Machine striker

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Destruction of a loom (1812)

Machine attackers were a protest movement against the social consequences of mechanization in the industrial revolution . Often the destruction of machines or newly built factories was a means of preventing factory owners from replacing skilled workers with unskilled workers, or of protesting against deterioration in wages and working conditions. The focus of the so-called machine storm was England, but similar protests also broke out in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The uprising of the Silesian weavers of 1844 is often listed in historiography as the best-known German case.

term

As a "historically precisely locatable protest movement", the machine storm was a phenomenon of early industrialization, as a result of which traditional economic and working methods were called into question. Rolf Peter Sieferle speaks of the dissolution of the "craft culture of a norm-integrated class society ". The mechanization of production was just the most obvious element of these changes. Groups that threatened to be outclassed as a result of the upheavals defended their social status with the only means available to them - in the absence of regulated (collective) negotiations between employers and employees: the "threat or use of offensive force" against machines or goods or private property of the industrial manufacturers or publishers.

The term machine storm came from 1812 as a translation of the English term machine breaking into German. Marx and Engels still used the term machine destruction, but more often they wrote of "revolts, uprisings or reunions against the machine or machinery".

As an open protest, the machine storm differs from the covert form of sabotage .

Participating professional groups

The actions of the machine strikers took place mainly in the textile sector and were directed against new machines for textile production and processing. The machine storm in England, also named Luddism after its fictional leader Ned Ludd , was, according to EP Thompson, limited to the period from 1811 to 1817 and to three regions and professions: cloth shearers ( West Riding of Yorkshire ), cotton weavers (South Lancashire ) and Stocking Maker ( Nottingham ). Cloth shearers were skilled and privileged workers, while weavers and hosiery workers were home workers with a long tradition of craftsmen . All three occupational groups suffered a deterioration in their status due to the abolition of protective legislation (banning of hoisting machines and loom restrictions) and the concentration of looms in the newly established factories with unskilled and young workers. In Germany, too, the actions concentrated on the textile sector with the support groups of cloth shears, hand weavers and calico printers . Small entrepreneurs and craftsmen were involved in the so-called weaver revolts and fought against the competition that arose. In addition to the textile workers, metal craftsmen (grinders, blacksmiths) fought against machines and new production processes.

Goals and Motives

While Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels accused the machine attackers of a lack of understanding of technology hostility , historical research has shown that the destruction of machines did not arise from any irrational technology hostility.

The real motive was rather the defense of previously relatively secure professional groups against a deterioration in their social status and the loss of traditional privileges , which they also tried to secure in part with petitions to the ruling powers. Although workers were only laid off occasionally due to the introduction of machines, the fear of job losses diminished the acceptance of technical progress and delayed industrialization.

According to EP Thompson, the machine attackers fought against "the 'freedom' of the capitalist to destroy the customs of the trade, through new machines, through the factory system or through unrestrained competition [...] and the erosion of craft standards".

Eric Hobsbawm argued in his essay The Machine Breakers that the destruction of the machines also served as leverage for the Luddites . The destruction and the threat of destruction of products or productive capital was already a means of wage negotiation for Hobsbawm in the 18th century. Since the workers at the time, he concluded, had no legal means of asserting their collective interests at their disposal, such as unionization , industrial action and collective bargaining , they would have resorted to this means. The destruction of the means of production also solved the virulent solidarity problem in labor disputes, since possible strike breakers could not continue to work. The resistance against the machines was, according to Hobsbawm, "quite consciously resistance to the machine in the hands of the capitalist" (quite consciously resistance to the machine in the hands of the capitalist). He sees the machine storm as a form of collective bargaining through riot (“collective bargaining by riot”). Hobsbawm explains that there were mostly no further violent forms of action by the fact that machines were often bought during growth phases, in which there was enough work, so that they were not concerned about wage developments.

The German social historian Rolf Peter Sieferle also documents numerous cases of the machine storm as early as the 18th century, which had in common “that they took place in connection with labor disputes” and - in the absence of trade unions - as “an important means of pressure to enforce (wage) claims “Served.

Examples of machine storming

England

Among the technology-related uprisings in England, the Luddite uprisings between 1811 and 1816 and the so-called Swing Riots between 1830 and 1833 are among the best known.

The revolt of the English Luddites is named after the legendary Ned Ludd (Ludlam), who defied his father (or master) and broke the needles in his stocking factory in protest. Other sources titled "Captain" or "General Ludd" - more folkloric than real - leader of the first protests. He was considered to be a “defender of ancient law” and “guardian of a lost constitution” to the craftsmen of the wool industry.

In 1811/1812 there was a real riot in Nottingham , which the English state had 12,000 soldiers put down. Only a law ( Frame-breaking Act ) of 1812, which made the destruction of looms a death penalty and the demands of the Luddites, brought an end to the uprising in Nottingham. The Luddites used violence in an organized and disciplined manner. The Luddites experienced a great deal of sympathy for their protest in the middle and lower classes. Mainly weavers and spinners got together, destroyed mechanical looms and factories . They even murdered inventors who they believed deprived them of their wages and salaries. However, the relief was later withdrawn. Ludd and the other leaders (30 in total) were sentenced to death. The other rebels were deported to the Australian convict colony .

In 1816 further "Luddite riots" followed due to a further deterioration in the workers' situation.

The swing riots were between 1830 and 1833 a movement by English farm workers against the use of agricultural machinery, especially the threshing machine , and for the payment of higher wages. The uprisings got their name from the fictitious name Captain Swing , in whose name threatening letters were sent against farmers and landowners. In addition to these threatening letters, the farm workers tried to achieve their goals by burning down grain piles and threshing machines. Some of the uprisings were also directed against Irish labor immigrants.

Germany

In Germany there were also machine storms between 1815 and 1849. In his historical dissertation, Michael Spehr compiled 186 cases of machine protests in the period from 1815 to 1849. Protest, violence and rioting came mainly from highly qualified and well-paid artisan workers, whose actions “contradicted the image of a maddened crowd that struck instinctively”.

There were so-called weaver revolts in many places , which were due to various causes. Small entrepreneurs and craftsmen, who were no longer able to compete in the face of the beginning industrialization , tried to suppress the new competition by force. There were direct attacks on productive capital and workers as well as lobbying and revolts in order to discriminate against foreign suppliers by means of state power. In some cases the rebels were so impoverished that it was a question of hunger riots . The loss of foreign sales markets in connection with the continental blockade and the English sea ​​blockade , the penetration of English manufactured goods after the end of the continental blockade , the loss of domestic demand in the wake of agricultural crises, and the advancing industrialization with its cheap products aggravated the situation.

The historian Christina von Hodenberg sums up in a more recent evaluation of the investigation files and witness reports of the uprising of the Silesian weavers - which for decades were only accessible to East German historians in the GDR - that “neither extreme material misery (as depicted in Gerhart Hauptmann's drama Die Weber) nor anti-industrial machine storm class struggle motives [...] which [would have] driven home weavers marching at the head of the revolt, but the demand for appropriate payment and respectful treatment. ”The targeted destruction campaigns were directed against company buildings, warehouses and houses of wage-depressing publishers. Mechanical textile production had not yet found its way into the world, so that apart from a few jacquard looms there were no machines that could have been destroyed.

In Germany, the legal consequences, most of which were directed against the ringleaders, were generally mild compared to England. The unrest was analyzed and irregularities in working conditions were found. In some cases, efforts were made to establish a factory order to remedy the grievances, but this Aachen factory order failed because of the Prussian State Ministry.

Other regions

According to the French historian George Rudé , the industrial revolution by the end of the 18th century had not yet gripped France as much as England did. The labor disputes were "fought relatively non-violently and without bloodshed". An exception was the uprising of the silk weavers in Lyon in 1831 and 1834, when the rebels confronted the National Guard by force. Acts of "machine storming" against the cartridge did not materialize.

In Switzerland, the most famous case of a machine storm occurred in Oberuster in 1832 - the so-called Usterbrand - in which small manufacturers and homeworkers from the Zurich Oberland destroyed a mechanical spinning and weaving mill because their demand for a ban on looms had remained unfulfilled.

Reception in economics

David Ricardo (1772-1823); unknown painter

The actions of the Luddites were also reflected in contemporary economics . David Ricardo gave a speech on December 16, 1819, on the motion of William De Crespigny to set up a commission to implement Robert Owen's plan to end unemployment and improve the condition of the lower classes. Ricardo said that it should not be denied that the introduction of machines into production does not reduce the demand for labor. He took this view in the first two editions of his major work On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817 and 1819).

The Swiss economist Sismondi questioned the Ricardian compensation theory . In his work Nouveaux principes d'économie politique ou de la richesse dans ses rapports avec la population (1819) he questioned the assumption that machines always create as much employment as they replace. The controversy between himself and Ricardo ended with Ricardo revising his previously positive assessment of the impact of the introduction of machines on the situation of workers in the third edition of his Principles (1821) shortly before his death . He now saw the replacement of work by machines as a possible cause of technological unemployment and concluded “that the prevailing opinion among the working class that the use of machines often harms their interests is not based on prejudice and error, but on the right principles the national economy. ”Marx praised him for his honesty,“ which distinguishes him so essentially from the vulgar economists ”. In contrast to Ricardo, his contemporary colleagues Robert Torrens and John Ramsay McCulloch continued to represent Ricardo's original opinion.

Machine storm in a historical context

Although it was a protest movement in a limited historical period, the machine storm as an event and as a metaphor left lasting traces in the historical culture of remembrance .

On the one hand, the traditional line was extended back into the past. Reference was made to traditional societies that had suppressed or prevented technical inventions “when these innovations questioned the social norms, mentalities and customs”. We remembered a Thorner guild document from 1523, which the social economist Heinrich Dietzel (and many others after him) quoted:

"No craftsman should think up, invent or use anything new, but everyone should follow his neighbor out of civil and brotherly love."

Another example was the belt mill , a forerunner of the mechanical loom, with which several belts could be made on one loom at the same time. “In 1685 their use was banned throughout Germany. In Hamburg it was publicly burned on the orders of the magistrate. "

On the other hand, in the last third of the 20th century, employers and the press referred to employees and their unions as "modern machine storms" when they were against technical innovations in the printing industry ( photo typesetting ) and in mechanical engineering ( NC and CNC machines ) fought with violent strikes to implement socially acceptable solutions. The dispute was particularly bitter in the London press center on Fleet Street . A long-term strike with sometimes violent actions resulted in the publication of the Times being interrupted for a year and the relocation of the press center to Docklands ( Wapping ).

Trivia

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literature

  • Albert Hauser : The Uster machine storm . In: Zürcher Taschenbuch . 1958 (1957), ISSN 1661-8173, pp. 107-116.
  • Martin Henkel & Rolf Taubert: machine strikers. A chapter from the social history of technical progress. Syndicate, Frankfurt am Main 1979, ISBN 3-8108-0119-4 .
  • Eric J. Hobsbawm : The Machine Breakers. In: Past & Present . Vol. 1, No. 1, February 1952, pp. 57-70.
  • Christina von Hodenberg : revolt of the weavers. The 1844 revolt and its rise to myth . JHW Dietz Nachf., Bonn 1997.
  • Walther Müller-Jentsch : machine striker . In: Wolfgang Fritz Haug , Frigga Haug , Peter Jehle, Wolfgang Küttler (eds.): Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism . Volume 8 / II: Left / Right to Machine Striker . Argument, Hamburg 2015, columns 2035–2040.
  • David F. Noble : Machine Striker or Humans' Complicated Relationships with their Machines. Interaction-Verlag, Berlin 1986, ISBN 3-924709-00-9 .
  • Adrian J. Randall: The Philosophy of Luddism: The Case of the West of England Woolen Workers, ca.1790-1809 . In: Technology and Culture . Vol. 27, No. 1 (Jan. 1986), pp. 1-17.
  • Klaus Schlottau: machine attacker against female gainful employment. Dea ex machina . In: Torsten Meyer and Marcus Popplow (eds.): Technology, work and the environment in history. Günter Bayerl on his 60th birthday . Waxmann, Münster 2006, pp. 111-132.
  • Rolf Peter Sieferle : enemies of progress? Opposition to technology and industry from romanticism to the present (= the social compatibility of energy systems. 5). CH Beck, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-406-30331-5 .
  • Michael Spehr : Machine storm . Protest and resistance to technical innovations at the beginning of industrialization (= theory and history of bourgeois society. 18). Westphalian steam boat, Münster 2000, ISBN 3-89691-118-X .
  • Edward P. Thompson : The Origin of the English Working Class . 2 volumes. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1987, ISBN 3-518-11170-1 , pp. 606-694 (second volume, part III, chapter 14. IV-VI.).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rolf Peter Sieferle : Enemies of Progress? Opposition to technology and industry from Romanticism to the present . CH Beck, Munich 1984, p. 65.
  2. ^ Rolf Peter Sieferle: Enemies of Progress? Opposition to technology and industry from Romanticism to the present . CH Beck, Munich 1984, p. 66.
  3. ^ Hobsbawm speaks of "collective bargaining by riot"; s. Eric J. Hobsbawm : The Machine Breakers . In: Ders .: Laboring Men. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1964, pp. 5–25, here p. 7.
  4. ↑ Michael Spehr : Machine storm . Protest and resistance against technical innovations at the beginning of industrialization . Westphalian steam boat, Münster 2000, p. 17.
  5. ↑ Klaus Schlottau: Luddites against female employment. Dea ex machina . In: Torsten Meyer and Marcus Popplow (eds.): Technology, work and the environment in history. Günter Bayerl on his 60th birthday . Waxmann, Münster 2006, pp. 111–132, here p. 114.
  6. ↑ Walther Müller-Jentsch : machine striker . In: Wolfgang Fritz Haug , Frigga Haug , Peter Jehle, Wolfgang Küttler (eds.): Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism . Volume 8 / II: Left / Right to Machine Striker . Argument, Hamburg 2015, columns 2035–2040, here col. 2035.
  7. ↑ Michael Spehr: Machine storm . Protest and resistance against technical innovations at the beginning of industrialization . Westphalian steam boat, Münster 2000, p. 18.
  8. ^ Edward P. Thompson: The Origin of the English Working Class. Second volume. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1987, p. 607.
  9. ↑ "In 1809 [...] the entire protective legislation in the wool industry - including apprenticeship regulations, raising machines and loom restrictions - was abolished." Edward P. Thompson: The emergence of the English working class. Second volume. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1987, p. 614 f.
  10. ↑ Michael Spehr: Machine storm . Protest and resistance against technical innovations at the beginning of industrialization. Westphalian steam boat, Münster 2000, p. 42 ff.
  11. ↑ Michael Spehr: Machine storm . Protest and resistance against technical innovations at the beginning of industrialization. Westphalian steam boat, Münster 2000, p. 124.
  12. ↑ For example, Marx speaks of the "crude form of the workers' outrage against the machinery", of "aimless acts of violence" and "acts of blind rage". All quotations from Walther Müller-Jentsch: machine striker . In: Wolfgang Fritz Haug , Frigga Haug , Peter Jehle, Wolfgang Küttler (eds.): Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism . Volume 8 / II: Left / Right to Machine Striker . Argument, Hamburg 2015, columns 2035–2040, here col. 2036.
  13. ↑ Milos Vec: Law and Standardization in the Industrial Revolution. Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 3-465-03490-2 , p. 237.
  14. ↑ Hubertus Bardt: “Labor” versus “Capital” - on the change of a classic conflict. An economic study. Lucius & Lucius, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-8282-0277-2 , p. 105.
  15. ↑ Michael Spehr: Machine storm . Protest and resistance against technical innovations at the beginning of industrialization. Westphalian steam boat, Münster 2000, ISBN 9783896911186 , p. 4.
  16. ↑ Hubertus Bardt: “Labor” versus “Capital” - on the change of a classic conflict. An economic study. Lucius & Lucius, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-8282-0277-2 , pp. 105-107.
  17. ↑ Michael Spehr: Machine storm: Protest and resistance against technical innovations at the beginning of industrialization. Westphalian steam boat, Münster 2000, ISBN 9783896911186 , pp. 25, 41.
  18. ^ Edward P. Thompson: The Origin of the English Working Class. Second volume. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1987, p. 637.
  19. ↑ Eric Hobsbawm: The Machine Breakers. In: Ders .: Laboring Men. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1964, pp. 5-25.
  20. ↑ Jürgen Mittag and Benjamin Legrand: Eric Hobsbawm and the Bochumer Historikerpreis 2008 or: Interpretation and Impulse - Perspectives of a Committed History. In: Bulletin of the Institute for Social Movements. Ruhr University Bochum, No. 40/2008, p. 158.
  21. ↑ Eric Hobsbawm: The Machine Breakers. In: Laboring Men. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1964, p. 11.
  22. ↑ Jürgen Mittag & Benjamin Legrand: Eric Hobsbawm and the Bochumer Historikerpreis 2008 or: Interpretation and Impulse - Perspectives of a Committed History. In: Bulletin of the Institute for Social Movements. Ruhr University Bochum, No. 40/2008, p. 159.
  23. ^ Rolf Peter Sieferle: Enemies of Progress? Opposition to technology and industry from Romanticism to the present. CH Beck, Munich 1984, p. 69 f.
  24. ^ Edward P. Thompson: The Origin of the English Working Class. Second volume. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1987, p. 615.
  25. ↑ Neil Websdale: Policing the Poor: From Slave Plantation to Public Housing . Northeastern University Press, Boston 2001, p. 226.
  26. ^ John A. James & Mark Thomas (Eds.): Capitalism in Context. Essays on Economic Development and Cultural Change in Honor of RM Hartwell. University of Chicago Press, 1994, ISBN 0226391981 , p. 244 ( online )
  27. ↑ Michael Spehr: Machine storm . Protest and resistance against technical innovations at the beginning of industrialization. Westphalian steam boat, Münster 2000, p. 33.
  28. ↑ Michael Spehr: Machine storm . Protest and resistance against technical innovations at the beginning of industrialization. Westphalian steam boat, Münster 2000, p. 166 f.
  29. ↑ Christina von Hodenberg: Revolt of the weavers. The revolt of 1844 and its rise to myth , JHW ​​Dietz Nachf., Bonn 1997
  30. ↑ Walther Müller-Jentsch: machine striker . In: Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism . Edited by WF Haug / Frigga Haug / Peter Jehle / Wolfgang Küttler. Volume 8 / II. Argument, Hamburg 2015, col. 2035–2040, here col. 2038.
  31. ↑ Walther Müller-Jentsch: machine striker . In: Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism . Edited by WF Haug / Frigga Haug / Peter Jehle / Wolfgang Küttler. Volume 8 / II. Argument, Hamburg 2015, col. 2035–2040, here col. 2038.
  32. ↑ Michael Spehr: Machine storm . Protest and resistance against technical innovations at the beginning of industrialization. Westphalian steam boat, Münster 2000.
  33. ↑ George Rudé : The popular masses in history. Unrest, uprisings and revolutions in England and France 1730–1848 . 2nd Edition. Campus, Frankfurt / New York 1979, pp. 114 and 116.
  34. ↑ Piero Sraffa (Ed.): The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo. Vol. V, Cambridge 1952, p. 30.
  35. ↑ First German edition: New principles of political economy or The wealth in its relationships with the population (1827).
  36. ↑ Book VII, Chapter VII: "Of the population, which becomes superfluous through the invention of machines" in: Sismondi: New principles of political economy or The wealth in its relations to the population . Verlag von RK Prager, Berlin 1902, Volume 2, pp. 239-258.
  37. ^ Haim Barkai: Ricardo's Volte-Face on Machinery. In: The Journal of Political Economy . Vol. 94, no. 3, Part 1, June 1986, pp. 595-613.
  38. ↑ Karl Marx: Theories about the surplus value . MEW vol. 26.2., P. 557 f.
  39. ↑ David Ricardo: Principles of Political Economy and Taxation . Edited by Fritz Neumark . Athenäum Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1972, p. 290.
  40. ↑ Karl Marx: Theories about the surplus value . MEW Vol. 26.2., P. 557.
  41. ↑ Cosimo Perrotta: unproductive Labor in Political Economy. The History of an Idea . Routledge, London 2018.
  42. ↑ Walther Müller-Jentsch: Technology as a threat? Phototypesetting and computer technology in the printing industry . In: The main thing is work. Change in the world of work after 1945 (book accompanying the exhibition in the House of History of the Federal Republic of Germany, Bonn, December 2, 2009 to April 5, 2010), Bielefeld 2009, p. 95.
  43. ^ Heinrich Dietzel: Technical progress and freedom of the economy . Berlin 1922, p. 13.
  44. ^ Karl Marx: The capital. Critique of Political Economy . First volume (MEW 23). Dietz, Berlin [Ost] 1962, p. 451, fn. 192.
  45. ↑ Walther Müller-Jentsch: Technology as a threat? Phototypesetting and computer technology in the printing industry . In: The main thing is work. Change in the world of work after 1945 (book accompanying the exhibition in the House of History of the Federal Republic of Germany, Bonn, December 2, 2009 to April 5, 2010), Bielefeld 2009, pp. 95–101.
  46. ↑ Karsten Uhl: Machine striker against automation? The accusation of hostility towards technology in the labor disputes of the printing industry in the 1970s and 1980s and the crisis of the trade unions . In: History of Technology . Volume 82 (2015), No. 2, pp. 157-179.
  47. ↑ David F. Noble: Machine Striker or the Complicated Relationship between Humans and their Machines. Interaction-Verlag, Berlin 1986.
  48. ↑ Walther Müller-Jentsch, Hans Joachim Sperling, Irmgard Weyrather: New technologies in the negotiation arena. Sweden, Great Britain and Germany in comparison . Hampp, Munich and Mering 1997, pp. 112-117.
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