Only the names and the dates change.
Consider romantic Lord Byron, who had spent the previous Summer in a villa in Switzerland ruminating with other literaries about the issues of advancing science (which led to cohabiter Shelley’s Frankenstein), writing this drivel poetry the following December, Christmas eve 1816, in support of the Luddites:
As the Liberty lads o'er the sea
Bought their freedom, and cheaply, with blood,
So we, boys, we
Will die fighting, or live free,
And down with all kings but King Ludd!
When the web that we weave is complete,
And the shuttle exchanged for the sword,
We will fling the winding-sheet
O'er the despot at our feet,
And dye it deep in the gore he has pour'd.
Though black as his heart its hue,
Since his veins are corrupted to mud,
Yet this is the dew
Which the tree shall renew
Of Liberty, planted by Ludd!
Today’s self-declared intellectuals and media wannabes, similarly, extol the stand-against-the-machine OWSers in the parks. An essay from novelist Thomas Pynchon, maybe appropriately written in 1984, expresses the hope, “Is it OK to be a Luddite?” Pynchon traces Ludditism to belief in miracles against the “machine,” of modern life, then steps forward to today.
Machines have already become so user-friendly that even the most unreconstructed of Luddites can be charmed into laying down the old sledgehammer and stroking a few keys instead. Beyond this seems to be a growing consensus that knowledge really is power, that there is a pretty straightforward conversion between money and information, and that somehow, if the logistics can be worked out, miracles may yet be possible.
But, garbage in, garbage out. Now as then, retreat to fantasies misstate and contradict realities of how machines free labor to be more productive and remunerative, not only to investors but to the daily lives and liberties of workers. Now as then, it takes capitalists to exert practical imagination, risk capital, and bring to fruition and everyone’s table the produce. Not fairies.
See Polling the OWSers: "...the Occupy Wall Street movement reflects values that are dangerously out of touch with the broad mass of the American people." And with reality. They are miracle fairies for President Obama who will make disappear from consciousness all his abject failures and misdirections. Dream on as you drive into the wall of reality, President Obama. But, please spare the rest of us being further injured by your reckless driving.
