By Saturday, 20 September 2025, 5:17 Am Opinion: Ian Powell

Copyright scoop

Whenever the terms Luddism and Luddites are used they are
invariably used in a negative or derogatory manner. Calling
something Luddism and people Luddites is intended as an
insult, sometimes forcefully so.

This is because it is
associated with machine smashing by rural English labourers
in the early 19th century. In other words, smashing the new
technology (power looms) of that era because of backward
looking opposition.

Arguably, in my politically
thinking time, Helen Clark is Aotearoa New Zealand’s most
academically conscious prime minister of labour movement

But even she used the terms as a form of
criticism. This alone is testimony to the pervasive
prevalence of this mainstream
perception.

Early Luddism understanding in
New Zealand

Luddism began in Nottinghamshire
in 1811 extending to north-west England and Yorkshire. The
movement only lasted until 1816.

But, while other
labour movement struggles predated, postdated or were
concurrent with it, the imagery of Luddism is the most
memorable in contemporary public consciousness.

New Zealand newspapers were scathing of Luddism even though
they only began to appear around 35 years after its

The first reference to Luddism was on 2
November 1850 in the Nelson Examiner and New Zealand
Chronicle. It centred on the following quote from
England which was subsequently repeated in other newspaper
references:

Who made the quartern-loaf and Luddites

Who filled the butchers’ shops with

Hardly complimentary! For clarification
a quartern was a pint of beer.

Luddism as a
positive force

By placing it in its true
historical context British Marxist historian EP Thompson
instead describes Luddism as a positive force in the
development of class consciousness within the English
working class.

Although its demise was well before the
qualitative change that Thompson analysed and linked to the
political reform of the early 1830s in his groundbreaking
book on this consciousness The Making of the English
Working Class.

He concluded that Luddism’s
influence was to be a significant ‘helping hand’ for
this advance.

Contrary to the common view Luddites
were not against new technology. This is despite their focus
on power looms.

Instead their violent machine smashing
was targeted at those employers with power looms who refused
to pay minimum wages and improve working conditions,
particularly for women and children.

important. Not only was there an absence of formal
democratic political rights in England at that time, but
also limited constitutional rights had been removed under
the hated anti-combination laws.

Luddism was, in fact,
a strongly supported popular movement. Brutal suppression
was required to defeat it.

But, despite the success of
this repression, Luddism did make a positive difference. It
helped boost and inspire campaigning for parliamentary
reform beginning with the repeal of the combination

Particularly from the 1850s, the English
migrants in New Zealand who advocated for working class
interests were not Luddites. There was no obvious Luddism
identification.

But the movement directly and
indirectly influenced many of those within this emerging
working class consciousness from the early 1830s in England
and who subsequently migrated here.

of Popular Luddism

The positivity of Luddism
has now come to the fore again by Brian Merchant who is the
tech columnist for the Los Angeles Times. In 2017 he
was the bestselling author of ‘The One Device: The
Secret History of the iPhone.

Six years later
Merchant has published another well-received
book, Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the
Rebellion against Big Tech.

In December 2024 the
latter book was favourably reviewed by Professor Mark
Allison (Ohio Wesleyan University) in the American
socialist magazine Monthly Review: Attenuated
politics of popular

In his book
Merchant refers to a scene in the 1999 film Office
Space in which three disaffected workers vent their
frustration at the indignities of cubicle life by
demolishing a laser printer.

He argues in a spirited
exploration of the Luddite phenomenon, that the
identification of Luddism with misguided resistance to
machinery is a prime example of history being written by the

In Merchant’s words, “The Luddite
movement was not about technology. It was about workers’
rights.” His approach is to draw parallels between Luddism
and the burgeoning resistance to Silicon Valley digital
capitalism by those degraded and deskilled as a
consequence.

His perspective is different from
Thompson’s in that he focuses on the degrading and
deskilling nature of the work that remained as a consequence
of power looms and new digital technology. However, they are
complementary rather than conflicting perspectives.

Merchant identifies the Luddites were not crazed
technophobes. Many were themselves amateur inventors or
mechanical enthusiasts. Smashing machines was a bargaining
tactic used when all other avenues for redress had been

Luddism wanted better enforceable
employment protection laws. Alternatives were proposed, but
scornfully rejected, that would enable manufacturers to make
a profit without reducing their employees to

A rational and logical
political message

In other works, machine
smashing was the “the bargaining tool of last resort.”
In this context it was a “logical

Although loosely organised Luddites were
not disorganised. They showed much discipline and precision
(even politeness apparently) in their raids only targeting
particularly exploitative employers. There was nothing
irrational about them.

Somewhere in this is a message
for the anti-worker rights ideological politics, including
even in health and safety in the workplace, of this hard
right National-ACT-NZ First government.

exploitative capitalism becomes in this ideological
environment, the more the true spirit of Luddism may have
some resonance and in some form.

Prime Minister Luxon
take note. Do you want this to be part of your

© Scoop Media