Why did the Diggers call the Earth a common treasury during the English Civil Wars?

During the English Civil Wars, the Diggers—a group of agrarian communists led by Gerrard Winstanley—advocated for the Earth to be a "common treasury" as a direct challenge to the prevailing social and economic order.12

The Diggers believed that the war against the king and great landowners had created a revolutionary opportunity to rectify deep-seated inequality. With food prices reaching record heights in the late 1640s, they argued that land should be made available for the landless and laboring poor to cultivate for their own survival. By labeling the Earth a "common treasury," they were asserting that the land was a shared resource intended for the benefit of all, rather than the private property of a wealthy few.132

Winstanley and his followers viewed landlords, lawyers, and those who bought and sold land as enemies of the poor. Their vision of communal land use was an attempt to assert the rights of the common people against the class rule they believed had long dominated English society.32