“If the Luddites had never existed, their critics would have to invent them.” – Theodor Roszak
There are two kinds of work about the Luddites.
One of these takes a deeply historical approach to the Luddites, taking care to place them in their moment in time and drawing as much as possible on the available primary sources to cut through the biases the term Luddite inspires in order to present a faithful account of who the Luddites really were and what they really did. The other approach carries a deep interest in the historical Luddites, but focuses more fully not on the reasons why the Luddites practiced the tactics for which they would become famous but focuses instead on the significance of that tactic itself. Both kinds wrestle with the matter of smashing machinery with hammers, but in one approach this is a particular tactic deployed by particular people in a particular context, and in the other approach the machine smashing is used to raise questions that goes beyond the Luddites and asks larger questions about people’s ongoing relationships to technology more broadly.
Or, to put this in a more straightforward way, when approaching any work related to the Luddites the question to ask is if it is a work about the Luddites or if it is a work about Luddism. With the works about the Luddites providing a historical account of a period of machine-breaking, while works about Luddism seek to develop a philosophy/politics/worldview based on machine-breaking. And within either genre of work one will find some that are laudatory and others that are scornful.
To identify this split is not to pass judgement on the works in either camp. Both are necessary, both are important, both can be phenomenal, and though most work on the Luddites falls primarily into one of those categories most of these works at least dabble in doing both. This speaks to the challenges of discussing the Luddites: there is a desire to rescue the historical figures from the crude generalizations that the term “Luddite” often represents, even as there is a desire to find in the Luddites some sort of foundational critique of technology that can be generalized beyond the original historic struggle. Which in turn raises an even thornier question when it comes to discussing the Luddites, namely: what exactly do we mean today when we say “Luddism”?
With Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech, Brian Merchant has made an important and powerful contribution to current discussions around the Luddites and Luddism. The book is a hefty tome that features a thorough, and contextually grounded, recounting of the actions of the historic Luddites, while consistently drawing out the connections between the Luddite rebellion and contemporary opposition to the “Big Tech” of the book’s subtitle. Through Merchant’s writing—in places like the Los Angeles Times—and his speaking (some of which has been part of the press tour for the book), he has done a great deal to defend the integrity of the historic Luddites while arguing that there is much to be learned from them today. And while Blood in the Machine is primarily a recounting of the history of the Luddites, it is ultimately a work that is much more focused on trying to make of Luddism a usable philosophy for those of us living more than two-hundred years after the Luddite rebellion was crushed. This book is certainly about the Luddites, but more than that it appears intended as a tool to wield in the rebellion against big tech.
Blood in the Machine is a gripping and worthwhile read. But more than that it is a work that invites us to ask: what are we really talking about when we talk about the Luddites today? And thus, the work that emerges is so much a history of the Luddites, but is itself another chapter in the ongoing history of Luddism.
As the eighteenth century became the nineteenth century, new technologies began appearing in England that threatened to upend many textile trades. These were trades that employed technologies like the stocking frame and handloom, and which employed workers who had spent years developing the skill to use them. But perhaps more important than the skill of these craftworkers was that they, and their communities, were living in a moment in which “automation was not seen as inevitable, or even morally ambiguous” (3). The deployment of new production machinery was not seen as evidence of the inevitability of progress, nor was it seen as something that would be beneficial to any but the factory/workshop owners to whom the new machines belonged. These “obnoxious” new machines produced lower quality textiles, and lowered the living standards of those who had previously practiced these trades. While a mixture of actual laws and social customs had for a time helped protect the craft, the new machines and their owners were focused only on their own profit, and thus—after their attempts to inveigh upon the government for protection of their craft failed—the textile workers found that what they had left was that “they had each other, they had the pen, and they had the hammer” (20).
And thus, they found themselves turning to the leadership of General Ludd.
Whether or not there ever was a single individual named Ned Ludd does not matter much. There are some tales (and some accounts) suggesting there really was a Ned (or Edward), who smashed up the machinery of his employer in an outburst of rage before disappearing into Sherwood Forest. But what matters is that Ned Ludd would come to be an avenging icon in the same spirit as Sherwood Forest’s other avatar of righteous vengeance: Robin Hood. Regardless of whether or not there was an actual Ned Ludd, “Ludd would become a captain, a general, and even a king” (17) as he came to lead a workers’ uprising against the introduction of industrial machinery. And though all of the threatening letters that were signed by a Ned Ludd, were probably not actually written by his hand, Ludd “would become a mascot, an organizing tool, and a winking joke” (17). And more than two hundred years after the uprising that bore his name was suppressed, Ludd’s legend continues to circulate to this day.
Yet in 1811, the specter of Ludd was still fresh. As were the machines that were riling up his specter and army of redressers. This eventual army would be drawn from stocking-makers, frame-work knitters, croppers, and other employed in the skilled textile trades—“skilled, dedicated workers who enjoyed flexibility and autonomy in their workdays, if not extravagant pay” (28). These workers were not opposed to technology (as such), indeed they were experts in the usage of the particular technologies of their trades, and this was an expertise that provided them with a somewhat comfortable livelihood and station. However, with the deployment of new machinery, these workers found many of their brethren deprived of jobs, while those who hung on found their wages cut, with the new machines replacing skilled craftspeople with unskilled laborers (many of whom were children). Beyond their literal productive purpose, these new machines had powerful symbolic value—for those who owned them they were symbols of great fortunes that would be amassed, but for those who were being displaced by them the machines were both symbolic of and the literal means by which they were being deprived of their livelihoods. To target the machines, was thus both a practical and figurative tactic: it broke the literal machines being used to displace workers, and it took a stance against the broader social forces these machines represented.
While entrepreneurs and poets and government officials had the luxury of projecting lofty and/or dreary values onto these new machines, for the textile workers these machines represented an immediate problem—indeed:
“the machine breakers were not ultimately after the machines themselves but rather the men who were using them to transform social relations and gain power. The Luddites were technologists themselves; they did not hate the machines, though they did not hold any undue respect for them either.” (62)
The Luddite struggle was a fairly popular one, and these anonymized avengers operated with the tacit or open support of many of the communities in which they struck. Indeed, the Luddites were members of those communities. The loyalty and discipline that proved necessary to conduct the sorts of machine breaking actions taken by the Luddites were testament to the fact that many of the Luddites had bonds of trust that had been established before the time came to pick up hammers. While the identities of the actual Luddites remained hidden, the aims of the Luddites were quite clear—for the Luddites announced these in letters (often signed by Ned Ludd) which were often delivered to machine owners. Letters that laid out the Luddites’ demands (discontinue the use of the ”obnoxious” machinery, return wages to what they had been) and made clear what the consequences would be if the demands were to go unmet (the machines would be broken). And considering how the threatening letters proved to be genuine and not just a bit of puffed up posturing, there were quite a few manufacturers who acquiesced to the Luddites’ forceful requests. This “was a legend unfolding in real time” (84)—Ned Ludd may have been a sort of reincarnation of Robin Hood, but it was clear at the time that Ludd’s actions were more than just stories.
While an argument can certainly be made that, for a time, the Luddites were succeeding, there were powerful forces that had no interest in allowing the Luddites to ultimately triumph. And to be clear, these were not forces invested in lofty ideas about progress or human betterment, these were forces with financial investments in the machines being broken. Spies were dispatched that tried to infiltrate Luddite groups, new laws were put in place that threatened to severely punish those who broke machines or joined with the Luddites, and large numbers of soldiers were dispatched to the regions where the risings were taking place. This was a period of tumult, one not distant from the revolutionary upheavals of the end of the eighteenth century, and there was concern that the Luddite risings had the potential to turn into an open insurrection as opposed to a focused campaign against machinery. Though the Luddites had initially hoped that they could rely on their country’s government for some measure of protection of their craft—it quickly became clear that parliament, and the unpopular Prince Regent, were not going to support their cause. And despite a sympathetic parliamentary voice, in the form of Lord Byron, the Luddites knew that the matter was in their own hands. Yet even as the Luddites sought to escalate their strikes—and as unrelated but sympathetic actions (such as food riots) took place—so too did the efforts to suppress the Luddites increase.
For those who feared that the Luddites were a prelude to a revolution, largescale attacks—like the siege of Rawfolds Mill—seemed to indicate the growing organizational power of the Luddites (even if the attack on the Mill failed). And while the Luddites generally confined their attacks to machines and not people, the assassination of the industrialist William Horsfall, seemed to suggest that the Luddites might be preparing to move beyond just attacking machines. Though multiple Luddites had been killed over the course of the risings, the killing of Horsfall seemed to bring about a shift in the desire to put down the risings once and for all. Indeed, “all of this would have nicely fit the portrait of impending revolution…growing numbers and boldness, violence swelling to a crescendo, and acts of open defiance of military authority” (212). Thus, the forces of repression swelled: “The Luddites may have been well-organized, fearless, and tactical, but the force that the Crown deployed against hem now was enormous” (242). The army marched in force through the region, confessions were coerced, arrests were made, show trials were conducted, and though “Horsfall was the lone human casualty of the Luddites” somewhere between “forty and fifty Luddites were killed outright from the winter of 1812 to that of 1813” and in addition to those who were sentenced to death “dozens were sentenced to transportation to Australia” (302/303).
The Luddites are often remembered for struggling in vain against the introduction of new machinery, yet in their time the Luddites struggle was anything but in vain. Indeed, in its time it hardly appeared as a doomed campaign, but rather as one that had the potential to be successful. Which is largely why it became necessary to violently crush the Luddites. The rising was not something that petered out quickly due to its pointlessness, rather the rising was forcefully put down precisely because the point of the rising was one that seemed to be resonating widely.
The memory of the Luddites persists to this day. Much of this is thanks to some of the figures the Luddites inspired in one way or another (Lord Byron, Mary Shelley, Charlotte Bronte), but it is largely due to the way that “The history of the Luddites—the real ones, not the pejorative figment of the entrepreneurial imagination—gives us a framework to evaluate the utility of technologies and their social impacts” (309). And this framework from the frame-breakers continues to be relevant to this day, not only because Luddite is still flung about as an epithet, but precisely because the narrative that equates technological progress with social progress continues to break down—though in this moment “instead of the gig mill, it would be the gig app” (370) that inspires frustration. The Luddites stand as a powerful reminder to us today that “We can look at certain technologies, certain modes of domination, and say: No” (396).
In one of the most famous of the Luddites’ letters, the anonymous writer described the Luddite cause as being one in opposition to “all Machinery hurtful to Commonality.” And more than two hundred years after that letter was sent that matter of what we should do with “Machinery hurtful to Commonality” remains as pressing as ever.
According to legend, Ned Ludd fled to Sherwood Forest. And yet wherever you go these days it seems like you can catch a glimpse of Ned’s shadow, or hear the echo of his laughter.
Blood in the Machine provides an engaging, entertaining, and at times enraging (in a good way) account of the Luddites. It is a book that develops a rich historical picture of the original Luddites, and that presents them in a complex and contextualized way. While no one book or author will likely ever be able to completely correct the way that Luddite is still used as an epithet (alas), it is impossible to come away from Merchant’s book thinking that the Luddites were just a gaggle of ignorant anti-technology fools. Beyond the historic Luddites, Merchant continually draws out connections between the historic Luddites and contemporary dissatisfaction with, and pushback against, “Big Tech.” Blood in the Machine is a lengthy book, and the vast majority of the book is devoted to a detailed account of the historic Luddites. And yet, in the end, Blood in the Machine is not really a book about the Luddites; rather it is a book about Luddism, and an attempt to articulate an idea of what contemporary Luddism means. This is something which becomes evident every time Merchant interrupts his historical narrative to emphasize the parallels he is explicitly drawing out between the Luddites and (for example) union organizers at Amazon. On the surface this is a book about who the Luddites were, but at its core this is a book much more interested in what the Luddites mean. Which is ultimately what makes this book worth reading and deserving of critical engagement.
Merchant provides a thorough exploration of the history of the Luddites. It is a history that will be familiar to many who are already knowledgeable about the Luddites (and who are already deeply versed in the standard bibliography of the Luddites), but it is still excellent to see a work devote so much time to exploring the Luddites’ history as opposed to cramming that history into a couple of quick paragraphs or a single short chapter. This is an approachable and accessible history, one that aims for a readership that is interested in learning more about the Luddites, but which does not yet know a great deal about them. It is a work ideally suited for those who have been hearing the term Luddite more often these days, or who have perhaps read one of the articles floating around about the Luddites, and wants a more thorough exploration and explanation. It is a book that recounts the best known incidents in the history of the Luddites (such as the siege of Rawfolds Mill), but it is a work that makes it clear that such incidents are part of a much bigger tale.
One of the biggest challenges with writing a nonfiction history of the Luddites, is that the Luddites were a fairly secretive group who assembled for the purposes of conducting illegal acts that bore the heaviest of penalties. Or, to put it differently, the Luddites didn’t exactly leave behind the most voluminous set of archival records—and some of the things they did leave behind (such as the threatening letters that were sent) remain largely anonymous. This is a problem that Merchant is fully aware of, as he notes at one point “Few internal documents exist, and the writings of Luddites are primarily intended as threatening, blunt negotiating tools” (182), and as he notes later in the book “The Luddites were too cautious to keep records and correspondence” (312). The challenge here is that it can make it difficult to provide a narrative of the Luddites that is truly focused on the Luddites themselves. Merchant solves this by relying fairly heavily on Frank Peel’s The Risings of the Luddites and D.F.E. Sykes and George Henry Walker’s Ben o’Bill’s, The Luddite for truly putting the reader into the midst of the Luddites’ risings. Merchant recognizes that from these works “the dialogue in particular must be taken with a grain of salt” (xvii). And yet it is Merchant’s skillful use of that dialogue that helps give Blood in the Machine its engaging novelistic feel. To be clear, Blood in the Machine is not a work of historical fiction, though it does borrow some techniques from works of historical fiction to bring its narrative to life.
Where the narrative that Merchant weaves is at its best is in the moments when Merchant takes a step back from the Luddites to provide a much wider contextual view. Lord Byron often appears as something of a tangential character in works on the Luddites (due largely to the defense of the Luddites he issued in parliament), but here Merchant maintains him as a character throughout, which allows Merchant to contrast the literal struggle against the machines with the poets and writers of the time who may have not been struggling against the machinery in such a literal way, but were certainly struggling with the meaning of machinery. And in drawing the line from Byron to Mary Shelley, Merchant is able to draw out interesting connections between the Luddites and Frankenstein. Similarly, Merchant does important work in keeping the tale of the Luddites firmly rooted in the political goings on of England (and Europe) at the time. Beyond simply noting the Luddites failed attempts to earn some sort of governmental protection and support, the presence of the Prince Regent in Merchant’s account helps to make it clear that the Luddites did not exist in a social or political vacuum. And even as these seemingly tangential characters are woven into Merchant’s account, so too are the regular parallels that Merchant seeks to emphasize between 19th century industrialists and 21st century tech titans.
As the title of the book foreshadows, this is not a story without bloodshed. The historian Eric Hobsbawm famously described the tactic of machine breaking for which the Luddites became famous as “collective bargaining by riot,” but Merchant does not shy away from discussing what this “by riot” looked like. In the course of smashing machines, there were many Luddites who found themselves wounded or slain—and though the name of the Luddites’ only human victim has been recorded in history, the names of many of the Luddites who were killed remains unknown. Here Merchant does not try to hide the fact that the Luddites engaged in violent tactics, nor does he attempt to hide the fact that what eventually defeated the Luddites was violence. There is blood in these machines, there is blood on these machines, and Merchant makes it clear that many of the Luddites understood the struggle they were engaged in as being about life and death.
What Merchant attempts is to provide a faithful, and sympathetic, account of the historic Luddites. One that will be accessible and enjoyable. In this, Blood in the Machine largely succeeds. But to really engage with Blood in the Machine, requires understanding it not as a history of the Luddites, but as a fresh intervention in the ongoing attempt to define Luddism. After all, Merchant notes “a growing number of critics, academics, organizers, and writers are explicitly endorsing the Luddites and their tactics” (388) and Merchant is certainly a prominent member of that cohort, and this book is certainly intended as a tool for adding to that number. And in considering Blood in the Machine in this way what emerge are several critical points and problematics that are not so much faults of Merchant’s worthwhile book, so much as they are the main challenges that those seeking to make Luddism into a philosophy must wrestle with.
In other words, if you are wondering if Merchant’s book is a worthwhile look at the Luddites, the answer is yes. Go read it. But if your interest goes beyond the historic Luddites, and entails an interest in what Luddism means…you should still go read it, but you should also keep reading here.
The question of “what is Luddism?” is harder to answer than it may appear. As Merchant notes, the Luddites “never produced a clear, united political manifesto” (182/183). On the most simplistic level there may be a crude attempt to build a philosophy upon the tactic of machine breaking, and this simplistic knee-jerk anti-technology sentiment seems to be what the critics of the Luddites have in mind when they describe Luddism as any type of worldview. But those seeking to make of Luddism some kind of useful philosophy have a harder time. Certainly, some of the threatening letters that the Luddites sent lean into the philosophical or have the features suggesting a gesture towards a manifesto, but none of these is a true party platform or ideological manifesto—and when viewing the anonymous Luddite letters, it is always hard to know who all the anonymous author is really representing.
Nevertheless, to the extent that any single Luddite letter has been treated as the kernel of a manifesto (or ideology) it is likely the aforementioned one from 1812 featuring the lines:
“We will never lay down our Arms. The House of Commons passes an act to put down all Machinery hurtful to Commonality, and repeal that to hang Frame Breakers. But We. We petition no more that won’t do fighting must.” (reproduced in Binfield, 210)
With the lines “put down all Machinery hurtful to Commonality” generally being seen as the core of a philosophy of Luddism.
Of course, the broader problem that this only winds up raising is that of what “Machinery hurtful to Commonality” really means, and who gets to define which sorts of “Machinery” are the sorts that are “hurtful to Commonality”? Indeed, while “Commonality” is generally understood as a stand in for “common” or “regular” people, this too only opens up further sets of questions as it becomes necessary to ask who gets included and who gets excluded in those sets of people. When we say “commonality” do we just mean people who own and feel owned by their digital gadgets, or do we mean coltan miners? Does “commonality” refer to the artist whose work is gobbled up by AI, or do we mean the person laboring in a poisonous e-waste dump? Does “commonality” mean those whose work now involves staring at a computer adjacent gadget, or do we mean the people actually assembling these gadgets in factories? Do we mean all of these people, even if “hurtful” means quite different things in these different spaces? And what would it mean to try to build a philosophy and politics that encompasses all of them? Indeed, it may be that before we can even get to a philosophy of Luddism we first need some kind of broader philosophy of technology that will help us evaluate which kinds of “Machinery” are those that are “hurtful to Commonality.” And of course, this leads to the even trickier question of: what to do with such technologies?
If you spend a month immersing yourself in all of the books and articles about the Luddites, you will experience something amusing. Most of these works will be largely in agreement about the basic history of the Luddites, but you will find some wildly divergent ideas about what Luddism really means. Or, to put that slightly differently, most of those sympathetic to the historic Luddites will broadly agree with Merchant’s recounting of history, but in some of the parallels he draws to the present and some of his claims about living with computer technologies there will be more room for disagreement. Especially when it comes to trying to turn Luddism into some sort of guiding philosophy for the present. It’s fairly straightforward to say who the Luddites really were, but it’s much more challenging to say what Luddism really is (or should be) in the present.
In Blood in the Machine, Merchant notes that “True Luddism was about locating exactly where elites were using technologies to the disadvantage of the human being, and organizing to fight back” (308). This is a punchy and appealing definition that articulates a basic philosophy of Luddism. Though it’s worth paying attention to the fact that Merchant describes this as “True Luddism,” for goodness knows there are other competing definitions of Luddism out there. Before Merchant makes his comment about “True Luddism” he notes how “philosophical critiques of, and even outright opposition to, technology in general—a fretting over what might be lost or gained as it applies to lived experience—were conflated with Luddism” (307) and Merchant adds “Such conflation remains a deeply incorrect parsing of what the original movement was about” (307). Merchant stakes out a firm position in noting that “to argue that we should return to a more rural, nature-centric mode of life is not Luddism, it’s pastoralism” (307). This is certainly a definition of Luddism, and clearly it is a definition that seeks to couch itself in the historic Luddites while contrasting “True Luddism” with other views that are sometimes conflated with Luddism. To a certain extent, Merchant’s “True Luddism” feels like a rearticulation of “put down all Machinery hurtful to Commonality,” but Merchant’s “True Luddism” isn’t the only way to rearticulate “put down all Machinery hurtful to Commonality,” nor is it the only way that “put down all Machinery hurtful to Commonality” has been articulated.
An argument can be made that most of the attempts to (sympathetically and supportively) define Luddism hinge not so much on how the “Machinery” in “Machinery hurtful to Commonality” is defined, but on whether a particular person is putting the emphasis on “Machinery” or the emphasis on “Commonality.” The recent wave of writing that has appeared on Luddism—of which Merchant’s book and voice are certainly an important part—seem to put the focus on the matter of “Commonality.” And thus, it should not be much of a surprise that the focus winds up on how “elites were [or are] using technologies to the disadvantage of the human being.” This stance is typical of much of the current left-wing (socialist, democratic socialist) reappraisal of the Luddites, and fits within a larger philosophy in which the problem is not so much anything inherent about “Machinery” (or certain types of “Machinery”), but instead focuses on the sorts of economic power relations those pieces of “Machinery” embody. Here the issue isn’t really a matter of looms or gig mills or computers or the Internet, but the way that moneyed interests exploit the affordances of such “Machinery” for their own enrichment. In other words, the ”Machinery” matters, but it isn’t anything about the “Machinery” itself that is “hurtful to Commonality” rather it is the way “elites” use it that turns that “Machinery” into something “hurtful.” Philosophies of Luddism often hinge on the idea of dismantling, but within some of these the focus is on dismantling an economic system, and in others of these the focus is on dismantling the literal technological systems.
As for an approach to Luddism that sees there as being something “hurtful to Commonality” in the “Machinery” itself? Well, for that it is useful to consider another book that sought to provide a gripping and entertaining account of the Luddites’ risings, while rehabilitating the image of the Luddites, and using it in service of arguing for a renewed Luddism. The book in question being Kirkpatrick Sale’s Rebels Against the Future.
Published in 1995, Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution, provides a historical account of the risings of the original Luddites. An account that takes care to place them in their historical context, and to make it clear that they were not the crude anti-technology caricature that they have often been portrayed as being. Sale notes:
“The real challenge of the Luddites was not so much the physical one, against the machines and manufacturers, but a moral one, calling into question on grounds of justice and fairness the underlying assumptions of this political economy and the legitimacy of the principles of unrestrained profit and competition and innovation at its heart.” (Sale, 5)
For sources, Sale drew heavily upon works such as Ben O’Bill’s and The Risings of the Luddites, using these to help give his work a more narrative flair—and Sale’s work recounts many of the famed moments in the Luddite’s history (the Siege of Rawfolds Mill, the assassination of Horsfall). As for the definition of Luddism, that Sale uses, he writes:
“Luddism has meant a strain of opposition to the domination of industrial technology and to its values of mechanization, consumption, exploitation, growth, competition, novelty, and progress—a kind of solid, indelible body of beliefs existing subaqueously as it were, refusing to be eroded by the sweeping tides of triumphant modernism.” (Sale, 16)
Throughout Rebels Against the Future, Sale frequently draws attention to the way wealthy elites use “Machinery” in ways that are “hurtful to Commonality” but beneath this is a larger argument that “technologies are never neutral, and some are hurtful” (262). There is no question in Sale’s work about the way “elites” were using technology to their advantage, but Sale’s analysis is shot through with a deeper sentiment that certain technologies are created expressly for the purpose of benefiting the “elites” and that it is not just a matter of changing the economic situation.
There are many notable parallels between Merchant and Sale’s respective books (though, to be clear, if you’re looking for a solid history of the Luddites, Merchant’s book is definitely the one to read), but perhaps the most important thing is that neither book exists in a vacuum. Sale’s book was intended as a contribution to the discussions around Neo-Luddism that emerged in the early 1990s, and aimed to provide an accessible historical account while using the historic Luddites to bolster the Neo-Luddites of the 1990s. And Merchant’s book seems to be similarly intended as a contribution to the current discussions around Luddism that have emerged in the early 2020s, aiming to provide an accessible historical account while using the historic Luddites to bolster today’s interest in the Luddites. In both cases, the works are ostensibly about the Luddites, but seem to be really making an argument about Luddism. And to see this the places in each book to focus on are the concluding chapters: where Sale offers eight “Lessons from the Luddites,” and where Merchant comments on “How Uprisings Against Big Tech Begin.” And what most separates the two books is that by “Big Tech” Merchant seems to really be talking about the power and influence of the tech “elites,” whereas in evoking “lessons from the Luddites” Sale is focused on technology itself.
Or, to put it more clearly, Merchant’s Luddism is focused on “Machinery hurtful to Commonality” whereas Sale’s Luddism is focused on “Machinery hurtful to Commonality.” And both books seek to define and provide an argument for what Luddism means.
To draw attention to this division is not just to be pedantic. Nor, for that matter, is the point here to argue that one of these is the correct approach, or to suggest that one of these represents legitimate Luddism while the other is inaccurate. The point is to emphasize a significant split in attempts to make sense of Luddism, and to highlight the question that those who are interested in Luddism must continue to wrestle with if they are truly interested in making Luddism into any sort of worldview or foundational philosophy. And this question, to say it yet again, is whether the issue is technologies being deployed in such a way that favors elites, or if the issue is that there are some technologies that inherently favor elites? The reason why this question is so essential is because it is the one that truly raises the matter of what comes next: can this technology be reformed if it is brought under the control of a different economic order, or is this a technology that simply needs to be smashed with hammers (or more carefully disassembled using screwdrivers)?
Which, in turn, brings us to what is perhaps the thorniest matter currently vexing contemporary Luddism: what to make of the computer and other information technologies? Is the computer a piece of “Machinery hurtful to Commonality”?
The response to this question that one often encounters in contemporary work on Luddism (and tech criticism more broadly), elides the question of the computer by focusing instead on “tech” or “big tech.” Focusing on the ways that Microsoft or Google or Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk or AI are harnessing the transformative power of computer technologies in a way that primarily serves to enrich themselves. This is a fun way of going about things, because it’s enjoyable to make snide comments about Zuckerberg or Musk or to kvetch about how there’s nothing good about Netflix…but it allows us to maintain a baseline confidence in and appreciation for the underlying technologies. Thus, the problem isn’t something inherent about computer technologies, the problem is how that nogoodnik Elon Musk has ruined the potential of computer technologies. It is—to use a phrase popular in current tech criticism—to say that what we are witnessing is the “enshittification of the internet” instead of saying that the internet has already been shit (yes, you can grow some useful stuff in shit…but it’s still shit). Therefore, the problem is framed not about computers themselves, but about the way they are being used by particular “elites,” and thus what is necessary is to wrest these technologies out of their hands so they can be used differently. This is the argument that courses beneath most claims about “reclaiming the Internet” or “seizing the means of computation.” The response to this question that one encounters when looking back at Sale (and the other Neo-Luddites) is a more hostile stance towards the computer itself. The Neo-Luddite manifesto was published in 1990, and does not focus on Google or Musk (Google did not exist yet, Musk was not famous yet), but it does take a decidedly hostile stance towards computers; indeed, in its “program for the future” the Neo-Luddite manifesto listed “computer technologies” as one they “favor dismantling.” In short, for the Neo-Luddites, the problem was not how the computer was being used, the problem was the computer.
To be clear: this is not meant as a way of saying the Neo-Luddites were right and today’s Neo-Neo-Luddites are wrong. It’s meant as a way of saying these are real issues with which we need to wrestle.
While many seeking to put forth a contemporary Luddism opine on the desire to bring computer technologies under (small d) democratic control, the Neo-Luddites were more forthright in stating that some technologies are not (small d) democratic no matter how much some of us might wish that they were. And the Neo-Luddites were not taken in by the promises that computers would be, or could really be, (small d) democratic.
After all, when we look at various types of technologies there really are some significant differences between them. There is an amusing linguistic parallel between “the gig mill” and “the gig app,” and while both of these represent technologies that are exploitative of workers, there are extremely significant differences between them. To put it simply: you can smash a gig mill with a hammer, you can’t smash a gig app with a hammer. Compared to the layers of computer technology (from code to servers to cables to routers to smartphones to etc…) that make the gig app work, the gig mill is a much simpler technology. And, it should not be forgotten, that the sorts of relationships workers have to a gig mill are very different to the sorts or relationships workers have to the larger technological apparatus of which the gig app is a part. And this is a point Merchant acknowledges when he writes “It’s harder to smash a machine if its’s nowhere near you, or if it’s invisible—if, say, it’s ubiquitous lines of code” (407). Perhaps the reason why it was easier for the Luddites to see the gig mill for what it was had to do with the fact that the gig mill wasn’t the same device the Luddites used to communicate with their friends, to listen to music, to get directions, and so forth. It is much easier to imagine a way to exert (small d) democratic control over a relatively simple technology like the gig mill, than it is to exert (small d) democratic control over something as largescale, far flung, and complex as computer technology.
Writing about the Luddites, in a work that was itself a part of the discussions around Luddism in the early-90s, the historian of technology David Noble described the Luddites as “perhaps the last people in the West to perceive technology in the present tense and act upon that perception” (Noble, 7). And yet it seems that when it comes to computer technologies much of current Luddism is wrapped up in thinking about technology in the future tense, continually imagining what computer and Internet technologies can/might be as a way of avoiding the less pleasant realities of what computer and Internet technologies are “in the present tense.”
Before providing his definition of “True Luddism,” Merchant notes “philosophical critiques of, and even outright opposition to, technology in general—a fretting over what might be lost or gained as it applies to lived experience—were conflated with Luddism” (307), and while he is certainly correct that any critique of technology is often “conflated with Luddism” it may be that when we talk about Luddism we need to really engage with the “philosophical critiques” of technology that undergird any attempt to make Luddism into a philosophy. And along with this, we may need to perform a deep engagement with the history of technology. If Luddism is not itself a philosophy of technology, which philosophies of technology might provide useful grist for Luddism? In moving from 1812 to the present day how many technological developments do we need to grapple with? This is a matter that the Neo-Luddites clearly understood: their manifesto (and Sale’s book) explicitly draws on thinkers like Lewis Mumford (though Mumford never considered himself a Luddite or his critiques to be a form of Luddism) whose concept of “authoritarian and democratic technics” provides the key sort of evaluative tool that the Neo-Luddites used to ask whether a piece of “Machinery” really is “hurtful to commonality.” And, notably, the Neo-Luddites also drew heavily on Langdon Winner’s concept of “Luddism as Epistemology” which entailed “the method of carefully and deliberately dismantling technologies” (Winner, 330).
The twentieth-century’s critics, and critiques, of technology are quite often not explicitly intended as forms of Luddism (though some are). Nevertheless, those “philosophical critiques” represent a rich and essential source for Luddism (see, for example, Matt Tierney’s phenomenal book Dismantlings). And this is especially the case as engaging with such critiques is an opportunity to remember that it wasn’t as if there were the Luddites in 1812 and then we suddenly jump to today. In this present moment as we wrestle with how to make sense of computer technologies in terms of Luddism, we have a lot to learn from the thinkers and figures who were trying to warn us about computers and artificial intelligence and the false promises of the Internet decades before such technologies had become interwoven with the essential infrastructure of our daily lives. With a major benefit of revisiting such figures being that they did not get caught up in criticizing Elon Musk or Google, or dreaming of how great the Internet could be if suddenly it were unshackled from capitalism—instead, even as they did not ignore economic matters, they kept bringing their criticisms back to the technologies themselves. Or, to return to Noble’s definition, they were focused on a Luddism that saw technology “in the present tense.”
When we talk about the Luddites, we are often trying not to understand those historic rebels, but to understand how it is that we have come to find ourselves in our current technological predicament. And if we want to make sense of our current morass (and find a way out) we need to do more than focus on Ludd’s original army of redressers. For when we talk about the Luddites, we are not talking about their relationship to technology, we are talking about our own relationship to technology.
To be clear, these criticisms are not solely directed at Blood in the Machine (which is an excellent and important book). Rather they are meant as a more general comment about the current state of discussions around Luddism of which Blood in the Machine is a major part. Merchant has written a thought-provoking book, one that is certain to be a key texts that gets turned to and held up amidst present discussions around Luddism. And to say that Blood in the Machine is going to drive a lot of discourse around Luddism is to pay it an extremely high compliment (and it is intended as an extremely high compliment). Nevertheless, that is why it is necessary to draw out these questions and stakes in these contemporary discussions. There isn’t really a single worldview, philosophy, or ideology that a person can use to describe themselves as a person holding a critical view towards technology—and though we are seeing another uptick in people attempting to reclaim “Luddite” and “Luddism” to serve that purpose, this in turn raises the above discussed questions of what that person really means by these terms. And these are contested terms—even amongst those who are trying to wield them for liberatory ends.
Merchant’s book does a wonderful job of providing the true story of the Luddites. But when it comes to the matter of defining “True Luddism” the book is not the last word but is instead a contribution to an ongoing debate that is anything but settled. And hopefully the above comments help contribute to highlighting some of the issues that those who are interested in defining Luddism must really confront. Thanks to works like Blood in the Machine we can confidently say we know who the Luddites are, but we still have to engage in the thorny debates of defining what Luddism is.
Near the close of Blood in the Machine, Merchant writes that “The time is ripe again for targeting ‘the machinery hurtful to commonality’—duly singled out by those whose livelihoods are being migrated, against their will, by this generation’s tech titans, onto unforgiving technologized platforms, or degraded and whittled away by automated systems” (411). And he is certainly right.
More than two hundred years after it was first raised as a rallying call, “Put down all machinery hurtful to commonality” is clearly still a powerful principle. Now we just have to figure out if the problem is “machinery” or “commonality” or both.
It’s probably both.
Related Content
Specters of Ludd – A review of Breaking Things At Work
General Ludd in the Long Seventies – A review of Dismantlings
Theses on Technological Pessimism
Theses on Technological Optimism
They Meant Well (Or, why it matters who gets seen as a technology critic)
About Z.M.L
