http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
The
notes below are adapted from the above source.
What is a "Luddite?"
The
Luddites were a group of English workers in the early
1800s who protested the changes produced by the Industrial Revolution that they
felt threatened their jobs, often by destroying machines.
The
original Luddites claimed to be led by Ned Ludd, also known as "King Ludd",
who is believed to have destroyed two large stocking-frames that produced
inexpensive stockings (which could undercut the price of stockings produced by
skilled knitters) and whose signature appears on a "workers
manifesto" of the time. Whether or not Ludd
actually existed is historically unclear.
The
movement spread rapidly throughout England in 1811, with many wool and cotton
mills being destroyed, until the British government harshly suppressed them.
This included making "machine breaking" (industrial sabotage) a
capital crime, and executing 17 men in 1813. At one time, there were more
British troops fighting the Luddites than Napoleon
Bonaparte.
The
term "Luddite" in recent years has become
synonymous with anyone who opposes the advance of industrial technology.
E. P. Thompson's view of
Luddism in The Making of the
English Working Class
In
his classic book on English history, The Making of the English Working Class,
E. P. Thompson presented a view on Luddite history.
Thompson's approach might well be taken to illustrate the view that, as often
happens in history, it is the victor who writes the lines.
The
Luddites are often characterised,
and indeed their name has become synonymous with, people opposed to all
change--in particular technological change such as that which was sweeping
through the weaving shops in the industrial heartland of England. They are
often characterised as violent, thuggish, and disorganised.
E.
P. Thompson advances many arguments against this view of the Luddites. He aims to show that the Luddites
were not, contrary to their usual portrayal, opposed to new technology; rather,
they were opposed to the abolition of price defined by custom and practice and
therefore also to the introduction of what we would today call the free market.
Thompson
argues that the usage of free market rhetoric has become so pervasive and
commonplace nowadays that it is easy to forget that the notions of the free market
were invented relatively recently, in fact at about the time of Luddites. Before this time an artisan would perform work
for a given price. The notion of working out how much the materials cost them,
how much work they did, and how much profit they made would have been alien to
them, and indeed to most
people of that time, Thompson holds.
Thompson
supplies a number of examples that show it was the forcible introduction of a
new economic system that was being introduced that the Luddites
were protesting against. For example, the Luddite
song, "General Ludd's Triumph":
The guilty may fear, but no vengeance he
aims
At the honest man's life or Estate
His wrath is entirely confined to wide
frames
And to those that old prices abate
"Wide
frames" were the weaving frames, and the old prices were those prices
agreed by custom and practice. Thompson cites the many historical accounts of Luddite raids on workshops where some frames were smashed
whilst others (whose owners were obeying the old economic practice) were left
untouched.
Secondly,
Thompson counters the view that the Luddites were
thuggish. There were remarkably few Luddite arrests
and executions, and yet they operated highly effectively against the forces of
the state. The best explanation for this is that they were working with the
consent of the local communities (or indeed were part of those communities).
Thirdly,
Thompson argued that the Luddites were not disorganised. He noted that some of the largest Luddite activities involved a hundred men.
In
short, Thompson feels that in caricaturing the Luddites
as thugs who just wanted to smash up new technology we are simply continuing
the propaganda of the time. The reality, on Thompson's view, was that the Luddites were normal people who were protesting against
forced introduction of changes into their lives which they thought would be
highly damaging. Looking 50 years into the Luddites'
future, the diseased, poorly fed, and desperate operators in the weaving
factories, and
the swathe of destruction launched upon on the
traditional weaving communities--some with 500 years of history--suggests to
Thompson that they may have been right.
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