The LudditesSubmitted by scarlettforever t3_127z8et in singularity
Geeksylvania t1_jeguab9 wrote
Reply to comment by imnos in The Luddites by scarlettforever
No, they weren't. The Luddites weren't trying to socialize the means of production or fight for union rights. They were destroying machines because they were too small-minded to think of anything else. And if they had their way, we never would have seen all the benefits industrialization brought.
Oppose unjust economic systems, but technology is just a tool. Gooder tools are more gooder.
imnos t1_jegzbzh wrote
> No, they weren't
Jesus. No, they weren't what?
The luddites were taking organised action because they were about to be put out of a job. How is that any different to the rail strikes in the UK? The benefits of automation were not equally distributed - and here's a newsflash for you - they STILL aren't equally distributed or there wouldn't be mass strikes across the UK and US at the moment, to increase pay.
The line that you and others parrot about them just destroying machinery like lunatics as though they actually had it out for machines is laughable, and plenty of historians have spoken against this idea.
> Malcolm L. Thomis argued in his 1970 history The Luddites that machine-breaking was one of a very few tactics that workers could use to increase pressure on employers, to undermine lower-paid competing workers, and to create solidarity among workers. "These attacks on machines did not imply any necessary hostility to machinery as such; machinery was just a conveniently exposed target against which an attack could be made." An agricultural variant of Luddism occurred during the widespread Swing Riots of 1830 in southern and eastern England, centering on breaking threshing machines.
Geeksylvania t1_jeh2arh wrote
From Wikipedia:
"Luddites feared that the time spent learning the skills of their craft would go to waste, as machines would replace their role in the industry. Many Luddites were owners of workshops that had closed because factories could sell similar products for less. But when workshop owners set out to find a job at a factory, it was very hard to find one because producing things in factories required fewer workers than producing those same things in a workshop. This left many people unemployed and angry."
They weren't trying to create economic reform or socialized control of industry. They were attaching the competition because people sewing by hand obviously can't compete with machines. They were shortsighted, just like the people now are shortsighted.
Maybe you should consider how industrial textile mills ended clothing scarcity by making clothing incredibly cheap. If the Luddites had it their way, poor people would be walking around in barrels.
Maybe you should consider all the lives that will be saved by AI-based medical innovations. And that's just the beginning.
Technology is a tool. If you are forward-thinking, you will focus on making sure that tool is in the hands of many, not the few. But pretending that you can stop technological progress is absurd.
imnos t1_jeh4iig wrote
Nobody, including me, is trying to stop technological progress. The point is that common people will not be benefiting from advances as much as they should be, as long as we live in this unregulated capitalist society where the capitalist class reaps all the rewards.
If working people had been rewarded for the massive increases in productivity over the last 50 years, we'd all be on a 3 day week by now, or would at least have pay that kept up with inflation. But that didn't happen, did it?
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