For those with ears to hear, this book remains a stirring call to seriously consider whether ‘technology is in the saddle and rides humankind’.
If the Luddites are thought of at all, they are generally remembered as a rebellious group of English workers who hated machines for rather impenetrable or even mystical reasons. Consequently, our modern (pejorative) term ‘Luddite’ brands someone as an opponent of any new technology simply because it is new. On this view, Luddites—then and now—are stubbornly and hopelessly backward, dragging their heels for no good reason.
The thirty-year-old classic, Rebels Against the Future by Kirkpatrick Sale, sets out to challenge this perception and vindicate the Luddites by telling their story through their own eyes. More than that, Sale argues the Luddite experience contains valuable lessons for us as we comes to terms with a new industrial age defined by revolutions in computing, AI, robotics, biotech, etc. Will we learn the lessons of the first industrial revolution or relive its tragedies a second time?
Above all, Sale believes the Luddites stand as a warning: ‘whatever its presumed benefits, of speed or ease or power or wealth, industrial technology comes at a price, and in the contemporary world that price is ever rising and ever threatening.’
The book begins with some initial scene setting, including a chapter naming and explaining what the author sees as the defining features of the First Industrial Revolution. He doesn’t mince words: it was a multi-generational disaster for traditional lifeways due to its assault on the culture and economic independence of local communities, all driven by a fundamentally new culture which sought to entirely subordinate nature and overturn her ancient limits in the service of profit and (capital P) Progress.
Since we are the inheritors of this new industrial culture, Sale knows we are inclined to be charitable in its defence: ‘you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs’, and all that. Perhaps textile workers in the midlands of Britain in the early-mid 1800s were regrettably caught up in the gears of history, but you can’t (mustn’t?) halt Progress.
Yet it is hard to maintain this kind of dismissive apologetic after reading Sale’s narrative. And that’s intentional. He brings the reader face-to-face with the profound injustice and destitution experienced by workers and their families due to the rapid and unilateral imposition of novel technologies by a few wealthy factory owners, forcing all manufacturers to yield in turn to new market realities. He relates how this left the average cotton or wool worker with only two options: submit to drudge-work at pittance wages, or attempt ‘collective bargaining by riot’. The events of the resulting violent Luddite protests over fifteen months between 1811 and 1813 are passionately and evocatively told, and it is easy to get swept up in the drama of secret night raids on factories, government spies, letters of defiance signed in blood, and brutal military crackdown. In this telling, the Luddite resistance becomes far less about machinery per se than the moral and social outrage felt by common people at what the new machines represented: ‘a new economic order being thrust upon the workers and their communities unbidden.’
Who gets to decide how new technology is used? What are the criteria? How should we judge the outcomes and effects? Who bears the costs?
And this is the heart of the matter, then as now. As a Luddite letter of March 1812 has it, their ‘Army of Redressers’ sought neither the elimination of all machinery nor a halt to innovation, but rather ‘to put down all Machinery hurtful to Commonality’. These workers were adamant that, despite much high-flown economic theorising to the contrary by their betters, these particular machines were ‘hurtful’ as they did not serve the interests of the majority. In 19th century terms, the Luddites were forcing ‘the machinery question.’ Who gets to decide how new technology is used? What are the criteria? How should we judge the outcomes and effects? Who bears the costs?
These are questions we continue to face today as we contemplate everything from the use climate engineering technologies to rapid developments in AI which herald new possibilities for the automation of human labour. The enduring relevance of these same questions three decades later means Rebels Against the Future has aged remarkably well.
That said, while the history portion makes a compelling case for the ‘cataclysmic’ view of the Industrial Revolution—in many ways a tragedy as much for the life and community of the average worker as for the English countryside—Sale’s critical analysis nevertheless comes across a little too self-satisfied at times. He is certainly unlikely to convince anyone not already sympathetic to his outlook. However, for those with ears to hear, this book remains a stirring call to seriously consider whether ‘technology is in the saddle and rides humankind’.
And this leads to the question of technological determinism: the Luddites, after all, lost. They rebelled against the future and the future swallowed them. Is it even conceivable that they might have won? What would ‘winning’ have meant? As Sale notes, industrialism has succeeded more-or-less everywhere, no matter the culture or political arrangement. Moreover, he argues that in every case it has shown itself ‘disregardful of the collective human fate and of the earth from which it extracts all its wealth’. Is this merely because of consistently selfish or foolish application of industrial technology, or does it come with its own built-in Faustian character? The author has no doubt it’s the latter.
So, if industrial technology is irredeemable, then ongoing resistance is the answer. The final chapter accordingly offers eight ‘lessons from the Luddites’ on what this might mean. (You can hear in detail what Jonathan and I make of these lessons on ep. 29 of the MannaCast). In a sentence, I was left wanting more here. I am probably more willing than most to entertain the idea that ‘industrialism’ and ‘industrial culture’ as described are worth resisting in many respects, but a look at both the past and the present suggests this is devilishly difficult. Moreover, while Sale dismisses monotheistic religions as part of the problem, I’m particularly curious to know what a Christian theological critique and practice of resistance might look like.
All in all, Rebels is a provocative and educational read. It’s at its best when it is dismantling Luddite caricatures and questioning our deep assumptions about technology. I only wish this book was as good at answering its questions as it is at asking them.