Learning from the Luddites - Boston Review

Democracy depends on the free exchange of ideas. Help sustain it with a tax-deductible donation today. Image: Getty Images The key to an alternative is building a movement. Brian Merchant I’ve spent so many years among the Luddites—among oral histories, archived letters, and old newspaper articles about them—that there are scenes from their history that are so seared into my brain, it’s almost as if I was there myself. I can conjure the battle at Rawfolds Mill, where more than a hundred clothworkers made their ambitious and ill-fated assault on a hated factory owner who used automation not to ease their burden but to undercut their wages and employ child labor. The clothworkers, under the banner of Ned Ludd, were crushed; they left trails of blood in the mud as they fled into the forest. It’s the quieter moments that are more indelible, however, and more likely to come to mind as I’m reading news of AI startups and artist strikes. Take the young Luddite leader George Mellor, remarking

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