Many are unaware of this fact
Many are unaware of this fact
The Luddites weren’t anti-technology—they opposed machines that destroyed their livelihoods and benefited factory owners at workers’ expense. Their resistance was a critique of the social and economic chaos caused by the Industrial Revolution. Over time, “Luddite” became an insult due to capitalist propaganda, dismissing their valid concerns about inequality and exploitation. Seen in context, they were early critics of unchecked capitalism and harmful technological change—issues still relevant today.
Eh, their motivations were certainly understandable and their grievances valid, but their way of dealing with those grievances very flawed in my view. Producing more stuff with less labor, and allowing production to be done with less requisite training first, aren't bad things in of themselves, they increase the potential wealth available to society at large in increasing the total output the labor pool can create (though this may not seem so apparent if that technology and associated wealth is hoarded by a few, as has and continues to be the case).
The issue was less the machines themselves and more that the wealth generated by them was not distributed equitably, trying to solve this by being rid of the automation tech is throwing the baby out with the bathwater, though it is understandable how that stuff would become the target of people's frustrations.
In short: the Luddites were wrong to oppose new technology, but right to oppose the surplus value created by that technology being captured entirely by the capitalist class.
They were also opposed to the machines being run by unskilled labor and children. The same children that died and maimed running the machines. The children died in such masses that they had them buried in mass graves away from the factory. There is a lot to this story and not just one thing.
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/blood-in-the-machine/ This is worth a listen if you would like to hear more about the Luddite movement.a reasonable critique especially compared to the propaganda passed down to us. :) to me it really makes sense to want to destroy the exploitation machines the exploitation boss made to exploit. did it work? obviously not, lol, but the heart was in the right place and i am tired of these poor souls getting trashed ya know? it doesn’t sit well with me to have these folks’ legacy become an insult.
Yeah, and we still haven't learned the lesson. We have people today attacking AI technology rather than the way it's being used to funnel wealth inequitably.
It actually helps the wealthy capitalists, because they can use that sentiment to promote regulations that will entrench their positions.
i think we are certainly doing slightly better than the luddites. i see a ton of conversations about how artwork and texts are stolen, and the insane energy/water usage AI uses. those come with calls to ethically accquire training materials and to regulate eco efficiency. that’s certainly more specific than the worst possible public response of something like “ban neural networks” or something haha
Hang on, I haven’t learned the lesson yet either. I don’t know that antibiotics, air conditioning, and Novocain (the three inventions I value most) are actually worth the destruction of our environment that came with advanced technology. For me, they’ve paid off, and for my parents’ generation, there were very few bad side effects. For the next five generations, I think it’s going to be a different calculus.
Isn’t that just a matter of opinion?
What does AI technology do for society that is comparable to textile machines? Write your 3-paragraph essay for you?
It's honestly a bit cringe how these memes always need to pull some kind of capitalist Boogeyman into the narrative where it doesn't belong.
Marx's entire theory of history is built in the inevitability of technological progress, and how it shapes economic and social systems. From a Marxist lens, opposing such progress is pissing into the wind. It's worse than being an actual aristocrat in many ways, because it actively harms the progression towards the post scarcity utopia where surplus labor has no value to exploit.
There's a reason why the USSR and China formed their entire revisionist theory around rapid industrialization to compete with more advanced capitalist societies.
This one again? Luddites opposed technological progress from a very naive position, and their stance had nothing to do with subverting capitalist exploitation and was literally just braindead conservative "no change allowed" nonsense.
These memes don't make sense. As if AES countries refused to build out automation tech so that every tradesman could keep their father's job. It was the exact opposite - a movemt like the Luddites in the USSR would have been unceremoniously squashed as counter-revolutionary, just the same.
I said “based” not “perfect in every single motive and tactic.” Marx didn’t totally rock with the Luddites himself, but he does express an understanding that the Luddites actions were a primitive and instinctive form of class struggle. This user explains it well:
Marx was right about the luddites. The first phase of the development of working clas consciousness is destroying the machines that impoverish the workers. It is not the last phase.
I mean if you are taking a Marxist lens then not really. Opposing technological progress because it makes your current job obsolete would be seen as pretty much the same kind of brain dead effort it is through a capitalist lens. At best it would be seen as a huge missed opportunity to put that effort into actual syndicalism instead of the public relations nightmare they chose.
Something people need to understand is that technology is not a linear progression. We decide not only how it is used and for what purpose, but the actual thing itself. The technology itself can be thought in terms of conviviality, ie how adaptive it is to human intent. Chomsky points to CNC machines; how when they were developed they were done so with top down control in mind. Contrast that with how 3D printers have a trend of supporting more autonomy on the shop floor (print from computer over wifi or plug in a USB stick). While CNC machines of old have practically no thought for such things beyond safety and accuracy.
Do you have the citation for the Chomsky reference? Would love to get a better handle on these concepts.
One more link: where I discovered the term conviviality was a video from andrewism "we need to be more tech critical": https://youtu.be/lV6JzroVr48
Damn, lots of propaganda-swallowers in the comments.
Can I suggest yall listen to some pods about the Luddites and make up your own mind?
You may come to the conclusion it’s time to bring Ludd’s hammer to a data center near you.
You can be anti-capitalist and pro-labor without needing to see the Luddites as anything except what they were - middle-class workers trying to defend their own handful of specialized jobs and firms exploiting familial rather than wage labor against the intrusion of more efficient processes during an economic downturn. It's not propaganda to fail to read some kind of proto-class consciousness into it.
the luddites then have basically the same argument as coal miners now - it’s entirely about loss of their livelihood, and ignores the bigger societal good that comes from the changes that result in the loss of their livelihood
from the luddites and the coal miners perspective, it’s entirely self-serving and everything else is just used to support that
There’s something of a myth of a “model demographic” that I think is being misapplied by those “falling for the propaganda.” Of course, it’s a meme, but when I refer to certain groups or individuals in a positive light, I don’t mean to imply they were ethically perfect or without flaws. What I mean is that they were actively challenging the systems that needed to be challenged. In that sense, the praise is about their resistance to a deeply exploitative system, not an endorsement of every action or belief they held.
For example, many view Malcolm X positively—not because he was without contradictions, but because he challenged oppressive systems and presented a radical alternative. Similarly, someone like Luigi Mangione might be admired for resisting corporate or state control in his own way, even though the context is different.
Technically correct but language and meaning change over time based on how we use it. Doing something "on accident" is grammatically incorrect, bimbo is a masculine term (bimbette is the feminine and himbo shouldn't exist) and literally isn't a synonym of figuratively, except when it is. Now luddite means techno-smuggle whether we like it or not.
totally valid perspective to take on the matter. i can do my little piece to combat that but in the end i am just a droplet among the waves.
Non meme version: What the Luddites can teach us about resisting an automated future. - comic format.
sample:
Machines were the weapons employed by the capitalist to quell the revolt of specialized labor. -- Karl Marx
Yep, before industrialisation you had powerful guilds that would hold monopolies over production of certain goods and we're basically unions before the fact.
Marx was right about the luddites. The first phase of the development of working clas consciousness is destroying the machines that impoverish the workers. It is not the last phase.
Part of the broader struggle, but not the endpoint of the struggle.
Proto-based—not yet fully based—, yet necessary for absolute based-ness to come to fruition.
they opposed machines that destroyed their livelihoods
Yep, in the same way that horse breeders opposed motorized busses and trolleys.
No, not the same way at all (edit: similar, yes but I take issue with calling them identical). The Luddites fought against machines that exploited workers and destroyed communities, targeting the systems of inequality behind them. Horse breeders opposed motorized buses purely to protect their market share. One was a fight for justice; the other was just economic self-interest.
No, not the same way at all. The Luddites fought against machines that exploited workers and destroyed communities, targeting the systems of inequality behind them.
'Exploited workers'
By that, of course, you mean 'undermined the system of cottage industry which had been monopolized by a relatively small group of semiskilled families which resented the influx of unskilled workers in the region'.
But hey, as long as it's exploitation WITHIN the family, that's better, right? And fuck those unskilled workers.
Horse breeders opposed motorized buses purely to protect their market share. One was a fight for justice; the other was just economic self-interest.
The Luddites were not some crusaders for justice. If you want to lionize them, at least get the fucking history right. They were acting in their economic self-interest.
I really got a bad taste in my soul about the luddites mostly because of Wendell Berry and his use of his wife as the replacement for a computer. I mean, sure if you are willing to exploit people, machines are less important. But he didn't even type his own work. She typed, proofread, edited. Like a word processor but a human one.
Just learned of this guy now, but yeah. If the originalist Luddites were doing the right thing for the wrong reason, Berry here is doing the wrong thing for the wrong reasons.
It's like if "we" start producing androids for slave labour - if only factory owners benefit from it then what is the point?
It's only worth it if all society benefits from it.
They were both actually: tech haters and system critics.
When huge majority of
technology at the timeindustrial technology was designed to drive wages down, yeah, people are going to become industrial “tech haters.”Not many realize how new this tech and type of mechanical exploitation was to those people, and how it was concentrated on simply extracting value from them.
Not many realize how new this tech and type of mechanical exploitation was to those people, and how it was concentrated on simply extracting value from them.
... you do realize that the entire textile industry which the Luddites' cottage-style industry was based on was, itself, formed on 'mechanical exploitation' almost a century old at that point, right?
... right...?
Thanks for this. More incite:
Marx’s point against the Luddites is well meant; but there’s a sense, too, in which he underestimated the Luddites’ anti-capitalist stance, giving short-shrift to their ties to nascent trade unionism and to the growing workers’ underground. Arguably, the Luddites offered a way into attacking not just the material instruments of production but also the form of society that utilised them. To that degree, their agitation and activism remains instructive, maybe even inspiring, in our own abrasively technocratic and technological age.
Originalist luddite, not troglodyte.
What did I do to you?
Nothing when you don’t have internet access in the cave.
real
I wonder what the artist, script writers and a litterny of other skilled workers will be called after the anti ai revolution..
They'll be called artists, script writers, and their other respected titles. The market value of any AI art is zero, as its supply is effectively infinite. If a piece can be churned out for a few pennies of electricity, then the market value of that piece is just a few pennies. Inevitably, the kind of art that can be produced by AI models will, and already is, regarded as cheap worthless schlock. Human artists will instead focus on those things that AI can't mass produce, and those will retain value.
The market value of any product or service produced by an AI algorithm is zero.
I'm not talking art gallery or famous writers and I am not speaking of current AI either, with the rapid speed AI has moved with in the last 10 years I can't see commercial artists, game writers continuing as they are. They will become the etcy seller selling hand crafted niche as the profit margins of incorporating AI is too lucrative and is something we see currently.
Luddites are part of a long tradition of leftists being completely slandered and misrepresented by capitalist media... See also: anarchism, communism, nihilism, etc.
Wrong instance to talk the finer points of whether or not resistance to monopolized innovation is justified.
resistance to monopolized innovation is based, didn’t say anything about justified 😝