Luddites

I have been called a Luddite many times, and it has always been a derogatory label, if often used in friendly banter.  The use of the term in that way has become so prevalent that many dictionaries now list the pejorative as the word’s primary meaning, ahead of the historical.  I am happy to wear that label, not because I think my own reluctance to embrace technology is noble, or even admirable; it’s just my way.  But I am proud of the label because the real Luddites, the English textile workers who rebelled against the forced automation of their craft are heroes to me.

I do not consider myself a “small-minded Luddite resisting progress.”  Neither were the original Luddites.  They were highly-skilled and principled artisans trying to keep themselves from poverty and rescue their craft from oblivion.  Their methods became violent, and, between 1811 and 1816, gangs of Luddites attacked factories and destroyed machinery across the Midlands and the north of England.  Of course they were brutally suppressed by the government, using the army.  Some were shot, more were hanged, and many were transported to the penal colony in Australia.

In present-day Vermont, one could probably sell a pair of hand-knit stockings for forty dollars, just by slapping the word “artisan” on it.  The same people who are willing to pay fourteen or fifteen dollars for a four-pack of Heady Topper, or plunk down eighteen dollars for a “farm-to-table” hamburger at the Farmhouse Restaurant, would happily pay big money for hand-crafted stockings, while at the same time they derisively dismiss those who, two hundred years ago, tried in vain to preserve their craft.

The bigger issue is what E.P. Thompson called “the enormous condescension of posterity.”  In his classic work, The Making of the English Working Class,  Thompson argues that modern-day social historians read history “in the light of subsequent preoccupations, and not as in fact it occurred.”  “Only the successful are remembered.  The blind alleys, the lost causes, and the losers themselves are forgotten.”

I’m not saying that the Luddites were right.  Their response to the crisis they faced may have been foolhardy, but who are we to judge, when we face crises ourselves that we have not yet found the proper way to address?  The point is, the Luddites have become a historical laughing-stock, not because they were wrong, but because they failed.

I quote Thompson again – “Our only criterion of judgement should not be whether or not a man’s actions are justified in the light of subsequent evolution.  After all, we are not at the end of social evolution ourselves.”  That bears remembering.  We all choose paths in life, and not all those paths lead where we want them to.  That does not make us fools, or idiots; it only makes us human.