AGAINST THE MACHINE: THE HIDDEN LUDDITE TRADITION IN LITERATURE, ART, AND INDIVIDUAL LIVES
By Nicols Fox
405 pp. Washington, D.C.:
Island Press. $25.00.   

Reviewed by Laurie Meunier Graves

As I read Against the Machine: The Hidden Luddite Tradition in Literature, Art and Individual Lives by Nicols Fox, I was aware of an interesting paradox. In its essence, Against the Machine charts the rise of the machine from the Industrial Revolution to the present and explores the resistance of workers (the original Luddites), writers, artists, and thinkers to this development. While attempting to be fair minded (and, for the most part, succeeding), Ms. Fox asks whether we have lost more than we have gained. For years, I have wondered the same thing, and I found myself in complete sympathy with Ms. Fox. Yet without machines, and their father—technology—Wolf Moon Press would not exist, and, in all likelihood, I would not be reviewing this book. To carry this line of reasoning even further, without technology, Against the Machine would not exist. From its subject matter to its actual physical state—that is, of being a book—Against the Machine is totally dependent on machines.

What’s a neo-Luddite to do? One option is to buy an island off the coast of Maine, build a small cabin, and live as simply as possible with no electricity, telephone, or central heating. In the first chapter of Against the Machine, Ms. Fox writes of Nan and Arthur Kellam, who did that very thing. As Nan put it, “[they wanted] to leave behind the battle for non-essentials and the burden of abundance to build in the beauty of this million-masted island a simple home and an uncluttered life.” And this they did for forty years. Ms. Fox writes, “they [the Kellams] vowed not to cut a living tree and so used only the trees the wind had blown down for firewood…their allegiance to frugality was impressive. A friend tells me of metal measuring spoons mended and remended with solder and small rivets…[they scavenged] the harvest of the sea on the stone beaches. Reshaping found objects for their use.” The story ends sadly. Arthur dies, and Nan becomes ill and has to leave their beloved island. Yet, isn’t that how all stories inevitably end? No one lasts forever. In the meantime, Nan and Arthur Kellam lived lightly and simply and deliberately.

What modern-day commuter, racing between work, home, errands, and children, hasn’t longed for at least some measure of the Kellams’ peaceful lives? But, alas, there aren’t enough islands for everyone, and most of us must resign ourselves to lives that fall short of such romantic tranquility. However, that doesn’t mean we have to concede defeat and use machines mindlessly. And more importantly, we can consider the questions that Ms. Fox asks, “what, after all, is technology? Is it a simple screw? Is it the wheel? Is it a printing press? Is it nuclear fission? … No innovation is without impact, yet the effects are not equal…To think seriously about technology, it will be necessary to examine the nature of mechanical innovation…”

Ms. Fox does this with a vengeance. After the idyllic first chapter with the Kellams, Ms. Fox plunges us into the heart of manufacturing England in the 1800s and chronicles the struggles between the factory owners and the workers. Almost from the start, the story is ugly, with the owners obsessed with profits and quotas while the workers desperately try to maintain standards and not become obsolete. Downsized was not a term that was used back then, but with each mechanical innovation, the workers felt it keenly, even if they didn’t know the word.

Ned Ludd, or King Ludd, a figure who was perhaps a blend of myth and reality, became the symbol around which the workers rallied, and in the end, gave them their Luddite name. Secretive, subversive, and akin to Robin Hood, Ned Ludd, in spirit if not in body, ran with the workers when in frustration, they began to smash the machines that were replacing them and producing inferior goods. The workers’ protests were not against the machines themselves but rather on the machines’ negative effects on their work and on their livelihoods.

Ms. Fox quotes the historian Malcolm Thomas: “If workmen disliked certain machines, it was because of the use to which they were being put, not because they were machines or because they were new.”

This is an important point that is often lost on the neo-Luddites of today. Ms. Fox generously draws a parallel between the writer Kirkpatrick Sale’s computer-smashing antics and the Luddites’ revolt of the 1800s. But compared with those workers, Mr. Sale seems like a peevish if sincere dilettante. In Mr. Sale’s case, the destruction of the computer was part protest but also part publicity stunt for his new book Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution. For the workers in nineteenth-century England, it was something quite different.

According to Ms. Fox, as a result of rampant industrialization, the workers faced poverty, hunger, dislocation, and, if they were lucky enough to keep their jobs, hellish hours. There was no safety net to help the displaced workers, no rent subsidies or food stamps or fuel assistance. When we think of the horrors of Victorian England, we must remember the system that produced these horrors—namely capitalism run amok. The mill owners did not care about the workers; all they cared about was making a profit. The government did not care about the workers, either.

Eventually, the rebellion was quelled, and the workers settled into a new, grinding routine that didn’t improve until the rise of the unions. But others continued the struggle. In a clear, concise, and lively style, Ms. Fox moves from the Luddites to the Romantic poets, from the Victorian novelists to the Pre-Raphaelites, from the transcendentalists to the environmentalists, from novelists to those who went back to the land. Ms. Fox’s knowledge and range is incredible, and her vivid writing turns what could have been a long and potentially dull list that consists mainly of—let’s face it—white men, into a series of fascinating profiles.

Best of all, Against the Machine makes the reader think deeply about machines and their place in society. Like all good books, it is a starting point that encourages further reflection. As I thought about the way machines have been used since the industrial revolution, I began to realize how things have shifted. Once, land was used as a source of power and domination, but the machine age changed that, and now technology is used in that way. It’s the same old story, except the stakes are higher; we have the ability to destroy the whole planet.

Does it have to be this way? I’d like to think that it doesn’t. I’d like to think that we could use machines to make life more comfortable but that we would also have enough sense not to be dominated by them and by those who are in power. I’d like to think we have the ability to say, “Enough! We don’t always need more.” So far we haven’t, but the day may come when our very survival depends on it.

Until then, we need writers such as Nicols Fox to remind us that where we’ve been is intimately connected with where we are now. And that we have a choice.

 

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