jjlassen at chinastudygroup.org wrote:
>
> The Luddites were not against technical change. Just technical change that
> destroyed their livelihood. K. Sale's book and David Noble's work dispel this
> myth.
One would hope that most subscribers to a left maillist already knew
this, but probably not.
>
> My argument would not just be about better treatment of displaced workers (but
> would include this), but also about who controls the pace and form of technical
> change and for what ends, but whoops, now we're getting into radical territory
> (radical as in goes to the root of the problem).
Capital, of course, is not going to be sweetly persuaded by this -- but even before the struggle over control of the "pace and form of technical change" can be launched (or made an item in general programs) it will be necessary to eliminate the knee-jerk assumption (even or especially among leftists) that "change" is somehow a good in itself. The myth that the Luddites were "against technical change" is nourished, I suspect, by the myth of the essential goodness of change as such.
Carrol