People or machines that excavate earth, or historically, a radical political group in 17th-century England that advocated communal land ownership.
From Old English 'dician' meaning to dig, plus agent suffix. The political sense comes from the English Civil War group who literally dug up common land to farm, led by Gerrard Winstanley in 1649-1650.
The Diggers were among history's first environmental communists, believing that land belonged to all people equally. Their radical act of literally digging up public lands to create communal farms was both practical agriculture and powerful political theater.
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