butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Can grab here - not all new stuff mind, in fact, most isn't. But if up to usual standards all are worth reading or re-reading.
Luddites and Neo-Luddites.
- Thread starter Delroy Booth
- Start date
Can grab here - not all new stuff mind, in fact, most isn't. But if up to usual standards all are worth reading or re-reading.
audiotech
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Rebels Against the Future is certainly worth read.
There's also a page being created on facebook celebrating the Luddite Bicentenary.
There's also a page being created on facebook celebrating the Luddite Bicentenary.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/may/19/driverless-cars-pilotless-planes-jobs-human
Here's a Will Hutton article on technological unemployment. Can't get round to doing a long post on it atm but I will return to it, and this thread, soon, coz I've been neglecting thisthread and there's a lot of new stuff I've read about Luddism recently and so I'll try get round to doing some proper posts on it.
Thanks to everyone who's contributed so far though.
Here's a Will Hutton article on technological unemployment. Can't get round to doing a long post on it atm but I will return to it, and this thread, soon, coz I've been neglecting thisthread and there's a lot of new stuff I've read about Luddism recently and so I'll try get round to doing some proper posts on it.
Thanks to everyone who's contributed so far though.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
It's only a thread mate.
I envy you sometimes. Not often mind.
If you fancy a little light reading around the subject, I'd recommend Against the Machine: The Hidden Luddite Tradition in Literature, Art, and Individual Lives by Nicols Fox.
She observes|claims that William Blake disappeared from London for exactly the period that General Ludd was issuing proclamations in t'Midlands
She observes|claims that William Blake disappeared from London for exactly the period that General Ludd was issuing proclamations in t'Midlands
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
No offence but that sounds hideous:
It doesn't even spell mind right. What other people think is interesting. Not these people.
It doesn't even spell mind right. What other people think is interesting. Not these people.
dylanredefined
Not a house elf a tiger
Luddites ultimately failed. Technology has made our world so much better and continues to do so. The price has been high for a lot of workers and entire communities have suffered. Trying to stem technological change is not the way.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Valued offering dylans. Thanks.
JimW
支那暗杀团
Fucking hell man, the whole point of the thread has been to retrieve from history the fact that it wasn't the technology per se they were against, it was the social relations.
I mean this in the nicest way possible, but please try and read the thread and do a bit of research into the topic before offering your opinion.
Luddites weren't against technology per se, these were people who worked alongside machinery routinely as part of their trade, they were against machinery that was specifically invented to make them redundant and break their unions. They were against technology that was designed to leave them destitute and their families hungry. Technology didn't make their world better, did it?
dylanredefined
Not a house elf a tiger
And they didn't succeed did they? Or anyone else who has fought against technological change to my knowledge?
Dockers, the printers in fleet street both lost. As you say their arguments are lost to time and only remembered as an insult nowadays.
No they didn't, but that's the not the issue I'm contesting, the part I disagree with is that it made the world a better place. Not if you're an unemployed cropper who's children starved it didn't. Did if you were a factory owner though.
That's not the case I'm afraid. As I pointed out in my reply to you the Luddites weren't fighting against technological change, they were fighting against being left unemployed and destitute. And also - there are plenty of examples of people who have fought against technological change and succeeded, for instance the way in which copyright law and anti-piracy laws have been used to protect big record companies against the internet, and the new technology that makes recording and distributing music for free a possibility, which poses a threat to their business model. They've been pretty successful with this actually. The difference is they used the law to protect their interests and livlihoods from technological progress, because of their class position, whereas the Luddites had no choice but to use hammers because they were systematically excluded from the political process.
SpineyNorman
Inappropriate content removed
'The Luddites lost' is hardly a great revelation though is it? And, once again, it wasn't so much technological change as the changes to social relations, loss of control over the labour process, etc. that they were fighting against. This technology was used as a weapon to discipline the working class - and that weaponisation (lol) that and their resistance to it is important.
Saying that they lost and shouldn't have fought because technology has improved lives isn't really saying anything - and it's completely missing the point. It wasn't technology per se but the control of technology by capital and the social power capital derived from it and used in an attempt to re-shape the relations of production, intensifying their control over the labour process and as part of that process destroying their livelihoods.
It's like saying that the CND shouldn't have campaigned against nuclear weapons because radiotherapy saves lives.
Saying that they lost and shouldn't have fought because technology has improved lives isn't really saying anything - and it's completely missing the point. It wasn't technology per se but the control of technology by capital and the social power capital derived from it and used in an attempt to re-shape the relations of production, intensifying their control over the labour process and as part of that process destroying their livelihoods.
It's like saying that the CND shouldn't have campaigned against nuclear weapons because radiotherapy saves lives.
JimW
支那暗杀团
One of the reasons the bloke who wrote that 'Land of Lost Content' I referred to earlier (or some other thread) chose that title is that he can show from parish registers that often apprentice lads would marry their master's daughters and similar relationships, which fits with the other documentary evidence and folk memory that prior to the de-skilling factory system that accompanied the new looms, the shearing communities were far less socially stratified as well. That's the sort of thing people hated, being turned into lesser human beings at someone's beck and call (time-keeping used ot be far more flexible/family oriented previously too).
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
The luddite's didn't lose anyway - work was massively reconfigured to stop the wreckage they wreaked happening again.
grit
an ugly force for good
Where do you draw the line though? What is the criteria used to determine if the technology is causing a bad influence. If its put as making people's jobs redundant, taking that it logical extreme, we should have never bothered going past subsistence farming.
A few quick question on this (I've not slept very much last couple of nights so excuse me for being a bit fuzzy) what other long-term political impacts did the Luddites have? There's obviously the repeal the Combination Acts, which can't be attributed exclusively to the Luddites, but the Luddites certainly demonstrated how ineffective these laws were at dealing with w/c politics and nascent trade unions.* This is the first step into the incorporation of Trade Unionism into the legitimate political process, something which in the long-term it could be argued actually aided 19th century British capitalism as working class grievances could be then resolved constitutionally without recourse to direct action. I'm reading up on the Sabotuers in France for a bit of a comparison here to see a contrasting approach, any recommendations of what to read on that topic? All ended up with the Trade Union movement attaching itself to the Liberals, the direct descendents of the same Whig bastards who were the most vocally in favour of stringing up the Luddites and any other poor bastard in a union, prior to the formation of the Labour party.
Then there's democratisation - I found a quote from some MP arguing in the aftermath of the 1832 reform act that it was inadaquet and that Chartism might end up "going the way of Ned Ludd" unless more was done to enfranchise the working class. I suppose it's what we'd called physical force Chartism, although I'm not sure if it's a reference to violence or a reference to Chartism making links with trade unions. I found it searching Ludd on some athens library archive (might've been JSTOR) and I don't have access to any more so I can't find. Did the Luddites have a longer-term political impact, I mean it's not a co-incidence that Luddism was centred in areas that were totally unrepresented in parliament.
Also, can I ask your opinion on this - how come Eric Hobsbawm's writings on the Swing riots and Primitivee Rebels is so much more comprehensive, sympathetic and detailed than his writings on the Luddites? Not saying I disagree with it by and large just that it's really something he spent very little time on and he didn't seem to make much effort in challenging the pre-Thompson consensus of the Luddites being apolitical criminality.
In return I offer you a gift, this is the worst article I've read concerning the Luddites so far. Technological Inertia in Economic History by Joel Mokyr from the from The Journal of Economic History. It's from a Hayekian point of view. He condemns the Luddites for being "non-market deviants." Astonishingly bad.
http://www.mediafire.com/view/?qut69o9te5brm38
*EDIT: Although then again one of the reasons why the British state survived the period after the French Revolution to, and later how they managed to prevent the same sort of uprisings happening here in the 1840's that happened in Europe, could be down how well they managed these problems with their pretty comprehensive repressive state apparatus and laws like the combination acts. Pitt's repression could be argued to have been very successful in the longer term. It's this weird combination of brutal repression and spying networks at the same time as tactical concession. Actually quite astute in some respects.
I should probably try this again when I'm a bit sharper.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Where does who draw the line? The people effected should be the centre of having a say, rather than those who financially benefit by disregarding social costs. Simple - and no need to invent stupid incoherent extremes.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
One for tmw del boy.
This is a very interesting question and I wish I had the stamina to do it justice, so I may have to come back to it another time. In the meantime a few observatons.
Making people's jobs redundant isn't so bad if it weren't for the fact working-class people have no other means of surviving other than selling their labour. Take that away and it's practically a death sentence. As Kirkpatrick Sale says in Rebels Against the Future "That, in fact, may be said to be the defining achievement of the Industrial Revolution: the creation of a society in which people are reduced to a choice betwen wage-labour or starvation" (p.47) Making a job redundant isn't a problem at all until you create a society where making someone redundant leaves them with no means of surviving. This was the era of the poor laws and the workhouse, where if you served no economic utility for the rich and the powerful you were locked up for it.
Also worth mentioning here that technology doesn't get created by some political neutral process. Who pays for research and development in new technology? Are those people ever going to create a form of technology that makes managers or capitalists obsolete? Is technology that hurts their interests allowed or suppressed? What happened to Napster again? What's that quote, fuck it can't remember I think it's from a guy in Parliament defending the Luddites and it's something along the lines of "had there been a machine invented to replace the need for lawyers I'm quite sure we'd be hearing a lot of complaints from the gentlemen of the long robe who currently condemn these croppers" and that's an important point to remember.
There's another theory here you might want to familiarise yourself with, which is Karl Polyani's theory of embeddedness. That the market should be embedded in the needs of the community, and the community shouldn't be compelled to meet the needs of the market. His exact words: "Ultimately that is why the control of the economic system by the market is of overwhelming consequence to the whole organization of society: it means no less than the running of society as an adjunct to the market. Instead of economy being embedded in social relations, social relations are embedded in the economic system"
The experience of the Luddites should really be seen in the context of this huge change in the nature of the economy and the social relations that underpin it.
grit
an ugly force for good
Eh Delroy... the poster I quoted.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
You asked:
A social you. A social criteria. Unless you think Delory pulls the strings of history? Do you? Do you think these are questions that Delory can and did decide?
grit
an ugly force for good
Nah you just parsed it incorrectly mate, no worries.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Oh, you did mean delroy as omnipotent being. Or Alternatively, you are unable - as usual - to reply to the answers to your questions in any substantive manner.
grit
an ugly force for good
No, just Delroy, I dont see where you are having difficulty with this. Delroy had no problem understanding.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
No difficultly, crystal clear as ever. Ooh no I might have to think about what I asked.
grit
an ugly force for good
Then why did you fumble through at least 2 incorrect interpetations?
Night night.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
And guess how delroy answered, by emphasising the social nature of the answer to your questions. You're right he had no problem doing so.
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