Why the Luddites Matter

Understanding history is not just about passing verdicts on the outcomes with the benefit of hindsight. It's about understanding the process of change, why it happened, and how people living at the time viewed the changes and reacted to them.

An article like this sheds light on a lot of those topics, including people's beliefs about their economic rights at that time. It corrects common misconceptions about the Luddites. It demonstrates that the outcomes of the Industrial Revolution were not inevitable, and that people's understanding of what was going on at the time was very different than our understanding of it today. It opens the door to further research for people interested in the topic. It doesn't deserve a handwavy dismissal.

People reading this may be interested in Lord Byron's first speech to the House of Lords as well, which was a full-throated defense of the Luddites. As you might guess, it's beautifully written. It also nicely magnifies the historical irony of Byron fathering Ada Lovelace.

http://www.luddites200.org.uk/LordByronspeech.html

"Considerable injury has been done to the proprietors of the improved frames. These machines were to them an advantage, inasmuch as they superseded the necessity of employing a number of workmen, who were left in consequence to starve. By the adoption of one species of frame in particular, one man performed the work of many, and the superfluous labourers were thrown out of employment. Yet it is to be observed, that the work thus executed was inferior in quality, not marketable at home, and merely hurried over with a view to exportation. It was called, in the cant of the trade, by the name of Spider-work. The rejected workmen, in the blindness of their ignorance, instead of rejoicing at these improvements in arts so beneficial to mankind, conceived themselves to be sacrificed to improvements in mechanism. In the foolishness of their hearts, they imagined that the maintenance and well doing of the industrious poor, were objects of greater consequence than the enrichment of a few individuals by any improvement in the implements of trade which threw the workmen out of employment, and rendered the labourer unworthy of his hire. And, it must be confessed, that although the adoption of the enlarged machinery, in that state of our commerce which the country once boasted, might have been beneficial to the master without being detrimental to the servant; yet, in the present situation of our manufactures, rotting in warehouses without a prospect of exportation, with the demand for work and workmen equally diminished, frames of this construction tend materially to aggravate the distresses and discontents of the disappointed sufferers. But the real cause of these distresses, and consequent disturbances, lies deeper."

that's the unfortunate truth about "wealth redistribution" (aka "inequality").

it's quite logical : those who have much don't feel the need to give as much as those who feel the need to have more.