sympathy for the luddites

[bcbm]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/opinion/krugman-sympathy-for-the-luddites.html?hp&_r=2&

[Sky Hedgehogian Maestro]

Hahaha!
http://www.revleft.com/vb/postcapitalist-theory-t181433/index.html

[bcbm]

could you post something a bit more substantial than a link to one of your other posts

[Sea]

Disgusting. He bumps into one of the limitations arising from capitalism's dependance on labor, and blames the very machinery that makes abundance possible.

[blake 3:17]

Most people don't realize the friends of Ned Ludd were class struggle freedom fighters.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I was under the impression that Ned Ludd, as such, did not exist, and that in any case, he had little connection to the Luddite movement. That said, the Luddites were a working class movement, and an extremely militant one, although their analysis of capitalism was flawed. Of course, they can be excused for that, given the circumstances. But today, there is simply no excuse for assimilating this sort of liberal analysis to Marxism - surely, we can recognise that the problem is not machinery as such, but the trends that emerge in the present period of the development of capitalism, when that mode of production has become degenerate and no longer corresponds to the stage of development of the means of production?

[Brutus]

Ned Ludd did not exist, as comrade Semendyaev states.

[cyu]

http://www.revleft.com/vb/do-we-prioritise-t180057/index2.html

it's not so much the (possibly intentionally misguided) Luddite claim that machines and automation cause unemployment and suffering to the working class, but it's that the output of machines and automation is grabbed by the capitalist instead of being controlled by the working class.

[Sky Hedgehogian Maestro]

could you post something a bit more substantial than a link to one of your other posts

Actually, I was just referring to how what that said co-aligns with what I've figured is inevitable under capitalism and socialism.
Yeah, I know about Ned Ludd and whatnot, but seriously. "Luddite" sounds like it comes from the Bible. Who agrees with me?

[MarxArchist]

Ned Ludd did not exist, as comrade Semendyaev states.

I hear he was John Galts cousin.

[blake 3:17]

Actually, I was just referring to how what that said co-aligns with what I've figured is inevitable under capitalism and socialism.
Yeah, I know about Ned Ludd and whatnot, but seriously. "Luddite" sounds like it comes from the Bible. Who agrees with me?


My first name is one of the Gospels and my handle here is a riff off of John 3:16. Actually Austin 3:16 -- William Blake could kick his ass.

Anybody serious about challenging capitalism should read E.P. Thompson's Making of the English Working Class. I don't know of a better study of the Luddite movement, and that's just a portion of it. But it puts it in context.

The Luddites were skilled artisans that were getting ripped to shreds in short order through new relations of production through a whole cluster of capitalist initiatives. And they fought back. It's nonsense to criticize them for not being Marxists before there was Marxism, and we may want to rethink things a bit about "progress" and how desirable "it" is. Why accept new shitty working conditions, deskilling, and lowered wages?

Thompson makes the fine and very important point throughout his life's writing that workers fight back on a conservative basis. This is not the same thing as a Right wing one. It's about holding on to the good things we have. And the way capitalism and imperialism have functioned the main ways they've been able to replace those things for some have been at the expense of others. That's certainly not a position socialists should endorse.

[ComradeOm]

It's nonsense to criticize them for not being Marxists before there was Marxism, and we may want to rethink things a bit about "progress" and how desirable "it" is.I don't think anyone does the first half of that statement. The Luddites are criticised for formulating what was a fundamentally negative response to their conditions, not for failing to articulate a socialist conception of society. Machine breaking, alongside the contemporary trend for utopian ruralist projects (such as advocated by Owen and O'Connor), was just a strategic and tactical dead-end.

The alternative was the defence of the workers' interests through the use of labour unions; a position that was, unlike machine breaking, entirely compatible with industrial society.

I of course have sympathy for the Luddites, emerging as they did in an environment in which effective unionisation (that far more effective and promising contemporary labour development) was in practice impossible. But this is the same sympathy I have for earlier peasant jacqueries: understandable but doomed. Probably more pity than sympathy, if I'm being honest

[Sky Hedgehogian Maestro]

Because in the face of the coming machine proletariat, the Neoluddites will be the ones to profit, for as long as they rise up en masse.
If machines take over their jobs, the ex-working class won't have anything to do but revolt at this point. Their contention is staring at them right in the face— "My capitalist masters think I'm worth less than a machine. I've had enough of them screwing me over."
Right now, too many are simply too comfortable.

[Point Blank]

Yeah, I agree with others that the Luddites can be considered a (proto-revolutionary) workers' movement, but an analysis blaming technology is ridiculous and fairly primitive.

And by the bye, even if machines replace workers, capitalists will create new (useless and uncreative) jobs to employ people, because only living labour can create surplus value.


we may want to rethink things a bit about "progress" and how desirable "it" is.

But the issues with "progress" have little to do with technology itself, but rather with an inadequate mode of production (the way work is organised, which goods are produced, how resources are allocated, etc.).

[blake 3:17]

Yeah, I agree with others that the Luddites can be considered a (proto-revolutionary) workers' movement, but an analysis blaming technology is ridiculous and fairly primitive.

I'm not advancing an analysis that blames technology. What I do question very strongly is any notion of any technology simply being neutral. A loom or a nail gun or an automobile or a telephone is nothing like a natural being. They may be quite desirable but we need to be conscious of what ends they serve and be observant of what unintended consequences their presence may have.


And by the bye, even if machines replace workers, capitalists will create new (useless and uncreative) jobs to employ people, because only living labour can create surplus value.

Capitalism is the only mode of production in which people capable of work don't work, and are in fact deprived of employment.


But the issues with "progress" have little to do with technology itself, but rather with an inadequate mode of production (the way work is organised, which goods are produced, how resources are allocated, etc.).

You do realize that many and most ecocidal and deeply alienating forms of production and distribution wouldn't be possible without those technologies? I'm certainly not a primitivist -- I love soap and antibiotics and whole range of goods only available on a mass scale in very recent times -- but I do think we need to be skeptical and wary of technological innovation for its own sake.

I think we also need to be very aware of the the actual effect of increased deskilling on large sections of the working class. A good friend in a trade union works closely with people who've been laid off from factory jobs. Many of the ones who were bringing in the most money, because they were working in capital intensive industries, are amongst the least able to do anything else. They know how to work a rivet or a punch on a XK4978AB or C super well, but their skills are not transferable. At all. If they had to work a rivet or punch on a different machine for a different type of product, it'd take them a long time.

The Luddites weren't protesting a loss of income or a simple economic inequality -- they were fighting back against the imposition of alienating methods of production.

While not on the Luddites, this essay by EP Thompson, Time, work-discipline and industrial capitalism, is a very important contribution to understanding the violence done to the spirit of working people by the imposition of regulated capitalist modes of production. http://tems.umn.edu/pdf/EPThompson-PastPresent.pdf

[Point Blank]

Capitalism is the only mode of production in which people capable of work don't work, and are in fact deprived of employment.

Sure. I only said that capitalism needs labour and cannot survive with zero employment.


You do realize that many and most ecocidal and deeply alienating forms of production and distribution wouldn't be possible without those technologies?

Eh, that's a tricky one since under a materialist understanding of history forms of production and distribution are the result of the development of productive forces, including technology.
So, yes, for example without industrial production we could have never had (since you mentioned deskilling of the working class due to over-specialisation) that kind of Fordist division of labour with workers performing small, repetitive, standardised tasks.
However, I don't think assembly line / Fordism is a necessary product of industrial technology, but only one of the possible results.

So, normally, I'd tend to think that even starting from the same technology, production could be rearranged in other non-alienating forms ...

[bcbm]

Yeah, I agree with others that the Luddites can be considered a (proto-revolutionary) workers' movement, but an analysis blaming technology is ridiculous and fairly primitive.

And by the bye, even if machines replace workers, capitalists will create new (useless and uncreative) jobs to employ people, because only living labour can create surplus value.
why?


But the issues with "progress" have little to do with technology itself, but rather with an inadequate mode of production (the way work is organised, which goods are produced, how resources are allocated, etc.).

not sure how much that matters to the people getting fucked by it

[Os Cangaceiros]

I'm not advancing an analysis that blames technology. What I do question very strongly is any notion of any technology simply being neutral. A loom or a nail gun or an automobile or a telephone is nothing like a natural being. They may be quite desirable but we need to be conscious of what ends they serve and be observant of what unintended consequences their presence may have.

Isn't that basically saying that technology is largely neutral, though? Technology is a tool that takes on either a positive or negative character depending on "what ends they serve", ie what force is using the technology, and for what purpose.

IE a unmanned aerial drone can be used for repression and killing, but that technology could also be used for finding someone who's lost in a storm, or monitoring volcanic activity, etc.

[cyu]

Tanks and nuclear missiles don't kill people. Generals kill people ;)

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Isn't that basically saying that technology is largely neutral, though? Technology is a tool that takes on either a positive or negative character depending on "what ends they serve", ie what force is using the technology, and for what purpose.

IE a unmanned aerial drone can be used for repression and killing, but that technology could also be used for finding someone who's lost in a storm, or monitoring volcanic activity, etc.

If I have understood correctly, what Blake 3:17 is trying to say is that technology does not merely exist, to 'serve an end'. Rather, technological advance is endogenous (i.e., it doesn't arise out of thin air) in that it arises as part of the production process, it arises on the back of the exploitation of workers; where it leads to a labour-saving alteration in working conditions for workers it can be seen as potentially positive (i.e. factory machines) in general terms, but ex-ante the destruction of capitalism as negative, as 'labour-saving' = more unemployment, de-skilling/lower wages etc.

In other words, technology only exists because somebody/some group of workers produced it. It therefore cannot assume a neutral character as the very production of technology involves the usual negative connotations of the capitalist production process and, by definition, where technology is labour-saving it leads to further negative consequences under capitalism, that might otherwise be positive consequences (for example, in a democratically-run society).

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

IE a unmanned aerial drone can be used for repression and killing, but that technology could also be used for finding someone who's lost in a storm, or monitoring volcanic activity, etc.

Take this example.

The un-manned drone doesn't appear out of thin air (excuse the pun!). It is produced, and in capitalism it is produced for one reason: profit. The very process of producing the drone is part of a wider process of re-producing capital. Thus technology - even technology with positive social externalities - can be seen to be produced through the motivation of profit. It's important to understand technology as being derived from the production process, it does not merely exist or appear.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Well I don't think that anyone would argue that technology simply appears...

[ComradeOm]

The Luddites weren't protesting a loss of income or a simple economic inequality -- they were fighting back against the imposition of alienating methods of productionEh, no. Machine-breaking was not some generic response to encroaching capitalism. If it were then we wouldn't know it by the very specific name of Luddism. Rather, episodes of mass machine-breaking, in England at least, were very geographically and temporally limited. The years of machine-breaking (1800, 1812, 1816, 1826-7 and 1830) were those of sharp economic distress. As Mathias puts it:

"Machine-breaking was not a generalised response to new technology but highly selective, depending on local circumstances, and much more influenced by the short-term impact of high prices and poor employment in cyclical fluctuations than by opposition to the structural context of work in the developing industrial economy." (The First Industrial Nation)

Again, the Luddites have to be put in the context of their forerunners, jacqueries and rick burning, rather than some romanticised notion of noble yet doomed artisans being broken by new world

[Hit The North]

Disgusting. He bumps into one of the limitations arising from capitalism's dependance on labor, and blames the very machinery that makes abundance possible.

Marx described in broad contours this development inherent in capitalism:


Originally written by Marx (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm)
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.

So, of course, technology is always a product of specific social relations and, under capitalism, this means that new technology impacts negatively on sections of the working class as its introduction is always a calculated ploy to boost profitability for the bosses and it always leads to de-skilling, unemployment, and the further subjection of the worker to the instruments of production and the production process and, therefore, an increase in his alienation.

After the passage I quoted above in the Communist Manifesto, Marx then goes on to broadly map out the advantages of this revolutionary aspect of the capitalist mode of production: it raises the material level of society; it promotes a cosmopolitan consciousness and unites the cultural and material advances of hitherto scattered human populations; it promotes rationalism and works against the prejudices of religion and mysticism. So progress is double-edged and has contradictory outcomes.

In other places, Marx spells out the limits of advantage that machinery and technology hold for the bosses - the increase in organic capital, etc. - and how this intensifies capitalist crisis. So when we examine the role of technology within the mode of production lots of interesting contradictions pile up and I suppose that Luddism is yet another.



Again, the Luddites have to be put in the context of their forerunners, jacqueries and rick burning, rather than some romanticised notion of noble yet doomed artisans being broken by new world

But they were "doomed artisans being broken by [a] new world". I don't see why this is necessarily a romanticised notion.

[Sky Hedgehogian Maestro]

Especially whence said machinery becomes the means of production and owns the means of production, besides being the thing produced, hence the postcapitalist singularity.

[Vanguard1917]

As Eric Hobsbawm pointed out, the Luddites practised machine breaking as a form of collective bargaining - 'collective bargaining by riot' - to safeguard their standards of living (article available free (http://past.oxfordjournals.org/content/1/1/57.full.pdf+html)). There was no hostility to machinery as such - it wasn't just machines that were targeted, but also raw materials, barns, kennels and even trees. So it was very different from today's fashionable 'neo-Luddism', which is not a fight by labouring men for better wages but a middle-class reaction against technology itself. Human material interests were seen as the crux of the Luddite struggle - not any sort of hippy nature-worship. This has to be stressed to avoid ahistorical comparison.

Was Luddism a reactionary response to industrialisation? That can't be answered with a simple yes or no. Industrialisation was an historically progressive development, but so was the historical process by which working-class self-consciousness and 'identity' came to be formed - and the Luddism of the early 19th century can't be withdrawn from this process.

[blake 3:17]

Tanks and nuclear missiles don't kill people. Generals kill people ;)
Rather have a fist fight with a general than a nuke.

[cyu]

A pro-capitalist economy does not exist to serve employees. It exists to serve capitalists. If it can serve capitalists better by replacing employees with non-humans, then that's what a pro-capitalist economy will do.

When "your" society tells you that you are no longer needed, wanted, and might as well just go die in a gutter, what options do you have left? Well, you could certainly kill the capitalists, but that may end with a charge of murder. Vandalizing machines would be a much less serious charge. I presume many chose to go this route out of fear, but pushed on by desperation.

[ComradeOm]

But they were "doomed artisans being broken by [a] new world". I don't see why this is necessarily a romanticised notion.I think my posts above have answered this already. The only thing that is probably worth adding is that it would be hard to describe most Luddites as artisans. The textile areas that served as the hotbeds of machine breaking had long been home to what is probably best called a pre-factory proto-proletariat. That is, households that sold their labour in exchange for a money wage, without owning their means of production, as part of the putting out system

[subcp]

A pro-capitalist economy does not exist to serve employees. It exists to serve capitalists. If it can serve capitalists better by replacing employees with non-humans, then that's what a pro-capitalist economy will do.

When "your" society tells you that you are no longer needed, wanted, and might as well just go die in a gutter, what options do you have left? Well, you could certainly kill the capitalists, but that may end with a charge of murder. Vandalizing machines would be a much less serious charge. I presume many chose to go this route out of fear, but pushed on by desperation.

But the capitalists have a similar problem- the growing 'horizontalism' of decision making, growing importance of the state in the international economy, relinquishes the individual capitalists' role as sole decision maker when it comes to development. They become less important than the executive boards, shareholders, salaried employees of the state, etc. Rather than a capitalist economy in service of capitalists, it's a society in the service of capital, autonomous of the individual humans that interact to make this society possible.

There's an anecdote in the modernist paper Anvil about a Russian factory worker who gets promoted to a new machine (from a foreign advanced capitalist nation), memorizes the manual, then destroys it- thus making himself invaluable to the operation of the machine and training of new workers, securing his position in the factory. It sounds like the Luddite tendencies were driven by a similar cold recognition of their place at the point of production, and acted out of raw self-interest.

[cyu]

It sounds like the Luddite tendencies were driven by a similar cold recognition of their place at the point of production, and acted out of raw self-interest.

Quite possible - of course, I would have neither encouraged the destruction of machines nor the killing of capitalists, but rather the takeover of the machines *from* the capitalists.



They become less important than the executive boards, shareholders, salaried employees of the state, etc.


True only to a certain extent. As mentioned long ago, there's a bigger difference between the small-time shopkeeper and those who have enough money to be corporate raiders and can almost single-handedly fund a presidential candidate's entire campaign.

From http://www.revleft.com/vb/new-argument-against-t179943/index.html

"It is conventional political wisdom that you can't make a serious run for the Presidency unless you know the names of at least twenty wealthy people who can raise big money for your campaign. Political pros say this is a very elite group -- numbering no more than a few hundred around the country."

If the US had 262 million people in 1996, and 1% of Americans decided who gets to run for president, then that's 2.62 million people. If 1% of 1% decided who gets to run, then that's 26,200 people. If 1% of 1% of 1% were the deciders, then that's 262 people.

So it seems even the oligarchs among oligarchs tend to get stepped on around here.

[blake 3:17]

I think my posts above have answered this already. The only thing that is probably worth adding is that it would be hard to describe most Luddites as artisans. The textile areas that served as the hotbeds of machine breaking had long been home to what is probably best called a pre-factory proto-proletariat. That is, households that sold their labour in exchange for a money wage, without owning their means of production, as part of the putting out system


I fail to see why any people would wish to be proletarianized.

And given the failure of Marxist/socialist/workers movements -- being a sort of Marxist, and definite socialist and worker -- why the frig would we want to be? My area of work has gone through a period of savage proletarianization -- with a bunch of ideological fig leaves being used as cover -- and have experienced a very profound deskilling, atomization, and loss of income. If I weren't already a revolutionary socialist, I'd just despair. Instead I intellectualize some and strategize some and despair.

[ComradeOm]

I fail to see why any people would wish to be proletarianizedWhich wasn't the question that I was addressing. The point was that the Luddites were largely a proletariat (of sorts) and were therefore particularly hard hit by the new-ish cycles of unemployment inherent in capitalism. Working for money wages and without ownership of their means of production, they were particularly vulnerable (relative to their peers) to these downturns

Which is neither here nor there except to again stress that this was not some revolt against 'becoming proletarianised' or factory work

As for the actual question, the reason that most people throughout history have generally flocked to the cities is that it's better than the alternative of peasantry. Even the worst urban working conditions have historically proven far more attractive than a lifetime in the fields to most peasants. Artisans were of course in a different scenario, given their relatively privileged position, but large-scale artisanal production is simply incompatible with modern forces of production