Notes on Luddism
... the Luddites were not against innovation. Many of the technologies they destroyed weren’t even new inventions... It wasn’t the invention of these machines that provoked the Luddites to action. They only banded together once factory owners began using these machines to displace and disempower workers.
- " I'm a Luddite. You should be one too "
Being workers at the forefront of early forms of automation, those who came to be called Luddites are those who best knew the weaknesses of the machines their employers were using to cheat them out of their fair wages. I would go as far as to say that the Luddites are an underrated and unrecognized part of Socialist history.
... All of the aggressions carried a message not against “technology” in general but against the repurposing of technology with the specific aim of increasing output. In the Nottingham of 1812, that meant doubling the number of stockings produced (and reducing their quality) via automation, while putting workers out of work under the rationalizing banner of labor-saving “efficiency.”...
... The war waged against the Luddites in industrial England brought us one of the earliest examples of a government corrupting a social movement by force of arms on behalf of private property...
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Are hackers the new Luddites?
I'd argue that the Luddites are the first Hackers!