a history of the Luddite movement—a group of artisans and textile workers who resisted the adoption of machines during the early years of the Industrial Revolution in England and whose resistance to being displaced from their work was met with violence by the British monarchy.
That’s a much better explanation of the Luddite movement than I was expecting.
It’s more than just income protection. The Luddites were against the way the manufacturing capital was being used to effectively create wage slavery. They weren’t against technology, they were against a specific use case that undermined worker rights and freedoms, not just incomes. The end result of their suppression was nearly a century of worker abuse and exploitation that ultimately produced the violent conflicts with the labour movement at the beginning of the 20th century.
It’s currently looking like we’re headed back into an era where the owner class is going to be leveraging government to mass-murder their own employees to maintain their dominion over the masses.
That’s a much better explanation of the Luddite movement than I was expecting.
People always assume that it is an anti-technology movement when it’s really an income-protection movement.
It’s more than just income protection. The Luddites were against the way the manufacturing capital was being used to effectively create wage slavery. They weren’t against technology, they were against a specific use case that undermined worker rights and freedoms, not just incomes. The end result of their suppression was nearly a century of worker abuse and exploitation that ultimately produced the violent conflicts with the labour movement at the beginning of the 20th century.
It’s currently looking like we’re headed back into an era where the owner class is going to be leveraging government to mass-murder their own employees to maintain their dominion over the masses.
It’s both.