The Case for Luddism: Taking a Hammer to the Capitalist Machine

by Paul Murphy

Taoiseach[1] Leo Varadkar: “There is a long-standing tradition on the far left of rejecting new technologies, and it has been proven wrong time and time again in that regard.”

Me: “Like what? What are you talking about?”

Varadkar: “The Luddites for a start.”[2]

If history is written by the victors, the Luddites must be the ultimate losers. Not only has their struggle almost totally faded from popular memory, but their name has entered the dictionary as “derogatory: a person opposed to new technology or ways of working.”[3]

““Their defeat was a crucial paving stone on the road of capitalist technological development that led us to the society we inhabit today.””

But just because they lost doesn’t mean they were wrong. Their defeat was a crucial paving stone on the road of capitalist technological development that led us to the society we inhabit today.

It is one where people feel enslaved by their emails and ruled by their mobile phones. Walter Benjamin writes about Parisians, simultaneously and independently of each other, shooting at clock-towers during the 1830 July revolution.[4] These towers, attacked in the same era as the Luddites, represented an external imposition of regimented ‘clock-time’ on an emerging working class. I can imagine phone smashing in a future ecosocialist revolution as people react against what has come to be what Marx described as a “power independent of the producer” that appears “hostile and alien” to us.[5]  

This is a world where tech companies make up 11 of the 20 largest companies and every part of our lives is tracked by these corporations. An increasing number of employees have their work literally dictated by corporate algorithms designed to minimise autonomy and maximise productivity.

It’s no wonder there’s a revival of interest in the Luddites and a new attempt to rescue them from the ‘condescension of posterity’.[6] 

A brief history of Luddism

The Luddites were named after Ned Ludd - a mythical apprentice who took a hammer to his master’s knitting frame after being whipped for his lack of productivity. This early nineteenth century English legend served as inspiration to textile workers confronted with new machinery - the stocking frame, gig mill and shearing frame - that would transform their lives. These workers had skilled jobs with a large degree of flexibility. Many worked 30 hours a week, with long weekends and with a rhythm of work decided by themselves. 

An 1838 memoir describes the normal life of a stocking maker:

“The stocking maker had peas and beans in his snug garden, and a good barrel of humming ale. To these comforts were added two suits of clothes, a working suit and a Sunday suit; but, more than all, he had leisure, which in the summer-time was a blessing and delight. The year was chequered with holidays, wakes, and fairs; it was not one dull round of labour. Those who had their frames at home seldom worked more than three days in a week.”[7]

Suddenly they were confronted with unemployment and pauperisation at worst. At best, their years of punishing service as apprentices had been rendered almost worthless and they faced drastically reduced pay. 

This was the Industrial Revolution. Factories, with their new punishing regime of exploitation, together with coal mines and steam engines, appeared. Workers were having their autonomy curtailed, and their rate of exploitation dramatically increased. 

E.P Thompson reminds us:

“It is easy to forget how evil a reputation the new cotton-mills had acquired. They were centres of exploitation, monstrous prisons in which children were confined, centres of immorality and of industrial conflict; above all, they reduced the industrious artisan to ‘a dependent State.”[8]

““This struggle was about defending a way of life...””

This struggle was about defending a way of life - not just workers defending their jobs. The machines were a condensation of the factory system being imposed.

Those opposing it were not technophobes. They were skilled workers who understood and operated technology daily. They were against the imposition of new technology designed to increase profits at the expense of their lives and leisure time. As Jathan Sadowski puts it, the “Luddites were striking blows against capitalism as a social system of exploitation by smashing the material manifestations of capital.”[9]

The Luddite movement began among framework knitters in 1811 in Nottingham but quickly spread to Yorkshire, where croppers dominated, and south Lancashire, where cotton weaving was centred. It involved thousands of overwhelmingly male workers. Faced with the outlawing of ‘combinations of workmen’ (trade unionism), they organised underground in a disciplined movement. Workers would be initiated into a local secret society, taking an illegal oath[10] to keep the identity of other Luddites secret. 

Contrary to the image of indiscriminate machine breaking, this was anything but. Owners would be warned in advance and told to desist in letters signed by General or King Ludd. Disciplined crowds of workers then gathered at the most hated hosiers and manufacturers in town. Unless they received a commitment to stop, they would break in. Even when they used their famous hammers, they demolished only the most offensive machines, leaving other equipment alone. 

On top of taking hammers to machines came food riots, arson, and rumours of a plan for insurrection. This underground work was carried out in combination with appeals and petitions to parliament. They sought a delay in the introduction of these new machines, a legal minimum wage, the right to form unions, and restrictions on the work of children and women. 

While their appeals to parliament fell on deaf ears, their machine breaking proved initially effective. In whole regions, bosses delayed the deployment of this new technology for fear of being targeted. Ultimately, however, they were brutally and bloodily repressed by the state and bosses, “hunted by military squadrons and pursued by militia-commanding magistrates and entrepreneurs.”[11] 

Tens of thousands of soldiers were sent to effectively occupy the areas of uprising. Rewards were promised for information, and machine breaking was made punishable by hanging. 

In Blood in the Machine, Brian Merchant recounts the  April 1812 assault of the Luddites on a mill owned by one of the aggressive capitalists most associated with the introduction of new machinery, William Cartwright. 

Cartwright was well prepared - having fortified his massive mill and hired mercenaries. The assault of around 150 Luddites turned into a rout. At least two were killed - with an inquest judging their deaths ‘justifiable homicide’. A mercenary who had refused to fire against the Luddites was subjected to a brutal public lashing until he was close to death. 

The successful defence of Cartwright's Mill was a turning point. The lesson for the capitalist class was clear - massive repression and state-sanctioned murder could work.

Another textile manufacturer, William Horsfall, was assassinated the same month. When he lay dying, the local people came, not to help him, but to admonish him for his behaviour. In response, three Luddites were hanged. Dozens more would be executed. By 1816, the movement was defeated. 

But the Luddites left their mark - and not only in the dictionary. Their struggle  was a key part of the chain of workers’ struggles of the early 19th century, including the Pentrich Rising of 1817 (led by an unemployed Nottingham stockinger), the Peterloo massacre of 1819, the growth of trade unionism, utopian socialist propaganda and the ten hours movement, which culminated in the mass working class Chartist movement of the mid 19th century.[12] Luddism was a key component of the emergence of a working class “for itself” - not just an object of exploitation but as a subject of political action.   

A Workers’ Movement against productivism

Why does this matter? Because for more than 100 years the dominant trends of the workers’ movement have been productivist. Social Democratic parties, ‘official’ Communist Parties and trade unions have all been led by people who have accepted the lie that economic growth, development of the forces of production and increased productivity is necessary to ensure improvements in workers’ living standards. Even revolutionary Marxism was infected.

The Luddites serve to remind us that there is another trend within the workers’ movement. One that resists the ‘progress’ of capitalism and instead fights in defence of autonomy, for safe working conditions and against pollution. 

The Luddites are only the most infamous of the historical examples - but they were not alone. A few decades later, a new generation of workers joined the fight. During the first general strike in a capitalist country in 1842, the ‘plug pullers’ literally pulled the plugs out of steam engines in their struggle against wage cuts and for a radical democratic ‘People’s Charter’.[13] 

Destruction of machines and factories took place at the same time in the US, in Silesia and Bavaria. In France, industrialisation was resisted, just as it was in Britain. Historian Michelle Perrot recounts how weavers struck, rioted, protested and even got drunk on the job.[14] They succeeded for a time in staving off widespread mechanisation; but, eventually, as in Britain,  state repression cleared the way. 

This was a particular moment in the development of capitalism. These were “transitional” struggles in the words of E.P. Thompson - taking place at a crossroads, with a working class looking backwards to an artisanal past and forwards to working class methods of struggle. Their defeat marked a turning point. 

““Workers against surveillance apps and top-down control over their work are part of the same rich seam of struggle.””

However, struggles in defence of autonomy and against technology never stopped and continue to this day. Taylorism[15] and later Fordism[16] and their associated work and time motion studies were ultimately about squeezing any autonomy out of the workplace. Both were  bitterly resisted on the factory floor. The strikes of Deliveroo, Uber, Lyft and other workers against surveillance apps and top-down control over their work are part of the same rich seam of struggle.

This tradition is more important than ever when we're confronted with ecological catastrophe and a capitalist class which relies on techno-utopianism to wave away calls for action. When Varadkar threw out his ‘Luddites’ comment, he was responding to criticism of his support for the fairytale of carbon capture and storage. 

The key criterion to judge technological development is that of the Luddites - is this improving or worsening our lives? Is it giving us more autonomy and freedom at work or less? Is it improving our world outside of the workplace or degrading it?

As Gavin Mueller argues:

“Workers’ movements of the past two centuries often had a Luddish bent: they understood new machines as weapons wielded against them in their struggles for a better life, treated them as such. Intellectuals on both sides of the class struggle often characterized this perspective as shortsightedness, or downright irrationality. In spite of their political commitments to the working class, Marxist theoreticians often saw the capitalist development of technology as the means for creating both abundance and leisure, which would be realised once the masses finally took the reins of government and industry.”[17]

Against technological determinism

The Luddites’ struggle is a necessary antidote to this technological determinism which distorted Marxism for much of the last century. Some of the blame for this unfortunately lies with Marx’s condensed description of historical materialism:

“At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production... From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.”[18]

G.A. Cohen in his Karl Marx’s Theory of History builds from this description to create his dry ‘analytical Marxism’. It contains a Chinese wall between the “productive forces”, which are given primacy, and “social relations of production”. He writes: 

“history is, fundamentally, the growth of human productive power, and forms of society rise and fall according as they enable or impede that growth.”[19]

Cohen represented the purest technologically determinist interpretation of Marxism. For him, class struggle is simply a surface phenomenon partially obscuring the fundamental explanation of social change, which is the necessity of the development of the productive forces. He argues that the “class which rules through a period … is the class best suited, most able and disposed, to preside over the development of the productive forces at the given time.”

In truth though, this same approach was highly influential (if not without challenge) within the mainstream of second International Marxism, within Stalinism and even amongst Trotskyist currents. Karl Kautsky 86 years earlier than Cohen argued: 

“In the last analysis, the history of mankind is determined, not by ideas, but by an economic development which progresses irresistibly, obedient to certain underlying laws and not to anyone’s wishes or whims”[20]

This is the theoretical undergirding of the quietist approach of the Second International epitomised by Plekhanov’s declaration in response to the October 1917 Revolution - “But it’s a violation of all the laws of history.”[21]

What is missing is human agency and an understanding of the interrelationship of ‘relations’ and ‘forces of production’. It treats the development of productive forces, or technology in its broadest definition, as an objective process. But how could it be? 

Technology in the real world is not like a tech tree in a game of Civilization where there are a series of more and more complex developments. Instead, there are innumerable roads not taken. The technology that the Luddites faced was not a product of natural development and certainly did not reflect the interests of the population as a whole. It reflected the needs and wants of the emergent capitalist class to produce more and to tame the developing working-class obstacle in the way. We need to be clear: the ‘forces of production’ are infused with the mode of production.

Sadowski provides a detailed description of what this looks like today in the hype economy of Silicon Valley. The most influential agents of capitalist innovation are the venture capitalists who gatekeep access to capital. They invested nearly $330 billion in 2021[22] and are displacing other forms of investment in research and development, including public investment. 

Instead of “resulting in the best innovations that benefit the most people or tackle the biggest problems, we are sold technologies that prioritize the financial interests and social values of a small pool of investors and corporations.” The result is the successive bubbles of ‘Web3’, crypto and now generative AI. Our new Taoiseach has most certainly bought the hype, claiming that AI has the same significance as the industrial revolution and the printing press![23] 

““It is people, not abstract ‘productive forces’, who make history.””

It is people, not abstract ‘productive forces’, who make history. Yes, as Marx outlined, we do not make it in circumstances chosen by ourselves, but “under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.”[24] Our possible futures are undoubtedly constrained by circumstances beyond our individual wishes. The Luddites’ ultimate defeat was probably inevitable, given the balance of forces between an embryonic working class and the emerging capitalist class.  But their struggle is now part of the circumstances transmitted by the past. As the runaway train of capitalism hurtles us towards ecological catastrophe, we may be better off reaching for the hammer than the emergency brake.

 [1] Prime Minister.

[2] Dáil Éireann 6 December 2023.

[3] Oxford English Dictionary.

[4] Walter Benjamin, On the Concept of History (1942).

[5] Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844).

[6] The first attempt of the modern era can be credited to E.P Thompson and his magnificent The Making of the English Working Class (Pantheon Books, 1963). He described himself as “seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the "obsolete" hand-loom weaver, the "utopian" artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott, from the enormous condescension of posterity.”

[7] William Gardiner, Music and Friends, 1838, quoted in Brian Merchant, Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech (Little Brown and Company, 2023).

[8] EP Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class.

[9] Jathan Sadowski, The Mechanic and the Luddite: A Ruthless Criticism of Technology and Capitalism (University of California Press, 2025).

[10]  Oaths were rendered illegal under the Unlawful Oaths Act of 1797.

[11] Brian Merchant, Blood in the Machine.

[12] For further reading, see  E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class.

[13] Andreas Malm, Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming (Verso Books, 2016).

[14] Michelle Perrot, ‘On the formation of the French Working Class’ in Working-Class Formation: Nineteenth-Century Patterns in Western Europe and the United States, eds. Ira Kratznelson and Aristide R. Zolberg (Princeton University Press, 1987).

[15] Named after Frederick Winslow Taylor, ‘scientific management’ involved ‘time study’ and ‘motion study’ of work practices in order to maximise labour productivity. This was developed at the end of the 19th century.

[16] Henry Ford applied a similar approach to mass production in factories based on standardization and the use of assembly lines.

[17] Gavin Mueller, Breaking Things at Work: The Luddites Were Right About Why You Hate Your Job (Verso Books, 2021).

[18] Karl Marx A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Progress Publishers, 1977).

[19] G.A. Cohen, Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence (1978).

[20] Karl Kautsky, Ch. 4, The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program) (1892).

[21] Quoted in Michael Löwy, ‘From the “Logic” of Hegel to the Finland Station in Petrograd’, in On Changing the World: Essays in Political Philosophy from Karl Marx to Walter Benjamin (Haymarket Books, 1993).

[22] Sadowski, The Mechanic and the Luddite

[23] Micheál Martin, ‘Europe and Ireland need to embrace AI or risk losing out on its enormous potential’, Sunday Business Post, 16 February 2025.

 [24] Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852).