The Luddites Were Right

The First Industrial Revolution was a time period of massive change for the entire world. It started in the late 1700s in England, but quickly spread to every corner of civilization as human appetite grew. During that time there was a group of, what we would now refer to as blue-collar trade workers—specifically textile workers. These workers saw the writing on the wall for their profession, and began smashing the factory machines that were replacing skilled labor. They called themselves Luddites, and their name lives on to this day.

If you look up the definition of Luddite, you will get some variation of “an uneducated person who is opposed to technology.” This definition comes from a murder trial, where the Crown was swaying public opinion against them.

The Luddites embraced technology and were extremely educated. What they opposed was oppression, and factories cannot exist without it

If you want to learn more about the Luddites, check out this 99% invisible podcast.

Factory Life

In the early 1800s, factories were popping up all over England. These monolithic buildings, powered by coal, housed automatic machines that could create cloth and garments faster and cheaper than manual machines. But the factories still needed people to operate the machines, and this was dangerous work. Not surprisingly, people who had been working from their homes, for themselves, for generations were not too keen on factory work that paid them less and usurped their freedom. To solve this problem, factory owners would strike deals with orphanages and buy children to work in their factories. The exact impact of this isn’t known, since the factories did not keep track of how many children died in their factories—they simply bought more.

The factories were able to produce massive quantities of cloth. Although it was at a lower quality than the craftsmen could make, cloth was in extremely high demand. The factories could outsell based on volume, and the demand for quality cloth diminished.

Fight The Machine

AAs their work dried up, craftsmen started to take factory work. But there were not as many positions available, and the pay was less. Entire communities found themselves out of work, and starvation was widespread. The people wrote letters to Parliament, tried to form unions, and asked to be able to purchase the same machines the factory owners were buying so they could start their own co-op. All their diplomatic channels failed. The factory owners swayed politicians and the Crown into believing these workers were anti-progress and too dim to understand what capitalism and free markets were all about.

In Nottingham, a group of craftsmen got together and decided to do something about their situation. The march of progress was literally killing them as the ruling class gained ever more power.

They did the only thing they could - They went to war against the machine.

It’s Hammer Time

The Luddites worked in small cells, coordinating with each other through code and secret meetings. They would gather in the fields at night to train, discuss, and plan what was to be done. They would choose a factory, break in at the dead of night, and carrying with them heavy hammers, they smashed every automatic machine they could find.

They left manual machines alone. They only targeted that which was destroying them.

For months, the attacks intensified and spread. Cities all over the north of England were no-go zones for factory owners looking to start a business. These powerful men told Parliament that this was an uprising, that these dirty peasants were getting ideas of grandeur from the French Revolution, and that if the government didn’t do something drastic, the English monarchy was at risk of being overthrown.

In response, Prime Minister Spencer Perceval mobilized the military and occupied cities all over England. But the attacks continued. Factory machines were being smashed, and no one would come forward with information.

The Luddites had the full support of the people.

Death To Those Who Stand In the Way

The factory owners pushed the government to do more. They passed a law where anyone who broke a machine could be killed on sight. So the factories became fortresses, and when the Luddites came in the night to fight against the machines that were starving them to death, they were gunned down by mercenaries.

This was the turning point in the Luddite struggle.

They had very little recourse, and any opposition to economic progress, no matter the human cost, was met with capital punishment. The Crown captured and hung Luddites by the dozen, and ran constant propaganda against them that still holds today.

Lessons For Today

The factory wasn’t inevitable.

It was forced on the people at gunpoint. In an alternative reality, these power looms would have been purchased by the craftsmen themselves. They would have been able to increase production while maintaining their freedoms and their lives. The wealth and prosperity could have been shared.

We can see the parallels today. Amazon is buying out smaller online retailers. Walmart is pricing out small brick-and-mortar stores. AI could be run at home on consumer hardware, but it’s being concentrated in AI data centers.

The Luddites were right to fight back and we need them more than ever. As Brian Merchant writes in Blood in the Machine, the Luddites were not technophobes, but skilled workers who saw technology being used to enrich the few at the expense of the many.

Their resistance was not against progress, but against exploitation.

A fight that we still carry on to this day.