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<h1 class="title">Review: Rebels Against the Future by Kirkpatrick
Sale & Addison Wesley</h1>
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<p> A review by John Gorman of Kirkpatrick Sale & Addison
Wesley's <span style="font-style:italic">Rebels Against the
Future</span>. Originally appeared in the <span
style="font-style:italic">Industrial Worker</span> #1586
(December 1995). </p>
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<p><span style="font-style:italic">Rebels Against the Future, by
Kirkpatrick Sale, Addison Wesley, 1995 $24.</span></p>
<p>Kirkpatrick Sale is writing, first of all, about the English
Luddites of the early 19th century and, secondly, of their
successors today. But the title is a bit misleading. Both groups
represent not "rebels against the future (emphasis mine)," but
rebels against a future; one for which they never voted, and one
where their interests were never seriously considered. As Sale
puts it, "They (the Luddites) were rebels against the future that
was being assigned to them by the new political economy taking
hold in Britain, in which... those who controlled capital were
able to do almost anything they wished."</p>
<p>With inflation, brought on by a 20-year war with Napoleon,
raging, crops failing, wages falling and unions illegal, craftsmen
in the heart of England from Manchester to Nottingham to Leeds
rose in carefully coordinated assaults on factories and the
machines they contained. Faces blackened and armed mostly with
their own tools, they struck terror into the hearts of the newly
powerful industrial capitalists.</p>
<p>Secrecy and surprise were the Luddite watchwords. Although not
every raid succeeded, England was in an uproar from the first
attacks in 1811 until the movement petered out in 1815. Many
suspected Luddites were arrested, some were hanged, and others
transported to penal colonies. The authorities finally succeeded
in restoring order only by sending more troops to the heartland
than they had sent against Bonaparte in Portugal. But they never
succeeded in penetrating the movement, finding its leaders or
understanding its structure. Indeed the convolution had no
parallel since the mysterious "Great Society" of the 14th had
plunged England into turmoil.</p>
<p>The history of the Luddites was, of course, written by the
movement's enemies and "Luddite" entered our language as a synonym
for a blind opponent of progress. Sale corrects that picture,
helping us to understand that these "machine breakers" were not
merely trying to keep their own incomes up, but were also fighting
against the destruction of a way of life that had sustained them
and countless other craftsmen for centuries. The skilled worker
who had provided "good gods" at a fair price working at his own
pace in his own house was being replaced by the wage slave toiling
his life away in horribly unhealthy factories for 12 or more hours
a day for a pittance that was his only alternative to starvation.
In a few decades, the Industrial Revolution reduced a third of
England's population to a destitution that saw 57% of the
country;s children dead before the age of five and a laborer's
life expectancy reduced to 18 years.</p>
<p>On the practical level, Sale notes, the Luddite movement was a
failure. The new machines proliferated, skilled craftsmen were
economically destroyed, and Dickensian misery stalked the land.
But the Luddites did succeed in raising the "machinery question"
which has never gone away - i.e., what is the cost of "progress,"
and who shall pay it? Ever since the Luddites took up their
hammers, blind faith in the "onward and upward" has been tempered
by a realism that sees, as Sale says, that "whatever its presumed
benefits... industrial technology comes at a price, and, in the
contemporary world, that price is ever rising and ever
threatening."</p>
<p>While Sale's history is interesting and enlightening, the most
useful part of his book for those who want to understand the
present comes in the discussion of the neo-Luddites of our own
time. Like Ned Ludd's bands, they too are rebelling against a
future they never made, one where the cost-benefit ration of
technology is heavily weighted in favor of the already rich and
powerful with machines that have left 40% of the work force in
disposable jobs, devastated the Earth and reduced much of the
Third World from poverty to abject misery.</p>
<p>The neo-Luddites reject the myth that any technology is
politically and morally neutral, holding that technology that goes
beyond the laboratory into the world is the technology that
benefits the ruling class. Therefore, the introduction of any
technology, the neo-Luddites demand, must be subject to the
consent of those who will be most affected by it. If the machines
are economically, ecologically or culturally destructive,
alternatives must be sought. If none can be found, the old ways
continue.</p>
<p>Where Sale becomes uncertain, however, is in his advice on what
is to be done to win this veto power. In this sense, he ends where
he should begin. Perhaps because most unions have been so slow to
recognize this threat, let alone combat it, Sale sees little value
in mass action, believing that "the nation state, synergistically
intertwined with industrialism, will always come to its defense,
making revolt futile and reform ineffectual." Yet many of the
instances he cites when the onward rush of "progress" was stopped
or diverted, as in France and India, depended on mass protest and
mass action, often of the more drastic sort.</p>
<p>Sale seems to prefer a kind of individualized philosophical
resistance founded on spiritual traditions of long standing, such
as those that have protected the Amish and some Native American
tribes from being sucked into a culture of greed. But he does not
tell us how the rest of us not so blessed are to acquire the
ideological ammunition to fight this war. Books like Sale's are
clearly part of that supply, but even the author is far from
certain they are enough.</p>
<p><span style="font-style:italic">Originally appeared in the
Industrial Worker #1586 (December 1995)</span></p>
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