• givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    It was always about worker’s rights anyways:

    Malcolm L. Thomas argued in his 1970 history The Luddites that machine-breaking was one of the very few tactics that workers could use to increase pressure on employers, undermine lower-paid competing workers, and create solidarity among workers. “These attacks on machines did not imply any necessary hostility to machinery as such; machinery was just a conveniently exposed target against which an attack could be made.”[10] Historian Eric Hobsbawm has called their machine wrecking “collective bargaining by riot”, which had been a tactic used in Britain since the Restoration because manufactories were scattered throughout the country, and that made it impractical to hold large-scale strikes.[13][14] An agricultural variant of Luddism occurred during the widespread Swing Riots of 1830 in southern and eastern England, centring on breaking threshing machines.[15]

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite

    It was about making sure that as mechanization resulted in a lower need for labor, that workers compensation remained steady, and they worked less hours.

    People hating luddites is just the result of centuries old propaganda from the wealthy