Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution

Kirkpatrick Sale
Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1996
279 pp., $13.00 pb

David Schrupp
Political Science
MSU-Bozeman

At the beginning of Rebels Against the Future, Kirkpatrick Sale throws us into the midst of a large group of disgruntled workers, marching through the English moonlight to seek revenge for their mistreatment and misery. The object of their wrath was a textile mill filled with large machines that had put them all out of jobs. A discussion of the motives for that raid and a little background on the sort of men that participated in the attack on the Rawfolds Mill in April 18 10 provide an excellent opening for a detailed look into the past and what it forebodes for our future. Quick tours of other protests in other times and other lands supply additional perspective of the Luddite rebellion and its philosophy; the result is a useful account of one aspect of the early years of the Industrial Revolution.

Sale uses a parallel organizational scheme in the book to showcase an interpretation of the Second Industrial Revolution that he attributes to the Computer Age. However, his version of the Neo-Luddite movement that has surfaced in response to the invention of the microchip in the 1970s is much shorter. Although some historians might disagree with the term Second Industrial Revolution, he certainly makes a good case for it and he does so with a very readable style; he's a persuasive author.

His analysis of the Luddite experience in the final chapter develops several "lessons" that the reader should find thought provoking. 'Me best example is his final, somewhat ominous prediction of the "crumbling" of the "edifice of industrial civilization." He balances his pessimism about the "accumulated excesses and instabilities" of such a social order with the hope for "alternative societies" that may arise after its demise (278). Rather than deal with each of these "lessons," it might be more interesting to concentrate on the assumptions the author makes about the world and how it operates, or should operate.

First, this author shows a predisposition for the traditional, stable, family-centered lifestyle associated with a small community. In fact, his well-written arguments about the heavy costs of both industrial revolutions point out the disadvantages of individuality, mobility, consumption, growth and change (213-214). Unfortunately, most readers will recognize these concepts as part of the core elements of an opportunity-based society. Americans, in particular, will feel Sale is attacking some core beliefs. Actually, it seems rather ironic for an historian to investigate revolutions while loathing rapid social or economic change. It would at best be difficult to be objective, but then again, maybe Kirkpatrick Sales doesn't really want to be objective.

Nevertheless, he probably has more than enough justification to question some values associated with the early part of "Wild West Capitalism"--at least in the context of his subjects, the Luddites. The examples of extreme exploitation found in his background discussions of life in the former cottage industry area of England demonstrate graphically the problems of fast-paced, wage-oriented urban communities of cities such as Leeds and Manchester. He certainly takes his skepticism about the principles of capitalism to the limit. His condemnation of what many view as the fruits of industrialization almost seems too arbitrary. How can Sale disregard the increased standard of living in most industrialized countries and classify all demand for modem goods and services as artificial consumption (42-43, 219)? Granted, there are enough atrocities against mankind and nature, but can you deny that citizens of developed countries are, on average, healthier and happier? This author's apparent refusal to consider the medical, educational, scientific or leisure-time benefits of an industrialized society leaves his analysis a trifle one-sided.

Perhaps even more important than his view of market economics is the author's apparent dislike of private property. Although he never actually speaks directly to the issue, his treatment of the Luddite experiences makes his position pretty clear. Surely Kirkpatrick Sale appreciates the role that property played in the social and political order of Britain in the Nineteenth Century! Nevertheless, he soundly condemns (at least in every one of his short anecdotes on the Luddite activities) all property-holders for their efforts to defend their rights. Moreover, Sale unabashedly lionizes the Luddites as they commit violent crimes. He treats such things as criminal trespass, destruction of property and even injury of others as "justifiable." On the other hand his description of the "Hanging Judges" appointed to handle the Luddite uprising makes them into monsters for ruling the deaths of Luddites during their attacks to be "justifiable homicide." Sale gives the reader the impression that Britain of 1810 was a police state.

This bias is even more clear when the author describes the fate of the thirteen executions in the wake of the Rawfolds Mill attack. Here he leaves the reader with the impression of a kangaroo court and overreaction by the government (182-183). Yet these men were part of a group of 120 or so, who broke out the windows of a mill and also fired weapons into the building not knowing (or caring?) if anyone was in there. Several of their own number died in the attack, because they were surprised when the owner and his men defended themselves and their property with their own weapons. In his description of the execution of thirteen of these attackers, Sale creates the idea that this was an extraordinary number of young men to die at once. But compared to the carnage that occurred at approximately the same time during the Napoleonic Wars on the continent, or to the British soldiers and sailors dying in the War of 1812, this number was hardly significant.

Using the term "victims" for those executed in January 1813 is probably the clearest example of Sale's bias against the government and the industrial leaders of the time. The fact that the Parliament had made the crime of machinery destruction a capital offense in 1812 shouldn't have been much of a surprise. After all, at the time, only property owners could vote, and they were arguably the only constituency for Parliament. But private property ownership became less important with the arrival of universal (male) suffrage. Two centuries or so later, at the time of the Second Industrial Revolution, it is mostly the use of private property that arouses Sale's ire and that of the Neo-Luddites.

Sale extols the non-violent aspect of the present Neo-Luddites, so maybe he is not all that comfortable with their philosophical forefathers from the First Revolution. He definitely would not include the Unabomber in his list of groups that qualify as Neo-Luddites. But all the others seem to agree on the need to limit the availability of technology to private property owners in their quest to profit from their own holdings. The author does admit to the irony of using computers to write and publish information on the dangers of computers (256-257). But, after all these years, the right of an individual to use his or her property for personal gain would seem to be an accepted part of an industrial culture within a market economy. In fact, in the 1990s, all types of government, but especially the leaders of former socialist states, understand that social unrest or disorder plagues the stagnant economy that fails to grow. Has the author's bias colored his lenses to the point that he refuses to acknowledge such a fact?

At first glance, Sale seems to have chosen a Marxist interpretation of how society is and should be organized. Given his view of the world, he is repulsed by the exploitation of the common laborer, alienation between individuals and their work or role in the. economy, and loss of communal cohesion. Sale's prediction is quite compatible with Marxism: the eventual "crumbling" of industrial civilizations. Not only are all of these elements present in his analysis of the Luddites and industrial society, but Sale also echoes the sentiments of Lenin about how the international economy functions! The author's observations of poor-country exploitation by the rich industrialized capitalists seems remarkably similar to Lenin's seminal work, Imperialism--the Highest Stage of Capitalism.

There is, however, another possible conclusion about Kirkpatrick Sale. Perhaps he is such a passionate pro-environmentalist that he cannot help but cry foul over the customary uses of private property that have evolved since the rise of industrial capitalism. He may not view wealth and property by themselves as a threat, but argues that human greed invariably makes them dangerous. Sale foresees the collapse of the current high-tech societies because he fears they will eventually destroy the environments that sustain them.

The end of modern society that Sale describes on his final pages is perhaps more terrifying, and certainly less utopian than the social revolution espoused by Marxist doctrine. After the great collapse of industrial societies by their own inherent contradictions, Sale hopes that small, environmentally sound communities will live in harmony, remembering their past. This author wants current observers to hear his wake-up call. Sale sees the Industrial Revolutions I and II as two hundred years of unwise use of technologies, contributing more to the destruction of society than to real progress.

Although the author's obvious imbalance in his approach to social philosophy seems to color all his analyses, it won't change an idea that deserves our attention. Should we continue to assume that industrialization is a synonym for progress? Sale's arguments are logical, and the book itself has an ingenious organization that further supports the author's efforts to persuade his reader. Even if you don't agree with some of his assumptions, you should take a look at these "lessons" for the computer age.


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