(Not to do with Lyndon Johnson)
I was reading The Country and the City by Raymond Williams, and I came across this passage that makes mention of the "Great Society"
We are men formed in Christ's likeness, and we are kept like beasts.That was the declaration of one of the most remarkable organisations of the poor peasants, the Great Soceity of the fourteenth century.
On the next page he writes:
In the words of the Great Society:
All things under heaven ought to be common.
And that's it. No further information is given. I've tried to research it but haven't had much luck so far.
I found a reference to it in a synopsis of the prologue to Alan Bush's opera Wat Tyler
Prologue
A forest in Kent, at the end of May, 1381. Serfs are returning from work and one of them, meaning to escape, hides until the others have gone. A Herdsman tries to dissuade the fugitive, hinting that "great things are stirring" that may bring the end of serfdom. Peasants enter for a secret meeting of the "Great Society", singing a traditional song of the time.
So what was the "Great Society"? and how did the above quotes come to be attributed to it?
The term "Great Society" refers to a supposed secret organization behind the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. The idea of the "Great Society" in this context is most likely a 19th-century misunderstanding; the indictment against the rebels used the term "magne societatis," which most likely simply referred to the "large band" of revolting peasants, not to an organization calling itself the "Great Society." See "Bond Men Made Free," by Rodney Hilton, p. 215. The quotations you gave capture the general rhetoric of the Peasants' Revolt fairly well, although I'm not sure about the authenticity of the exact words.