Luddites

A new essay examines the original Luddites, the early nineteenth-century English textile workers who smashed machinery in protest at automation, and asks what their story teaches about labor and technology today. It traces the lace and hosiery trades where skilled artisans lost livelihoods to mechanization, arguing the Luddites were not anti-technology but fighting for fair terms amid economic upheaval.

An essay on the Articles of Interest Substack explores the real history of the Luddites through the lace industry, arguing that the movement was less about rejecting machines than about bargaining power and workers' rights. Readers on technology and history forums are sharing and discussing it as debates over automation and artificial intelligence renew interest in how earlier workers resisted labor-disrupting technology.