Capitalists Use Technology to Attack the Working Class

Then and Now: Workers Fight back as Capitalists Use Technology to Attack our Class here ♦ Letter on AI, Capitalist Crisis, and Communist Class Struggle here ♦

Then and Now: Workers Fight Back as Capitalists Use Technology to Attack Our Class

RICHMOND (USA), March 30 — Our book club reads history because it helps us understand the world today. The Luddites, a workers’ movement that arose in Britain at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, helps us understand the current debate about Artificial Intelligence.

Today the word “Luddite” is an insult aimed at a dull wit who stands in the way of technological advance.

Brian Merchant’s book Blood in the Machine demolishes that myth. “Imagine millions of people,” it argues, “plagued by the fear that technology is accelerating out of control. This could be today. It could also be in the early days of the Industrial Revolution when the story of the rebellion against …the first tech titans began.”

Two characters are at the center of the story. General Ned Ludd, who wrote lots of letters to factory owners. Ned “lived” in Sherwood Forest, once the home of Robin Hood. 

Alongside Ned was Enoch—the manufacturer’s brand name of a heavy hammer. Wherever Ned went, Enoch went too.

“One thing about a mythical leader,” Dave commented, “is they can never be caught!”

This is how Merchant describes Britain in 1811:

“Fiery speeches broke out…Some blasted the Crown (The King and Parliament) for the war against Napoleon…Others yelled at shop owners for setting food prices too high; children were going for days without eating. Still others called for political reform….

“(In Huddersfield) fully half the town’s 30,000 were listed on the poor rolls…The situation was so dire that hopeless framework knitters (a type of weaver) were committing suicide.”

“Sounds like today’s Deaths of Despair,” Minnie said.

 “Or the price of eggs,” Dave added. 

“Or DOGE,” Alice suggested.

Far from being unskilled, the weavers were among the high-tech workers of their age. The loom was a complicated piece of machinery. First powered by water and then the steam engine, the power loom replaced the hand loom.

In his day, the weaver and his family lived comfortably, working a thirty-hour week at home. As steam powered looms began to dominate and more inventions de-skilled the work, a child or destitute woman worked sixty hours for subsistence in the “dark Satanic” factories.

These stories give background to the movement. Here’s part of one of Gen Ludd’s letters.

“Whereas it hath been represented to us …That Charles Lacy, a British Lace Manufacturer… has reduced to poverty and Misery 700 of our beloved Brethren [by using machinery that was] hurtful to our commonality.”  Unless he changed his ways, they would break the machines that were “stealing our bread.”

The Luddites were not attacking innovation and technological advance. They were attacking technological advances that benefitted capitalists but impoverished the masses.

Eventually they were defeated militarily. The victors write history and so the Luddites come to us as ignorant roadblocks to social advances. However, the scale of their thirty-year guerilla warfare can be gleaned from one statistic.

 The British Empire during this period was fighting Napoleon in Europe, the United States, and conquering India with a private army. It actually stationed more troops in the North of England to fight the Luddites!

Imperialist and colonial terror begins at home!

Merchant also shows how this struggle influenced major writers of the period from Shelley to Byron and, of course, Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” a monster forged out of the reckless use of technology. 

“Wow! I never realized Ned Ludd was related to Frankenstein!” Dave joked.

The Luddites lost because they looked back. They wanted to restore the prosperous old days.  

In the long run they won. Out of their defeat, a mightier movement arose, the Chartists. That movement published the first English translation of The Communist Manifesto.  But that’s another book!

Letter: More on AI, Capitalist Crisis, and Communist Class Struggle

Thank you for the helpful, eye-opening article about artificial intelligence (AI). 

As it explains, bosses will use AI technology to lay off millions of workers worldwide in many industries and professions. This means growing mass unemployment, and greater poverty. Workers won’t be able to buy the many products AI generates. 

The rulers’ politicians and union leaders push passivity and tell workers nothing can be done in the face of technology’s progress. They warn that AI is also being used to make the rulers more effective at spying on the masses to attack workers in motion against them worldwide. 

Masses of workers around the world won’t take this attack lying down. They will be forced into the streets to fight for food and survival. These workers have great revolutionary potential. ICWP can grow and recruit many angry workers to become communist fighters to get rid of capitalism and its wage slavery. They can lead communist class struggles to build for communist revolution. In place of capitalism, we will build communism, where there will be plenty of useful vital work for all: to meet everyone’s’ needs.

The fight over which version of AI will dominate the market is intensifying the sharpening struggle between US and Chinese imperialists. It will bring a full World War sooner. AI will help these imperialist butchers produce even more lethal, destructive weapons. 

During the capitalist crisis of the Great Depression of the 1930’s, hundreds of millions were unemployed worldwide. In the US, 50% of the workforce, 17 million workers, were unemployed. 

The US Communist Party had tens of thousands of members and influenced millions of industrial workers. Their response to the Depression was to mobilize to build soup kitchens and unemployment councils demanding unemployment insurance and social security. They won these demands, but did not mobilize the masses for revolution. Capitalism was left intact. 

Today, the bosses’ use of AI technology is accelerating the capitalist crisis. Workers fighting layoffs and unemployment today need communist ideas and communist class struggle to win the fight for communism. The rulers’ spying can’t and won’t stop the masses. The rulers will still depend on workers to make their weapons, and soldiers to use them. Those workers and soldiers can become fighters for communism.

Learning from history, ICWP calls on Red Flag readers to join us to organize employed and unemployed workers to fight – not for social security or unemployment benefits like US Communist Party did – but for communism. Communism will have no unemployment or wage slavery. Everyone will be welcome everywhere to help produce whatever our class needs, and everyone’s needs will be met!

AI won’t tell workers that only communism will end this capitalist nightmare.  But ICWP is doing that.

When the masses destroy capitalism and run society, they will collectively design and use AI and all technology in all areas of human activity to help make workers’ lives and the earth safe and healthy for all. It will never again be used for profit, exploitation, or genocide.

—A Comrade

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