The Luddites were brave. You wouldn’t know it from the way we use the term today.
Luddites were brave, not fearful. They opposed technology to protect labor from the ruling class.
Time has proven their opposition correct. And yet, their critique is just as alive today. Because we’re caught up in the same problems.
Technology is making it easier for companies to “capture” more productivity at a reduced cost. That cost savings being entirely about paying human beings.
This savings is not passed on to other employees, consumers of products, or citizens in the society. It goes entirely to the company and its shareholders.
And we’re taught to believe that their profit may lead us to getting a few pennies. If we can afford to invest in the right companies.
Luddites rejected the means of their own demise. By casting this rejection as fear of technology and not opposition to the monied interests taking their jobs, we contribute to the whitewashing.
The luddites were rebels practicing civil disobedience.
And they attempted to literally throw wrenches into the machinery of exploitation.
Pretending that its about not knowing how to use a computer or wanting to meet face-to-face with people is an insult to the people who tried to protect us from the very reality we love to complain about.
And the same can be said about “kumbaya”. People prayed and sang as they prepared to be beaten. And we treat that bravery like weakness.
Our use of these terms in this way is deeming. Not only to those who struggled in the past. But to ourselves. Because we are deceiving ourselves and our neighbors. Pretending inequality is normal. That exploitation is normal. While treating collective bravery as stupid.
It isn’t normal. It’s the way of cowards and selfishness. People who don’t want a more just society. Seeking to change this is brave.
They like it when we mock our heroes.
Being a luddite has nothing to do with choosing to use a smartphone. It has to do with depressing the wages of real people and calling it innovation.
It isn’t self-checkouts. But it is about firing employees, doubling the price of a McChicken, and pocketing the profit.
We are accepting worse experience, worse service, and a more precarious labor force and paying more for it.
This isn’t about technology. Or our fear of it. It has everything to do with the story we’ve been told. About technology. About companies. And most importantly, about the part we are to play in the whole thing.
Of course, they want us to think the lesson is to break our phones. Or to individually boycott big tech—actions which need literally tens of millions of people acting at once to have any noticeable effect at all.
It will take massive organizing efforts and leveraging local opportunities to reverse the tide.
But it begins with a change of mindset. In realizing how much we’ve been played by those trying to take advantage of us to increase their profits. And by those who profit from maintaining those profits.