{"id":63369,"date":"2026-09-14T17:07:57","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T07:07:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/billmitchell.org\/blog\/?p=63369"},"modified":"2026-09-14T17:07:57","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T07:07:57","slug":"is-opposition-to-the-ai-development-the-new-ludditism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/billmitchell.org\/blog\/?p=63369","title":{"rendered":"Is opposition to the AI development the new Ludditism?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the early C19th, skilled English textile workers fearing for their future wage earning capacity launched a campaign against the automated machinery that was fast being introduced into the factory system. The initial protests in Nottingham in 1811 spread quickly to Yorkshire and Lancashire. They became known as the – Luddites<\/a> – a self-appointed title and for the next 5 years or so, the conflict between the workers and the bosses (aided by government) ensued. The workers’ case was really about who controlled the production process and the new technology they were fearful of was just another part of the sequence where capital sought to exert control on the extraction of surplus value from the workforce. Since then, if one expresses opposition to the introduction of new technology one is labelled with that title. The latest battle front in this struggle might be the rapid introduction of Artificial Intelligence, although that process goes well beyond an aim to control workplaces and reflects a broader desire to control society in general.
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It is important to understand that the textile workers back in C19th Britain did not oppose technology per se<\/em>, but rather were struggling to maintain the rights of workers in the face of the burgeoning profitability of industrial capital and the massive income and wealth inequalities that were emerging under Capitalism.<\/p>\n

I gained a much greater understanding of that struggle when I recently read the book by American author – Brian Merchant<\/a> – called – Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech<\/a> (published September 23, 2023).<\/p>\n

What the book teaches us is that the urgency of Capital to continually seek ways to control the workplace to ensure they can maximise the extraction of surplus value (the unpaid labour in each day of work) is relentless and the only comeback for workers is the traditional one – to organise and counterveil the power that Capital wields, given it owns the material means of production.<\/p>\n

The relevance of this historical struggle continues to resonate although the scale of the struggle these days transcends the workplace and is becoming a battle for society.<\/p>\n

On one level, the workplace concerns remain – technology that can replace skilled labour or any labour with machines – tends to undermine the prosperity of the workers displaced.<\/p>\n

The old arguments that technology just frees up labour to work in higher paying jobs that emerge as society becomes more sophisticated (for example, in the professional service sector) has long been made and may have carried some validity in the past.<\/p>\n

Today, many jobs in the service sector are vanishing.<\/p>\n

I was on a call to an Internet company today and spent several minutes essentially discussion options with an automated chat bot, when 10 years ago, I would be talking to someone in India.<\/p>\n

But even the well-paid, internal labour market jobs – the professional jobs – are disappearing as technology expands in the AI revolution.<\/p>\n

Economists like to talk about consumer sovereignty to justify their faith in the unregulated ‘market’ as the primary means of allocating resources between alternative uses.<\/p>\n

The implication is that inferior products that are offered to consumers will be rejected and those companies will disappear – part of the process that economists claim ensures that the highest satisfaction among consumers is achieved through market exchanges.<\/p>\n

But one lesson from the struggle of the Luddites was that inferior stockings, which were produced by the machines sewing two separate woven segments together (so-called ‘cut ups’) instead of the existing practice at the time of producing with a single continuous knitting process (so-called fully fashioned stockings), were not rejected in the market.<\/p>\n

The stockings didn’t last very long, and had an ugly seam.<\/p>\n

But they were much cheaper and as the urban class emerged (and with long skirts the fashion), the consumers purchased them and ‘ratified’ the technological shift, even if it undermined the prosperity of the textile workers who produced the products.<\/p>\n

As mass consumption became the norm in the C20th, this trend became familiar.<\/p>\n

The Luddites were at the forefront of the emergence of the factory system.<\/p>\n

This was the beginnings of industrial production and the way in which the capitalist class had to introduce a control function because they couldn\u2019t trust the workforce to work hard and long enough to generate the surplus production that was the source of capital accumulation and maintenance of the capitalist hegemony.<\/p>\n

Under the ‘cottage industry’ or ‘putting out’ system, the workers had some volition and the capitalists soon worked out that they needed to ‘bring the industry under one roof’.<\/p>\n

I discussed that topic in several blog posts, among them – Capitalists shooting their own feet \u2013 destroy trust and layer management<\/a> (September 30, 2015).<\/p>\n

Another lesson from the Luddite struggle was that it was the role of the state that rendered their actions (smashing textile machines) impossible to maintain.<\/p>\n

The British government, in Brian Merchant’s words “sided decisively with the entrepreneurs” by making the actions of the workers capital offenses and many workers were hung as a result.<\/p>\n

17 workers were hung in 1813 after a mass trial in the city of York in January 1813.<\/p>\n

Many others were transported to the penal colony that is now Australia.<\/p>\n

This song memorialises the struggle.<\/p>\n