>--- John Thornton <jthorn65 at mchsi.com> wrote:
>
>"The machines the Luddites were smashing had existed for quite some time.
>They were at least 150 years old in their design. What they objected to
>was the reorganization of society through those particular machines. They
>destroyed frames owned by capitalists but not frames owned by producers.
>[...] Since the victor wrote the official history Luddites were portrayed
>as anti-machine. [...] you still either do not understand or choose to
>disbelieve this."
>
>What is your evidence for this? I've just re-read E.P. Thompson on the
>Luddites, and what he emphasises again and again is that we don't know
>much about their motivations. The official reaction against the
>Luddites was so overwhelming that people didn't even talk or write
>about their involvement for a generation, by which time memories had
>faded. Probably, it was mixed. Many people were just reacting against
>their immediate situation (un- or under-employment), others were
>inspired by wider social and political questions. But these questions
>were being raised more articulately and more effectively by other
>movements at the time.
>It's true that the victor wrote the history, but given that all the
>movement did was smash machines, calling them anti-machine doesn't seem
>controversial to me.
>So will you join me in saying that the Luddites were the backward
>part of nineteenth century radicalism, and that we have nothing to
>learn from them today?
>___________________________________
>James Greenstein
I don't think we have much to learn from the Luddites. Their tactics would not do much of anything to further progressive causes right now. My objection was in painting them as anti-machine. I think the fact that they broke frames quite selectively lets us know some of their motives were not simply anti-technology as they portrayed today however. We will simply have to disagree on that issue I guess.
John Thornton