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notes_on_the_luddites [2014-04-09 12:26] – [Notes On The Luddites] majanotes_on_the_luddites [2014-08-05 20:16] (current) nik
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 ==== Notes On The Luddites ==== ==== Notes On The Luddites ====
  
-Luddite Bicentenary http://ludditebicentenary.blogspot.be/p/about.html+Luddite Bicentenaryhttp://ludditebicentenary.blogspot.be/p/about.html
  
 According to wikipedia According to wikipedia
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 http://paulkingsnorth.net/journalism/dark-ecology/ http://paulkingsnorth.net/journalism/dark-ecology/
 +
 +More from Paul Kingsnorth: "I would suggest that 'anti-globalisation' is simply a continuation of the Luddites' struggle, and I touched on this in my book on the movement (One No, Many Yeses) years ago. Same shit, different century, as it were."
 +
 +"We see this all the time: one man’s freedom is another’s industry run amok"
 +http://illusionofmore.com/on-being-a-luddite/
  
 <blockquote>modern Neo-Luddites are more likely to "confine their resistance...to a kind of intellectual and political resistance." The manifesto of the 'Second Luddite Congress' specifically rejects violent action (...) Neo-Luddites are generally opposed to anthropocentrism, globalization and industrial capitalism. (...) Neo-Luddites also believe that current technologies are a threat to humanity and to the natural world in general, and that a future societal collapse is possible.  <blockquote>modern Neo-Luddites are more likely to "confine their resistance...to a kind of intellectual and political resistance." The manifesto of the 'Second Luddite Congress' specifically rejects violent action (...) Neo-Luddites are generally opposed to anthropocentrism, globalization and industrial capitalism. (...) Neo-Luddites also believe that current technologies are a threat to humanity and to the natural world in general, and that a future societal collapse is possible. 
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 <blockquote> ... Simple living may be characterized by individuals being satisfied with what they need rather than want... </blockquote> <blockquote> ... Simple living may be characterized by individuals being satisfied with what they need rather than want... </blockquote>
 +
 +<blockquote>Much misunderstood, the Luddites weren't Primitivists, but opposed machinery 'harmful to commonality'. Their view that technology is never neutral is very resonant today. However for activists they also pose the troubling question of when tactics become self defeating. The people of  Britain in 1812 had the choice of supporting injustice or anarchy, and they chose injustice." </blockquote>
 +http://uncivilisation.ning.com/forum/topics/200-years-of-the-luddites
  
 <blockquote> In 1990, Chellis Glendinning published her "Notes towards a Neo-Luddite manifesto" in the Utne Reader, reclaiming the term 'luddite'. According to Glendinning, Neo-Luddites are "20th century citizens — activists, workers, neighbors, social critics, and scholars — who question the predominant modern worldview, which preaches that unbridled technology represents progress."[15] Glendinning then gives the following principles of Neo-Luddism: <blockquote> In 1990, Chellis Glendinning published her "Notes towards a Neo-Luddite manifesto" in the Utne Reader, reclaiming the term 'luddite'. According to Glendinning, Neo-Luddites are "20th century citizens — activists, workers, neighbors, social critics, and scholars — who question the predominant modern worldview, which preaches that unbridled technology represents progress."[15] Glendinning then gives the following principles of Neo-Luddism:
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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walden
 +
 +<blockquote>Bioluddism is a modern movement of opposition to specific or general technological development and Emerging technologies. The term “Bioluddite” is derived from Luddite, a political/historical term relating to a political movement by that name, that took place in England during the Industrial Revolution. The term “Bioluddite” is used to describe persons or organizations that resist technological advances.
 +
 +Bioluddites come from a variety of political backgrounds, ranging from anarchists (such as anarcho-primitivists) to political conservatives (such as eco-fascists).</blockquote>
 +
 +http://ieet.org/index.php/tpwiki/Bioluddites
  
  
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   * http://maradydd.livejournal.com/496085.html   * http://maradydd.livejournal.com/496085.html
  
-====Notes====+====Reading Notes==== 
 + 
 +From: The Shuttle Exchanged for the Sword by Warren Draper (In Dark Mountain Issue 2) 
 + 
 +All mythologies have their monsters, and for modern industrial civilisation it can sometimes seem that there is no more terrifying beast than the Luddite.  
 + 
 +In the closing years of the 18th century, the weaver’s profession would come under threat; not only from the introduction of new technology, but also from the newly emerging capitalist attitudes towards production. 
 + 
 +Indeed, many labourers and artisans worked only as long as needed to ensure that the immediate needs of their families were met; the idea of working to the clock for extra surplus value (profit) would have seemed somewhat ludicrous (…) 
 + 
 +It wasn’t just family ties that were closer thanks to pre-capitalist production methods, community life benefited as well. (…) Every weaving district had its weaver-poets, biologists, mathematicians, musicians, geologists, botanists:… [T]here are accounts of weavers in isolated villages who thought themselves geometry by chalking on their flagstones, and who were eager to discuss the differential calculus. In some kinds of plain work with strong yarn a book could actually be propped on the loom and read at work. 
 + 
 +As capitalism progressed, knowledge has been reduced to a meritocratic means-to-an-end (qualification) rather than an end in its own right; and in wealthier countries the self-educated polymath has become an endangered species. 
 + 
 +Robbed of their traditional land-rights, and divorced from communal production methods, the artisans and peasantry were forced instead to rely on the wage labour system; and the newly dominant merchant classes took full advantage of the situation.  
 + 
 +Byron’s speech was loaded with sarcastic references to the 'benefits' of progress. (…) Unfortunately, capital and the state - inseparable aspects of what William Cobbett called 'The Thing' - are driven solely by motives of profit and power, and are therefore impervious to arguments based on knowledgeable reason and impassioned intuition (Byron being one of the only Lords ever to offer both).  
 + 
 +(…) Frame breaking in Nottinghamshire became even less frequent, although 1812 did see regular food riots in the area which were themselves a by-product of the hardship created by the introduction of the mechanical looms.  
 + 
 +Having borne the brunt of the industrialisation for three decades, they knew better than most what factories and machines could do to the welfare of the local population. In living memory the vast majority of the well-fed peasantry and relatively wealthy artisans had been reduced to powerless, starving proletariat - and all in the name of progress. 
 + 
 +In Luddite circles, taking an oath was known as 'twisting in', in reference to the twisting of separate threads to form a single, stronger yarn. This sworn bond was further strengthened by military-style, night-time drills.  
 + 
 +Prior to 1813, the Luddites had wanted to save an autonomous, communal way of life based on self-sufficiency and skilled craftsmanship. Later loom-breaking incidents were almost exclusively centred around disputes regarding levels of pay; reflecting the later (and modern) labour movement, which claimed to stand against capitalism, but failed to question the central tenets of the 'progressive' production system.  
 + 
 +Put simply, pre-modern resistance was a fight against enclosure - a battle to save independent, self-sufficient ways of life from destruction; to prevent the industrial machine from enslaving the people. Modern industrial unrest was a battle waged after this war had been lost.  
 + 
 +Our societies have been so comprehensively remade in the image of capital that it is hard to talk about concepts like self-sufficiency, independence and the land, without being immediately dismissed by progressives on right and left as Romantics and, of course, Luddites.  
 + 
 +The land-based movements of the twenty-first century (MST in Brazil, EZLN in Mexico, Landless People Movement in South Africa, Bhumi Uched Pratirodh Committee in India…) may have little hope of becoming a worldwide revolution - certainly not within the time-scale dictated by catastrophic climate change or peak-oil - but these communities may yet prove to be the most resilient in the face of an unfolding collapse.  
 + 
 +This should start with accepting that the Luddites were right. The Thing - the state -industrial nexus which Cobbett identified in its infancy - is now the dominant force in the world, and its mythology shapes the times we live in. Today the mill owners are global brands.  
 + 
 +(…) It’s going to mean developing and using human-scale technologies which can augment our liberty and self-sufficiency rather than enslaving us to a grid. It’s going to mean hand-looms rather than wide-frames; control by the people rather than control of them. The best way to avoid being controlled by technology is to be in control of the technology you use.  
 + 
 +If you take a visit to one of the many websites which encourage a little technical tinkering, you’ll find a combination of free and open information, Open Source software, reduced material costs, high volumes of useful waste and micro-innovations have made it possible to develop and create projects at home - from bicycle trailers to slow cookers and mini robots - that would have needed highly specialised multi-million-dollar factories just a few years ago.  
 + 
 +We are now, in other words, approaching a position where it may be possible to create once again an infrastructure built upon localised, craft-orientated, community-based, ecologically sensitive production techniques - in other words to potentially return to the pre-capitalist idea of the cottage industry which the Luddites fought so hard to devend. Its’ a world in which not only is it easier to work from home, but it is easier to work away from the growth-addicted world of capitalist production. Traditional crafts are also experiencing a renaissance as people look for more ecologically sound and more self-reliant ways to live. The artisan, it seems, is coming back from the brink of exctinction - just as progressive civilisation itself begins to tip over the brink.  
 + 
 +Much of it (appropriate technology movement) focused (…) on simple technologies that could be put to work by ordinary people without six-figure incomes, doing the work themselves, using ordinary tools and readily available resources.  
 + 
 +I see at least some spark of a hopeful future in the development, practice and sharing of what I call ADApt (Anticipatory Design and Appropriate Technology) initiatives, which help us to distance ourselves from the corporate leviathan and restore some of the freedom of action and creativity that the Luddites went to their graves to protect.
  
-other+Related: [[fringejoyride_residency_notes]]
  
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