My tribute to the Luddites, on their 200th anniversary, appears in the Spring issue of The Fifth Estate. An excerpt from the opening paragraphs and a one near the end follows:
“In the waning moonlight, three bands of sullen men with ash-blackened faces stealthed through the woods and dales of central Yorkshire, one of the first counties in England to industrialize.
“Quietly, the three groups, each traveling from different villages, picked themselves through paths they traversed since childhood and assembled in a clearing near their target. Though they passed outlying cottages, no dogs betrayed them. The villagers all round brought in their animals that night.
“A quick count to assure themselves that their numbers, over a hundred, could do the job quickly and thoroughly and they were off again, now as a solid, intense phalanx.“
. . .
“Their defeat, probably foredoomed, nonetheless was a great historic loss. If in one time-warping leap they had adapted the new technology to reclaim the old village life on a new basis of greater freedom and leisure and thereby created a truly human society, today we would not be enclosed by the logic of technology as it expedites the capitalists’ addiction to endless growth. Instead, we could be living a life based on social and individual fulfillment.“
See The Fifth Estate: http://www.fifthestate.org/
