New Book on the History of the 19th Century Luddite Rebellions
Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech
I recently finished reading one of the best books I’ve read in quite a while, Blood in The Machine: The Origins of The Rebellion Against Big Tech (Cory Doctorow’s well-worth reading review here), by Brain Merchant. There were three things about it that made it the type of history book I find most compelling to read. One is the way it used a cast of fascinating characters to bring the story of the 19th Century Luddite rebellions to life, weaving these stories together (pun intended, as the key issue was how weavers and other cloth-making artisans were having their lives undermined by the implementation of new machines requiring less skill and producing shoddier quality) so I as a reader could see the events from the perspectives of various key participants. A second thing I appreciated was how clearly these past events were shown to reflect on current issues. History may not repeat itself, but it rhymes (was that Twain?), and Merchant did a masterful job highlighting the numerous rhymes between the tech titans of the 19th century cloth industry and those of the 21st century. Lastly, I greatly appreciated the interdisciplinary approach the author took, as this history needed to be informed by economics, sociology, literature, science, etc. to give a comprehensive understanding of the issues raised by technology.
In addition to these approaches the author took, I also greatly appreciated the way the book fully debunked the misconception many people still have about the Luddites - the term has come to be an epithet for ignorant mistrust of all progress or technology. Yet the book reveals that many of the artisans who joined the Luddite movement were themselves innovators, and very willing users of new machines. What they couldn’t accept was being shut out of decision making on how machines would be deployed, when they were being used to destroy their livelihoods and their control over how they did their work.
What an incredible cast of characters! From oral histories and documents, Merchant was able to reconstruct the stories of some of the artisans - weavers, croppers, etc., who ended up participating in the rebellions. As readers, we also get to meet the tech titans of the day, with attitudes not unlike Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, in terms of ego, or contempt for workers. In addition, there are politicians, from the prime minister of the time, to the Prince Regent (who became George IV, once his father, George III, “Mad King George”, died), to the local magistrates who clearly worked more for the lords and factory owners than for the working class population, as did the rest of the political class. But then there are surprising characters, such as Lord Byron, who became a vocal supporter of Luddism, and Mary Shelley, who grew up with the rebellions going on around her, which ended up influencing her view of technology in her most famous work, Frankenstein. There was also an orphaned boy of 7 who was taken from his orphanage to work in a factory, whose life we learn about, which somewhat parallels that of an enslaved man in the US, who escapes slavery successfully for a number of years, only to be captured and returned into an even worse situation on a cotton plantation in South Carolina. These stories intertwine both due to their common feature of exploited labor, but also because the cotton gin had increased the demand for slave labor to produce more cotton, and also the demand for cotton in Britain, as it worked even better than wool with the new machines for spinning and weaving in factories with child labor.
Merchant does a masterful job throughout the book drawing comparisons between the way the problem of how technology ought to be deployed worked itself out in the cloth-making industry in Britain of the 19th Century and how it is happening today. This is done both explicitly and implicitly in a number of the short chapters, each centered on one of the characters, which allows those comparisons to be political, economic, sociological, etc. depending on the particular character and story being told in that chapter. But he also ends the book with an entire section devoted to exploring how technology is being used today in ways that are making things worse for workers, in large part due to the undemocratic way these decisions are made - much as they were in the 19th Century.
I particularly liked 2 phrases Merchant quoted a in the book that return more than once due to their relevance. One was from the British historian E.P. Thompson, who wrote about the origins of the working class in Britain. About the loss of autonomy of men who had been artisans working in their own shops or homes (literally “cottage industry”) and selling the cloth they produced, when they were pushed to work in factories, they then felt they had to “stand at their command”. Any of us who have worked for imperious bosses can relate to how this loss of control feels, and in the modern setting the surveillance can be just as bad, or even worse, than with a human overseer. As a teacher, I often felt as if my colleagues and I judged our administrations over the years by the degree to which they made us feel we “stood at their command.” The second phrase came from the Luddites, written about how they were not against machines per se, just machines not deployed for the good of all. They said their target was “machinery hurtful to commonality.” This sounds to me like a wise standard to apply today as well.
This passage from the last chapter gives a good sense of Merchant’s take: “…for centuries, ordinary people have had their autonomy pried away by new and elaborately exploitative technologies. More of our time, our work, our blood has been needed to run the machinery of profit, with less given to us in return. Nineteenth-century artisans may not have had much, but they ran their own shops, plying their own trades, alongside their families, on their own terms. They had real freedom, the means to negotiate their wages, schedules, and their future. That, ultimately, is what the Luddites fought for.” This book was a pleasure to read, entertaining, enlightening, and incredibly relevant for vital problems that need to be solved today. I hope this can happen peacefully, without the hammers of today being taken out in violent rebellion against the machines.
An interview with the author about his book can be found here, on the excellent podcast Tech Won’t Save Us