Lessons from the Luddites

"Only a people serving an apprenticeship to nature can be trusted with machines."

This wise maxim of Herbert Read's is what Wordsworth and the other Romantic poets of the Luddite era expressed in their own way as they saw the Satanic mills and Stygian forges

Mercantile capitalism showed scant regard for nature
but until the 19th century it had not developed many technologies capable of wholesale destruction
What happens when an economy is not embedded in a due regard for the natural world
It also loses its sense of the human as a species and the individual as an animal
needing
land and air, decent food and shelter, intact communities and nurturing families
An economy without any kind of ecological grounding will be as disregardful of the human members as of the nonhuman
4. The nation-state, synergistically intertwined with industrialism, will always come to its aid and defense, making revolt futile and reform ineffectual.
There is no sign of hurt or astonishment in any of the Luddite letters written in reaction to the government's decision to defend the new industrialism with some 14,000 troops
so stark and clumsy and brutal, and accompanied by systems of spies & informers, zealous magistrates, illegal arrests, and rigged trials --- to control

its own populace.
the real meaning of laissez-faire: force would be used by the state to ensure that manufacturers would be free to do what they wished, especially with labor.
the industrial regime hardly cares which cadres run the state
it can accommodate itself to almost any national system --- Marxist Russia, capitalist Japan, China under a vicious dictator, Singapore under a benevolent one, messy and riven India, tidy and cohesive Norway, Jewish Israel, Moslem Egypt --- and in return asks only that its priorities dominate, its markets rule, its values penetrate, and its interests be defended, with 14,000 troops if necessary, or even an entire Desert Storm.
Some among the Luddites might have entertained a dream that the British government could be overthrown
Some among the Luddites also entertained a dream that the British government could be reformed
no figure of the Luddite era more pathetic than that of Gravener Henson
organizing Nottingham stockingers
getting Parliament to consider

to consider a bill preventing "Frauds and Abuses" in the knitting trades, only to see his bill become so distorted
that it ended up allowing manufac- turers to "Cheat, Rob, Pilfer" as never before --- and then finding that even that bill was rejected by the Lords.
5. But resistance to the industrial system, based on some grasp of moral principles and rooted in some sense of moral revulsion, is not only possible but necessary.
it is true that in a general sense the Luddites were not successful either in the short-run aim of halting the detestable machinery or the long-run task of stopping the Industrial Revolution and its multiple miseries
is that they resisted, not that they won
Luddism as a moral challenge, "a sort of moral earthquake," as Charlotte Bronte saw it
perception of right and wrong that went down deep in the English soul.
somewhere in the blood, in the place inside
where pain and fear and anger intersect,
one is finally moved to refusal and defiance: "No more."

"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part," is the way that Mario Savio put it before another movement in 1964. "And you've got to put your bodies upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop."
The "Great Refusal," in the words of Michel Foucault, is made up of "a plurality of resistances, each of them a special case: resistances that are possible, necessary, improbable, others that are spontaneous, savage, solitary, concerted, rampant, or violent." Lewis Mumford, at the end of his lengthy analysis of "the myth of the machine" a generation ago, argued that indeed anyone could "play a part in extricating himself from the power system" by "quiet acts of mental and physical withdrawal," and he thought he saw such resistance "in a hundred different places":

Though no immediate and complete escape from the ongoing power system
is possible, least of all through mass violence, the changes that will restore
autonomy and initiative to the human person all lie within the province of
each individual soul, once it is roused. Nothing could be more damaging to
the myth of the machine, and to the dehumanized social order it has brought
into existence, than a steady withdrawal of interest, a slowing down of tempo,
a stoppage of senseless routines and mindless acts.
the Old Order Amish communities from Pennsylvania to Iowa and the traditional Indian communities found on many reservations right across the country.

The political task of resistance today, then --- beyond the "quiet acts" of personal withdrawal Mumford urges --- is to try to make the culture of industrialism and its assumptions less invisible and to put the issue of its technology
on the political agenda
Neil Postmen, a professor of communications at New York University and author of Technopoly, "it is necessary for a great debate" to take place
Is this invention
nothing but, as Thoreau put it, and improved means to an unimproved end?
who the principle beneficiaries
large, bureaucratic, complex, and secretive organizations of the industrial world
an immensely self-satisfied laissez-faire plutocracy whose access to means of forcing debates and framing issues
that task ought not to be so difficult --- in spite of the continued opposition of a plutocracy grown only more powerful and complacent
some of the fish at least not only seem to be seeing the water but realizing it is polluted. Industrialism
is on a collision course with the biosphere

Industrial societies
shot through with inequality, injustice, instability, and incivility
tribal societies
devoid for the most part of crime or addiction or anomie or poverty or suicide
they did not have atomic bombs and death camps, toxic wastes, traffic jams, strip mining, organized crime, psychosurgery, advertising, unemployment, or genocide.
For durability, however, they are not enough, they do not sustain a commitment that lasts through the adversities of repression and trials, they do not forge a solidarity that prevents the infiltration of spies and stooges, they do not engender strategies and tactics that adapt to shifting conditions and adversaries, and they do not develop analyses that make clear the nature of the enemy and the alternatives to put in its place.
elements of such an analysis
are in existence
Mumford and Schumacher and Wendell Berry and Jerry Mander and the Chellis Glendinning manifesto
Earth-First!ers
bioregionalists
deep ecologists
Amish
Irokwa
essentials of that analysis

opposed the principle of biocentrism and the spiritual identification of the human with all living species and systems.
its economic and military expression, is the guiding strategy of that civilization, to which must be opposed the strategy of localism, based upon the empowerment of the coherent bioregion and the small community.
Industrialism, the ethos encapsulating the values and technologies of Western civilization, is seriously endangering stable social and environmental existence on this planet, to which must be opposed the values and techniques of an organic ethos that seeks to preserve the integrity, stability, and harmony of the biotic community, and the human community within it.
Anthropocentrism, and its expression in both humanism and monotheism, is the ruling principle of that civilization, to which must be opposed the principle of biocentrism and the spiritual identification of the human with all living species and systems

Globalism, and its economic and military expression, is the guiding strategy of that civilization, to which must be opposed the strategy of localism, based upon the empowerment of the coherent bioregion and the small community.
Industrial capitalism, as an economy built upon the exploitation and degradation of the earth, is the productive and distributive enterprise of that civilization, to which must be opposed the practices of an ecological and sustainable economy built upon the accommodation and commitment to the earth and following principles of conservation, stability, self-sufficiency, and cooperation.
8. If the edifice of industrial civilization does not eventually crumble
as a result of a determined resistance within its very walls, it seems
certain to crumble of its own accumulated excesses and instabilities
within not more than a few decades, perhaps sooner, after which t
here may be space for alternative societies to arise.
The two chief strains pulling this edifice apart, environmental overload and social dislocation
Industrial civilization is different only in that it is now much larger and more powerful than any known before, by geometric differen-

ces in all dimensions, and its collapse will be far more extensive and thorough-
going, far more calamitous.
It is possible that such a collapse will be attended by environmental and social dislocations so severe that they will threaten the continuation of life
But it is also possible that it will come about more by decay and distension, the gradual erosion of nation-state arrangements made obsolete and unworkable, the disintegration of corporate behemoths unable to comprehend and respond, and thus with the slow resurrection and re-empowerment of small bioregions and coherent communities having control over their own political and economic destinies.
It is now the task of the neo-Luddites

http://reason.com/archives/2001/07/01/rage-against-the-machines

Understanding Obamacare: Luke Mitchell Harpers

Harpers
Luke Mitchell

The private insurance industry, as currently constituted, would collapse if the government allowed real competition. The companies offer no real value and so instead must create a regulatory system that virtually mandates their existence and will soon actually do so.

FAT CAT BANKERS: CLINTON AND OBAMA

Clinton, 1993: "You mean to tell me that the success of the economic program and my re-election hinges on the Federal Reserve and a bunch of fucking bond traders?"
Obama, 2009: "I Did Not Run for Office to Be Helping Out a Bunch of Fat Cat Bankers on Wall Street"

Oh yes, you did.

MATT TAIBI: OBAMA'S SELLOUT

We could have paid off every subprime mortgage in America for about $1.4 trillion and instead shelled out at least ten times that to Wall Street, primarily to pay off derivative bets made by bankers on those assets.

TARP is just one small slice of the bailout package — most of the bailout monies went out through little-known Fed programs like the TALF, the TLGP, the TIP, the PPI, and the Maiden Lanes. The number my friend Nomi Prins is using now for the bailouts is about $14 trillion in total outlays, and just as Barofsky pointed out, that number could rise.

Most of the bailouts came in the form of very cheap money lent out to the same banks that caused the crisis, who then took that money and lent it out at market rates, pocketing the difference.

---

It’s almost impossible to not make mountains of money when your cost of capital is next to nothing because you’re borrowing your money from the government basically for free.

Obama's Big Sellout
TAIBBLOG
The president has packed his economic team with Wall Street insiders intent on turning the bailout into an all-out giveaway

Obama's Big Sellout
MATT TAIBBI
Posted Dec 09, 2009 2:35 PM

The Commodity Futures Modernization Act

The Commodity Futures Modernization Act was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton in December 2000. It was an attempt to solve a dispute between the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) that arose in the early 1980s. At that time, Congress had enacted legislation to expand the scope of what was defined as a commodity. This resulted in some overlap between the regulatory scope of the SEC and the CFTC.

The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 (CFMA) is United States federal legislation that clarified that most 'over-the-counter derivatives' would not be subject to regulation by barring the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the states from regulating these products.[1]

Gramm and the ‘Enron Loophole’
By ERIC LIPTON

In 2000, Senator Phil Gramm played a central role in writing the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, a law that would open the door to unregulated trading of credit default swaps, the financial instruments blamed, in part, for the current economic meltdown.

Credit Default Swaps

The Press and Phil Gramm

The alternative press leads on the policy roots of the credit crisis

By Elinore Longobardi

HOW CAN OBAMA REALLY BECOME THE NEXT FDR

How Can Obama Really Become the Next FDR?
Obama needs to break with neoliberalism and embrace the public provision of public goods like Roosevelt and Eisenhower once did -- from energy and infrastructure to education and healthcare.
Dwight Eisenhower
authorized the biggest infrastructure program in American history, when he signed the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956.
The interstate highway act created an elaborate system of private tax incentives and public-private partnerships (PPPs) to encourage private corporations to build national highways.
To begin with, all U.S. highways were leased to domestic and foreign corporations for a period of decades.
Second, all U.S. highways were set up with toll booths, so that American drivers would be forced to repay the corporate owners of the national highways every few dozen miles.
Finally, a system of high-speed lanes with higher tolls was created,

so that the rich could whiz down the road while middle-class and poor Americans were stuck in traffic jams ...

Free highways without toll booths, owned by the public, paid for out of taxes? My God. So the John Birch Society was right after all. Dwight Eisenhower was as much of a socialist as Franklin Delano Roosevelt!
Once upon a time in the United States, public goods -- from retirement security and energy research to public roads -- were provided by the government and paid for by taxes.
As late as the Nixon administration, the provision of public goods by government was considered perfectly compatible with a robust market economy by so-called Modern Republicans like Eisenhower and Nixon as well as New Deal Democrats like Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy and Johnson.

In the intervening 40 years, however, free-market fundamentalists of the Chicago School have managed to change the debate, redefining "socialism" to mean not only public ownership of the means of production, but also public provision of public goods.
Rather than fight back, most Democrats in the last generation adapted to this hostile conservative political climate by jettisoning New Deal "big government" liberalism for "market-friendly" neoliberalism. Neoliberals shared the right's enthusiasm for deregulating industries that New Deal Democrats had regulated in the public interest. Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy supported the deregulation of trucking and airlines, while Bill Clinton presided over the dismantling of the New Deal era's banking regulations and declared:
"The era of big government is over." Neoliberals and conservatives agreed that public goods should be provided by private, for-profit or nonprofit entities, rather than government agencies.

If private corporations or universities had no motivation to provide public goods, well, then, they would be bribed with tax credits or other government subsidies.