only option for self-defense is to use force against a greater number of people as long as they were not responsible for being in the position they are in. Murray Rothbard's and Walter Block's formulations of NAP avoid these objections by either specifying that the NAP applies only to a civilized context (and not "lifeboat situations") or that it applies only to legal rights (as opposed to general morality). Thus a starving man may, in consonance with general morality, break into a hunting cabin and steal food, but nevertheless he is aggressing, i.e. violating the NAP, and (by most rectification theories) should pay compensation.[70] Critics argue that the legal rights approach might allow people who can afford to pay a sufficiently large amount of compensation to get away with murder. They point out that local law may vary from proportional compensation to capital punishment to no compensation at all.[50]

Other critics state that the NAP is unethical because it does not provide for the violent prohibition of, and thereby supposedly legitimizes, several forms of aggression that do not involve intrusion on property rights such as verbal sexual harassment, defamation, boycotting, noninvasive striking etc. If a victim thus provoked would turn to physical violence, they would be labeled an aggressor according to the NAP. However, supporters of the NAP state that boycotting[71][72] and defamation[73][74] both constitute freedoms of speech and that boycotting,[71][72] noninvasive striking[72][75] and noninvasive discrimination[76] all constitute freedoms of association and that both freedoms of association and of speech are nonaggressive. Supporters also point out that prohibiting physical retaliation against an action is not itself condonement of said action,[77] and that generally there are other, nonphysical means by which one can combat social ills (e.g., discrimination) that do not violate the NAP.[72][76] Some supporters also state that while most of the time individuals choose voluntarily to engage in situations that may cause some degree of mental battering, this mental battering begins to constitute unauthorized physical overload of the senses (i.e. eardrum and retina) when it cannot be avoided and that the NAP at that point does apply.[21]

Many supporters consider verbal and written threats of imminent physical violence sufficient justification for a defensive response in a physical manner.[78][79] Those threats would then constitute a legitimate limit to permissible speech. Because freedom of association entails the right of owners to choose who is permitted to enter or remain on their premises, legitimate property owners may also impose limitation on speech. The owner of a theatre wishing to avoid a stampede may prohibit those on her property from calling 'fire!' without just cause.[80] However, the owner of a bank may not prohibit anyone from urging the general public to a bank run, except insofar as this occurs on the property of said owner.[71]

In a 1948 interview with Donald H. Kirkley for the Library of Congress, H. L. Mencken, a writer who influenced many libertarians, puts an ethical limit on the freedom of speech:

I believe there is a limit beyond which free speech cannot go, but it's a limit that's very seldom mentioned. It's the point where free speech begins to collide with the right to privacy. I do not think there are any other conditions to free speech. I've got a right to say and believe anything I please, but I have not got a right to press it on anybody else. [...] Nobody's got a right to be a nuisance to his neighbors.[81]

Supporters also consider physical threats of imminent physical violence (e.g. pointing a firearm at innocent people, or stocking up nuclear weapons that cannot be used discriminately against specific individual aggressors) sufficient justification for a defensive response in a physical manner. Those threats would then constitute a legitimate limit to permissible action.[82][83][79]

Critics argue it is not possible to uphold NAP when protecting the environment as most pollution can never be traced back to the party that caused it. They therefore claim that only general broad government regulations will be able to protect the environment. Supporters cite the theoretical "tragedy of the commons"[clarification needed] and argue that free-market environmentalism will be much more effective in conserving nature.[84][85]Political theorist Hillel Steiner emphasizes that all things made come from natural resources and that the validity of any rights to those made things depends on the validity of the rights to the natural resources.[86] If land was stolen then anyone buying produce from that land would not be the legitimate owner of the goods. Also, if natural resources cannot be privately owned but are, and always will be, the property of all of mankind then NAP would be violated if such a resource would be used without everybody's consent (see the Lockean proviso and free-market anarchism).[87] Libertarian philosopher Roderick Long suggests that, as natural resources are required not only for the production of goods but for the production of the human body as well, the very concept of self-ownership can only exist if the land itself is privately owned.[88]

Consequentialist libertarian David D. Friedman, who believes that the NAP should be understood as a relative rather than absolute principle, defends his view by using a Sorites argument. Friedman begins by stating what he considers obvious: a neighbor aiming his flashlight at someone's property is not aggression, or if it is, it is only aggression in a trivial technical sense. However, aiming at the same property with a gigawatt laser is certainly aggression by any reasonable definition. Yet both flashlight and laser shine photons onto the property, so there must be some cutoff point of how many photons one is permitted to shine upon a property before it is considered aggression. However, the cutoff point cannot be found by deduction alone because of the Sorites paradox, so the non-aggression principle is necessarily ambiguous. Friedman points out the difficulty of undertaking any activity that poses a certain amount of risk to third parties (e.g. flying) if the permission of thousands of people that might be affected by the activity is required.[89]

"Right" has cogently and trenchantly been defined by Professor Sadowsky:

When we say that one has the right to do certain things we mean this and only this, that it would be immoral for another, alone or in combination, to stop him from doing this by the use of physical force or the threat thereof. We do not mean that any use a man makes of his property within the limits set forth is necessarily a moral use?

Sadowsky's definition highlights the crucial distinction we shall make throughout this work between a man's right and the morality or immorality of his exercise of that right. We will contend that it is a man's right to do whatever he wishes with his person; it is his right not to be molested or interfered with by violence from exercising that right. But what may be the moral or immoral ways of exercising that right is a question of personal ethics rather than of political philosophywhich is concerned solely with matters of right, and of the proper or improper exercise of physical violence in human relations. The importance of this crucial distinction cannot be overemphasized. Or, as Elisha Hurlbut concisely put it: "The exercise of a faculty by an individual is its only use. The manner of its exercise is one thing; that involves a question of morals. The right to its exercise is another thing."

Non-aggression principle - Wikipedia

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? – Wikipedia

Posted on December 6, 2022 by Danzig

Latin phrase

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? is a Latin phrase found in the work of the Roman poet Juvenal from his Satires (Satire VI, lines 347348). It is literally translated as "Who will guard the guards themselves?", though it is also known by variant translations, such as "Who watches the watchers?" and "Who will watch the watchmen?".

The original context deals with the problem of ensuring marital fidelity, though the phrase is now commonly used more generally to refer to the problem of controlling the actions of persons in positions of power, an issue discussed by Plato in the Republic. It is not clear whether the phrase was written by Juvenal, or whether the passage in which it appears was interpolated into his works.

The phrase, as it is normally quoted in Latin, comes from the Satires of Juvenal, the 1st2nd century Roman satirist. Although in its modern usage the phrase has universal, timeless applications to concepts such as tyrannical governments, uncontrollably oppressive dictatorships, and police or judicial corruption and overreach, in context within Juvenal's poem it refers to the impossibility of enforcing moral behaviour on women when the enforcers (custodes) are corruptible (Satire 6, 346348):

audio quid ueteres olim moneatis amici,"pone seram, cohibe." sed quis custodiet ipsoscustodes? cauta est et ab illis incipit uxor.

I hear always the admonishment of my friends:"Bolt her in, constrain her!" But who will guardthe guardians? The wife plans ahead and begins with them.

Modern editors regard these three lines as an interpolation inserted into the text. In 1899 an undergraduate student at Oxford, E. O. Winstedt, discovered a manuscript (now known as O, for Oxoniensis) containing 34 lines which some believe to have been omitted from other texts of Juvenal's poem.[1] The debate on this manuscript is ongoing, but even if the verses are not by Juvenal, it is likely that it preserves the original context of the phrase.[2] If so, the original context is as follows (O 2933):

... nouiconsilia et ueteres quaecumque monetis amici,"pone seram, cohibes." sed quis custodiet ipsoscustodes? qui nunc lasciuae furta puellaehac mercede silent crimen commune tacetur.

... I knowthe plan that my friends always advise me to adopt:"Bolt her in, constrain her!" But who can watchthe watchmen? They keep quiet about the girl'ssecrets and get her as their payment; everyone hushes it up.

This phrase is used generally to consider the embodiment of the philosophical question as to how power can be held to account. It is sometimes incorrectly attributed as a direct quotation from Plato's Republic in both popular media and academic contexts.[3] There is no exact parallel in the Republic, but it is used by modern authors to express Socrates' concerns about the guardians, the solution to which is to properly train their souls.

Several 19th-century examples of the association with Plato can be found, often dropping "ipsos".[4][5] John Stuart Mill quotes it thus in Considerations on Representative Government (1861), though without reference to Plato. Plato's Republic though was hardly ever referenced by classical Latin authors like Juvenal, and it has been noted that it simply disappeared from literary awareness for a thousand years except for traces in the writings of Cicero and St. Augustine.[6] In the Republic, a putatively perfect society is described by Socrates, the main character in this Socratic dialogue.

Socrates proposed a guardian class to protect that society, and the custodes (watchmen) from the Satires are often interpreted as being parallel to the Platonic guardians (phylakes in Greek). Socrates's answer to the problem is, in essence, that the guardians will be manipulated to guard themselves against themselves via a deception often called the "noble lie" in English.[7]As Leonid Hurwicz pointed out in his 2007 lecture on accepting the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, one of Socrates's interlocutors in the Republic, Glaucon, even goes so far as to say "it would be absurd that a guardian should need a guard."[8]

The issue of the accountability of political power, traced back to different passages of the Old and New Testaments, received great attention in medieval and early modern Christian thought, especially in connection with the exercise of authority in the Church and in church-state relations.[9] In the Protestant tradition it also animated the debate about who was to be the final arbiter in the interpretation of the Scriptures.[10][11]

In his 2013 report to the UN Human Rights Council, Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, the United Nations Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order, elucidated Juvenal's continued relevance: Crucial remains the conviction that the government should serve the people and that its powers must be circumscribed by a Constitution and the rule of law. Juvenal's question quis custodiet ipsos custodes (who guards the guardians?) remains a central concern of democracy, since the people must always watch over the constitutional behaviour of the leaders and impeach them if they act in contravention of their duties. Constitutional courts must fulfil this need and civil society should show solidarity with human rights defenders and whistleblowers who, far from being unpatriotic, perform a democratic service to their countries and the world.[12]

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? - Wikipedia

Voluntaryism – Wikipedia

Posted on December 6, 2022 by Danzig

Philosophy supporting all forms of human association being voluntary

Voluntaryism (,[1] ;[1] sometimes voluntarism[2] )[3] is used to describe the philosophy of Auberon Herbert, and later that of the authors and supporters of The Voluntaryist magazine, which, similarly to anarcho-capitalism, rejects a totalitarian government in favor of voluntary participation in society, meaning a lack of coercion and force. This is normally completed through a strict adherence to pacifism, civil rights, and either arbitration or some other mutually-agreed-upon court system between individuals.[4]

As a term, voluntaryism was coined in this usage by Auberon Herbert in the 19th century and gained renewed use since the late 20th century, especially within libertarianism in the United States.

Voluntaryist principal beliefs stem from the idea of natural rights, equality, non-coercion, and non-aggression.[5]

Precursors to the voluntaryist movement had a long tradition in the English-speaking world, at least as far back as the Leveller movement of mid-seventeenth century England. The Leveller spokesmen John Lilburne and Richard Overton who "clashed with the Presbyterian puritans, who wanted to preserve a state-church with coercive powers and to deny liberty of worship to the puritan sects".[6]

The Levellers were nonconformist in religion and advocated for the separation of church and state. The church to their way of thinking was a voluntary associating of equals, and furnished a theoretical and practical model for the civil state. If it was proper for their church congregations to be based on consent, then it was proper to apply the same principle of consent to its secular counterpart. For example, the Leveller 'Large' Petition of 1647 contained a proposal "that tythes and all other inforced maintenances, may be for ever abolished, and nothing in place thereof imposed, but that all Ministers may be payd only by those who voluntarily choose them, and contract with them for their labours."[6] The Levellers also held to the idea of self-proprietorship.[6]

The educational voluntaryists[citation needed] wanted free trade in education, just as they supported free trade in corn or cotton. Their concern for "liberty can scarcely be exaggerated". They believed that "government would employ education for its own ends" (teaching habits of obedience and indoctrination), and that government-controlled schools would ultimately teach children to rely on the State for all things. Baines, for example, noted that "[w]e cannot violate the principles of liberty in regard to education without furnishing at once a precedent and inducement to violate them in regard to other matters". Baines conceded that the then current system of education (both private and charitable) had deficiencies, but he argued that freedom should not be abridged on that account. In asking whether freedom of the press should be compromised because we have bad newspapers, Baines replied that "I maintain that Liberty is the chief cause of excellence; but it would cease to be Liberty if you proscribed everything inferior".[7] The Congregational Board of Education and the Baptist Voluntary Education Society are usually given pride of place among the Voluntaryists.[8]

In southern Africa, voluntaryism in religious matters was an important part of the liberal "Responsible Government" movement of the mid-19th century, along with support for multi-racial democracy and an opposition to British imperial control. The movement was driven by powerful local leaders such as Saul Solomon and John Molteno. When it briefly gained power, it disestablished the state-supported churches in 1875.[9][10]

There were at least two well-known Americans who espoused voluntaryist causes during the mid-19th century.[citation needed] Henry David Thoreau's first brush with the law in his home state of Massachusetts came in 1838, when he turned twenty-one. The state demanded that he pay the one dollar ministerial tax in support of a clergyman, "whose preaching my father attended but never I myself".[11] When Thoreau refused to pay the tax, it was probably paid by one of his aunts. In order to avoid the ministerial tax in the future, Thoreau had to sign an affidavit attesting he was not a member of the church.

Thoreau's overnight imprisonment for his failure to pay another municipal tax, the poll tax, to the town of Concord was recorded in his essay "Resistance to Civil Government", first published in 1849. It is often referred to as "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience" because in it he concluded that government was dependent on the cooperation of its citizens. While he was not a thoroughly consistent voluntaryist, he did write that he wished never to "rely on the protection of the state" and that he refused to tender it his allegiance so long as it supported slavery. He distinguished himself from "those who call[ed] themselves no-government men", writing that "I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government". This has been interpreted as a gradualist, rather than minarchist, stance,[12] given that he also opened his essay by stating his belief that "government is best which governs not at all", a point that all voluntaryists heartily embrace.[11]

Another one was Charles Lane. He was friendly with Amos Bronson Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thoreau. Between January and June 1843, a series of nine letters he penned were published in such abolitionist's papers as The Liberator and The Herald of Freedom. The title under which they were published was "A Voluntary Political Government" in which Lane described the state in terms of institutionalized violence and referred to its "club law, its mere brigand right of a strong arm, [supported] by guns and bayonets". He saw the coercive state on par with "forced" Christianity, arguing: "Everyone can see that the church is wrong when it comes to men with the [B]ible in one hand, and the sword in the other. Is it not equally diabolical for the state to do so?" Lane believed that governmental rule was only tolerated by public opinion because the fact was not yet recognized that all the true purposes of the state could be carried out on the voluntary principle, just as churches could be sustained voluntarily. Reliance on the voluntary principle could only come about through "kind, orderly, and moral means" that were consistent with the totally voluntary society he was advocating, adding: "Let us have a voluntary State as well as a voluntary Church, and we may possibly then have some claim to the appeallation of free men".[13]

Although use of the label voluntaryist waned after the death of Auberon Herbert in 1906, its use was renewed in 1982, when George H. Smith, Wendy McElroy and Carl Watner began publishing The Voluntaryist magazine.[14] Smith suggested use of the term to identify those libertarians who believed that political action and political parties (especially the Libertarian Party) were antithetical to their ideas. In their "Statement of Purpose" in Neither Bullets nor Ballots: Essays on Voluntaryism (1983), Watner, Smith and McElroy explained that voluntaryists were advocates of non-political strategies to achieve a free society, and effectively appropriated the term on behalf of right-libertarianism. They rejected electoral politics "in theory and practice as incompatible with libertarian goals" and argued that political methods invariably strengthen the legitimacy of coercive governments. In concluding their "Statement of Purpose", they wrote: "Voluntaryists seek instead to delegitimize the State through education, and we advocate the withdrawal of the cooperation and tacit consent on which state power ultimately depends".

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Voluntaryism - Wikipedia

Autarchism – Wikipedia

Posted on December 6, 2022 by Danzig

Political philosophy

Autarchism is a political philosophy that promotes the principles of individualism, the moral ideology of individual liberty and self-reliance. It rejects compulsory government and supports the elimination of government in favor of ruling oneself to the exclusion of rule by others.

Robert LeFevre, recognized as an autarchist by Murray Rothbard,[1] distinguished autarchism from anarchy, whose economics he felt entailed interventions contrary to freedom.[2] In professing "a sparkling and shining individualism" while "it advocates some kind of procedure to interfere with the processes of a free market", anarchy seemed to LeFevre to be self-contradictory.[2] He situated the fundamental premise of autarchy within the Stoicism of philosophers such as Zeno, Epicurus and Marcus Aurelius, which he summarized in the credo "Control yourself".[3]

Fusing these influences, LeFevre arrived at the autarchist philosophy: "The Stoics provide the moral framework; the Epicureans, the motivation; the praxeologists, the methodology. I propose to call this package of ideological systems autarchy, because autarchy means self-rule".[3] LeFevre stated that "the bridge between Spooner and modern-day autarchists was constructed primarily by persons such as H. L. Mencken, Albert Jay Nock, and Mark Twain".[2]

Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882) biographer Robert D. Richardson described Emerson's anarchy as "'autarchy', rule by self".[4][5] Philip Jenkins has stated that "Emersonian ideas stressed individual liberation, autarchy, self-sufficiency and self-government, and strenuously opposed social conformity".[6]

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Autarchism - Wikipedia

Gerrard Winstanley – Wikipedia

Posted on December 6, 2022 by Danzig

(16091676) Religious reformer, philosopher and activist

Gerrard Winstanley

Susan King

Elizabeth Stanley

Gerrard Winstanley (19 October 1609 10 September 1676) was an English Protestant religious reformer, political philosopher, and activist during the period of the Commonwealth of England. Winstanley was the leader and one of the founders of the English group known as the True Levellers or Diggers. The group occupied formerly common land that had been privatised by enclosures and dug them over, pulling down hedges and filling in ditches, to plant crops. True Levellers was the name they used to describe themselves, whereas the term Diggers was coined by contemporaries.

Gerrard Winstanley was born on 19 October 1609, the son of Edward Winstanley, mercer, and was baptised in the parish of Wigan, then part of the West Derby hundred of Lancashire. His mother's identity remains unknown and he could have been born anywhere in the parish of Wigan.[1] The parish of Wigan contained the townships of Abram, Aspull, Billinge-and-Winstanley, Dalton, Haigh, Hindley, Ince-in-Makerfield, Orrell, Pemberton, and Upholland, as well as Wigan itself.[2]

In 1630, Winstanley migrated to the City of London, where he became an apprentice to a Merchant Tailor. In 1638, he was admitted as a freeman of the Merchant Tailors' Company, a trade guild. In 1639, he married Susan King, the daughter of William King, a London surgeon.[3]

The First English Civil War disrupted Winstanleys business, and in 1643 he was made bankrupt. His father-in-law helped him to move to Cobham, Surrey, where he initially worked as a cowherd.[3]

There were many factions at work during the period of the three related English civil wars. They included the Royalists who supported King Charles I; the Parliamentary forces led by Sir Thomas Fairfax who would later emerge under the name of the New Model Army; the Fifth Monarchy Men, who believed in the establishment of a heavenly theocracy on earth to be led by a returning Jesus as king of kings and lord of lords; the Agitators for political egalitarian reform of government, who were branded "Levellers" by their foes and who were led by John Lilburne.[citation needed]

Winstanley became active as a Leveller, then led a faction known as the True Levellers, who were branded "Diggers" because of their actions. Whereas Lilburne had sought to "level the laws", while maintaining the right to the ownership of real property, Winstanley sought to level the ownership of real property itself, which is why he and his followers called themselves "True Levellers".[citation needed]

Winstanley published a pamphlet called The New Law of Righteousness. The basis of this work came from the Book of Acts, chapter two, verses 44 and 45: "And all that believed were together, and had all things common; And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need." Winstanley argued that

In the beginning of Time, the great Creator Reason, made the Earth to be a Common Treasury, to preserve Beasts, Birds, Fishes, and Man, the lord that was to govern this Creation; for Man had Domination given to him, over the Beasts, Birds, and Fishes; but not one word was spoken in the beginning, That one branch of mankind should rule over another. And the Reason is this, Every single man, Male and Female, is a perfect Creature of himself; and the same Spirit that made the Globe, dwels in man to govern the Globe; so that the flesh of man being subject to Reason, his Maker, hath him to be his Teacher and Ruler within himself, therefore needs not run abroad after any Teacher and Ruler without him, for he needs not that any man should teach him, for the same Anoynting that ruled in the Son of man, teacheth him all things... And so selfish imaginations taking possession of the Five Sences, and ruling as King in the room of Reason therein, and working with Covetousnesse, did set up one man to teach and rule over another; and thereby the Spirit was killed, and man was brought into bondage, and became a greater Slave to such of his own kind, then the Beasts of the field were to him.[4]

Winstanley took as his basic texts the Biblical sacred history, with its affirmation that all men were descended from a common stock, and with its scepticism about the rulership of kings, voiced in the Books of Samuel; and the New Testament's affirmations that God was no respecter of persons, that there were no masters or slaves under the New Covenant. From these and similar texts, he interpreted Christian teaching as calling for the abolition of property [in land] and aristocracy.

Winstanley wrote: "Seeing the common people of England by joynt consent of person and purse have caste out Charles our Norman oppressour, wee have by this victory recovered ourselves from under his Norman yoake."

His theme was rooted in ancient English radical thought. It went back at least to the days of the Peasants' Revolt (1381) led by Wat Tyler, because that is when a verse of the Lollard priest John Ball was circulated:

On 1 April 1649, Winstanley and his followers took over vacant or common lands on St George's Hill in Surrey. Other Digger colonies followed in Buckinghamshire, Kent, and Northamptonshire. Their action was to cultivate the land and distribute food without charge to any who would join them in the work. Local landowners took fright from the Diggers' activities and in 1650 sent hired armed men to beat the Diggers and destroy their colony. Winstanley protested to the government, but to no avail, and eventually the colony was abandoned.

After the failure of the Digger experiment in Surrey in 1650 Winstanley temporarily fled to Pirton, Hertfordshire, where he took up employment as an estate steward for the aristocratic mystic Lady Eleanor Davies. This employment lasted less than a year. It ended when Davies accused Winstanley of mismanaging her property, and he then returned to Cobham.

Winstanley continued to advocate the redistribution of land. In 1652 he published another pamphlet called The Law of Freedom in a Platform, in which he argued that the Christian basis for society is where property and wages are abolished. In keeping with Winstanley's adherence to biblical models, the tract envisages a communistic society structured on non-hierarchical lines, though one likely to have voluntary patriarchs.

By 1654 Winstanley was possibly assisting Edward Burrough, an early leader of the Quakers, later called the Society of Friends.[7] It seems that Winstanley remained a Quaker for the rest of his life, since his death was noted in Quaker records.[8] However, his Quakerism may not have been very strong as he was involved in the government of his local parish church from 1659 onwards though it is not unknown for committed Quakers to retain strong ties to other religious traditions, even including priesthood. He may have been buried in a Quaker cemetery.

Winstanley believed in Christian Universalism, the doctrine that everyone, however sinful, will eventually be reconciled to God; he wrote that "in the end every man shall be saved, though some at the last hour." His book The Mysterie of God is apparently the first theological work in the English language to state this universalism.[9]

In 1657 Winstanley and his wife Susan received a gift of property in Ham Manor in Cobham, from his father-in-law William King. This marked Winstanley's renovation in social status locally and he became waywarden of the parish in 1659, overseer of the poor in 1660 and churchwarden of the Church of England parish church in 166768. He was elected Chief Constable of Elmbridge, Surrey, in October 1671. These offices on the face of it conflicted with Winstanley's apparent Quakerism, a religion which later became more quietist.

When Susan died about 1664, Winstanley sold the land in Cobham to King for 50. Winstanley returned to London to trade, whilst retaining some connections in Surrey. In about 1665 he married his second wife, Elizabeth Stanley, and re-entered commerce as a corn chandler. Winstanley died in 1676, aged 66, vexed by legal disputes concerning a small legacy owed to him in a will.[10][11]

The Soviet-era Alexander Garden Obelisk in Moscow, Russia, in 1918 included his name among a list of outstanding thinkers and personalities of the struggle for the liberation of workers.

In 1999, the British activist group The Land is Ours celebrated the Digger movement's 350th anniversary with a march and reoccupation of St George's Hill, the site of the first Digger colony. Like the original colony, this settlement was quickly disbanded.[12]Since 2010 a Wigan Diggers Festival has been held annually in Winstanley's birth town of Wigan attracting support across the North of England.[13]

The Complete Works of Gerrard Winstanley, edited jointly by Thomas N. Corns, Ann Hughes and David Loewenstein, were published by the Oxford University Press in December 2009 at 229 (ISBN978-0-19-957606-7).

A shorter and less comprehensive volume containing all the major works, Gerrard Winstanley: A Common Treasury edited by Andrew Hopton, was published in 1989 by Aporia (ISBN978-0-948518-45-4) and reprinted several times since, most recently in 2011 (paperback) by Verso Books (UK) with an introduction by Tony Benn (ISBN978-1-84467-595-1).

1975 saw the release of Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo's film Winstanley.[14] As with the duo's previous film, It Happened Here, it had taken several years to produce with a very low budget. Winstanley was loosely based on a 1961 novel by David Caute entitled Comrade Jacob[15] and was produced in a quasi-documentary style, with great attention to period detail even to the point of only using breeds of animals which were known to exist at the time, and actual Civil War armour and weapons borrowed from the Tower of London museum.[16][17]

In 2009 UKA Press released Winstanley: Warts and all (ISBN978-1-905796-22-9), the story of the making of the film Winstanley, written by film director and film historian Kevin Brownlow.

The song, "The World Turned Upside Down," by English folksinger Leon Rosselson, weaves many of Winstanley's own words into the lyrics. An older song, the "Diggers' Song", said to have been written by Winstanley, was recorded by the English group Chumbawamba on their English Rebel Songs 13811914 in 1988.

From A Declaration from the Poor Oppressed People of England:

The power of enclosing land and owning property was brought into the creation by your ancestors by the sword; which first did murder their fellow creatures, men, and after plunder or steal away their land, and left this land successively to you, their children. And therefore, though you did not kill or thieve, yet you hold that cursed thing in your hand by the power of the sword; and so you justify the wicked deeds of your fathers, and that sin of your fathers shall be visited upon the head of you and your children to the third and fourth generation, and longer too, till your bloody and thieving power be rooted out of the land.

From A Watch-word to the City of London, and Army:

Alas! you poor blind earth-moles, you strive to take away my livelihood and the liberty of this poor weak frame my body of flesh, which is my house I dwell in for a time; but I strive to cast down your kingdom of darkness, and to open hell gates, and to break the devil's bonds asunder wherewith you are tied, and that you my enemies may live in peace; and that is all the harm I would have you to have.

From A New-year's Gift for the Parliament and Army:

The life of this dark kingly power, which you have made an act of Parliament and oath to cast out, if you search it to the bottom, you shall see it lies within the iron chest of cursed covetousness, who gives the earth to some part of mankind and denies it to another part of mankind: and that part that hath the earth, hath no right from the law of creation to take it to himself and shut out others; but he took it away violently by theft and murder in conquest.

From The Law of Freedom in a Platform:

If they prove desperate, wanton or idle, and will not quietly submit to the law, the task-master is to feed them with short diet, and to whip them, for a rod is prepared for the fool's back, till such time as their proud hearts do bend to the law... If any have so highly broke the laws as they come within the compass of whipping, imprisoning and death, the executioner shall cut off the head, hang or shoot to death, or whip the offender according to the sentence of law. Thus you may see what the work of every officer in a town or city is."

The rest is here:

Gerrard Winstanley - Wikipedia