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Would Luddites find the gig economy familiar?
Luddites were hardly the anti-tech dullards historians have painted them to be.
In his book Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech, Merchant memorializes the Luddites not as the hapless dolts with their heads in the sand that they’ve become synonymous with, but rather as the first labor organizers. Supposedly an apprentice in the cloth trade who smashed his master’s device with a hammer in 1799, he became the movement’s figurehead, with the disparate raiders breaking machines all over northern England, leaving notes signed with his name. Even as their bodies were still practically swinging on the gallows, the aristocracy and press were already undermining and reshaping the Luddite story, depicting them as deluded and small-minded men who smashed machines they couldn’t understand—not the strategic, grassroots labor activists they were.
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