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sympathy for the luddites
'heavens above, how awful it is to live outside the law - one is always expecting what one rightly deserves.'
petronius, the satyricon
could you post something a bit more substantial than a link to one of your other posts
'heavens above, how awful it is to live outside the law - one is always expecting what one rightly deserves.'
petronius, the satyricon
Disgusting. He bumps into one of the limitations arising from capitalism's dependance on labor, and blames the very machinery that makes abundance possible.
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"Think for yourself; question authority." - Timothy Lenin
Most people don't realize the friends of Ned Ludd were class struggle freedom fighters.
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?
Ned Ludd did not exist, as comrade Semendyaev states.
Segui il tuo corso e lascia dir le genti.
Socialism resides entirely in the revolutionary negation of the capitalist ENTERPRISE, not in granting the enterprise to the factory workers.
- Bordiga
http://www.revleft.com/vb/do-we-prio...57/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.
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The only slaves who are happy, are the crazy ones.
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?
I hear he was John Galts cousin.
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.
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
Last edited by ComradeOm; 23rd June 2013 at 11:44.
March at the head of the ideas of your century and those ideas will follow and sustain you. March behind them and they will drag you along. March against them and they will overthrow you.
Napoleon III
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.
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.
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.).
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.
Capitalism is the only mode of production in which people capable of work don't work, and are in fact deprived of employment.
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
Sure. I only said that capitalism needs labour and cannot survive with zero employment.
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 ...
We want to live without dead time.
why?
not sure how much that matters to the people getting fucked by it
'heavens above, how awful it is to live outside the law - one is always expecting what one rightly deserves.'
petronius, the satyricon
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.
"Win, lose or draw...long as you squabble and you get down, that's gangsta."
Tanks and nuclear missiles don't kill people. Generals kill people
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The only slaves who are happy, are the crazy ones.
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).
