Could There Be a Luddite Movement in 2026?

I’ve heard someone joke, “Shouldn’t we go full Luddite?” It is a good time for that sort of joke. Imagine IT workers of the world, like the workers who led Britain’s nineteenth-century Luddite movement, smashing every long, rectangular computer packed into the countless steel racks of a data center. There might be yellow and red wires flying everywhere and chips getting crushed. But we could also think about whom we could agree with on what to smash, and what we would want, or be able, to get back by doing it.

The Luddite movement began in Nottingham, England, in 1811.[1]1Kevin Binfield, “Luddite History”. Early machine breaking around Nottingham in March 1811. ↩ campus.murraystate.edu Skilled workers there made stockings on knitting machines called frames. They adjusted the width of the fabric as they knitted to fit the shape of a leg, then sewed the fabric into a stocking.[2]2Hinckley & District Museum, “The Art of Knitting”, p. 5. Adjusting fabric width on a knitting frame and sewing flat knitted fabric into stockings. ↩ www.hinckleydistrictmuseum.org.uk From the late eighteenth century, wider frames with more needles came into use. These could knit a wider piece of fabric in one go, and employers adopted a method of cutting stocking shapes out of that fabric and sewing them together. It was faster and required less skill than shaping a stocking during knitting.[3]3Knitting Together, “Luddite Frame Breaking”, “Protests begin.” Wider frames introduced in 1776, the increased number of needles, cutting shapes from wide fabric, and reductions in production time and required skill. ↩ www.knittingtogether.org.uk Employers hired people who had not completed a formal apprenticeship to make stockings more cheaply. Skilled workers saw their pay cut and believed that inferior stockings were damaging their trade’s reputation.[4]4Kevin Binfield, “Luddite History”. Stocking workers’ grievances over the employment of workers without formal apprenticeships, wage cuts, quality, and their trade’s reputation. ↩ campus.murraystate.edu They began breaking machines in protest against the wage cuts. In March 1811, wide frames were destroyed in Arnold, near Nottingham, and attacks spread to workshops in surrounding villages.[5]5Kevin Binfield, “Luddite History”. The destruction of wide frames in Arnold on March 11, 1811, and subsequent attacks in surrounding villages. ↩ campus.murraystate.edu

In Yorkshire, skilled cloth finishers resisted the introduction of machines that took over their work.[6]6Kevin Binfield, “Luddite History”. Yorkshire cloth finishers’ work and the threat posed by shearing machines. ↩ campus.murraystate.edu On the night of April 9, 1812, hundreds of Luddites gathered on a road carrying axes, clubs, and guns. With their faces covered or blackened, they surrounded a woolen mill around midnight and posted guards at its entrances. They broke through doors and windows, demanded the keys from the mill owner’s sons, and entered the workshops to destroy machines used to shear and raise the nap on woolen cloth. They also damaged hand shears and cloth. They set fire to a warehouse as well.[7]7Luddite Bicentenary, “9th April 1812: Attack on the Mill of Joseph Foster at Horbury, near Wakefield”. A reconstruction based on contemporary newspapers, military correspondence, and Josiah Foster’s eyewitness account (The National Archives, HO 42/122). Estimates of the number of participants range from 300 to 600. ↩ ludditebicentenary.blogspot.com

In 1812, the British government made breaking stocking frames punishable by death.[8]8Kevin Binfield, “Luddite History”. The 1812 law making frame breaking punishable by death. ↩ campus.murraystate.edu That April, Yorkshire Luddites attacked another woolen mill, Rawfolds Mill. This time, soldiers and workers guarding the mill fired back, and the attack failed. Two attackers died of gunshot wounds.[9]9UK Parliament, Report from the Secret Committee, July 14, 1812. The defense of Rawfolds Mill by its owner, workers, and soldiers, the failed entry, and two attackers’ deaths. Written from the perspective of the authorities involved in suppressing the unrest. ↩ hansard.parliament.uk Later that month, some Luddites shot and killed the mill owner William Horsfall as he returned from market.[10]10UK Parliament, Report from the Secret Committee, July 14, 1812. Horsfall was shot on his return from market on April 28, 1812, and died on April 30. On the Luddites’ involvement: Kevin Binfield, “Luddite History”. ↩ hansard.parliament.uk In January 1813, a special commission at York trying cases connected to these conflicts sentenced seventeen people to death; others were transported to the colonies.[11]11Mike Harwood, “The Luddites of Liversedge”, Leeds Libraries. Executions and transportation following the York trials in January 1813, including sentences under existing laws for offenses such as murder. ↩ secretlibraryleeds.net

Automation accelerated, and workers continued to face threats to their livelihoods. A severe depression followed the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, and some firms cut wages again.[12]12Katrina Navickas, “Afterword: Loughborough Luddism and the Pentrich Rising”, p. 1. The postwar depression and the background to wage cuts at Heathcoat’s firm. ↩ uhra.herts.ac.uk In June 1816, a lace factory in Loughborough that had cut wages was attacked, and more than fifty lace machines were destroyed.[13]13Katrina Navickas, “Afterword: Loughborough Luddism and the Pentrich Rising”, p. 1. The late June 1816 attack on the Loughborough factory and the destruction of more than fifty lace machines. ↩ uhra.herts.ac.uk Machine breaking reappeared as a form of protest when livelihoods were threatened in other regions and trades. Resistance continued, but the movement did not reverse the course of industrialization.

They had wages, working practices, and a reputation they wanted to defend together, and they could identify the employers and machines threatening them. These were skilled workers who operated machinery and acted to protect their working conditions.[14]14Kevin Binfield, “Luddite History”. Skilled workers’ demands concerning wages, production practices, and reputation, and their targets. Nottingham stocking workers operated knitting frames; Yorkshire cloth finishers were threatened by machinery taking over work done by hand. ↩ campus.murraystate.edu Rather than people whose work had been completely taken over by machines, they were machine users, much as developers write code using computers. It is hard to say they smashed machines because they did not understand technology or could not be bothered to learn it.

Imagine something like this happening. Someone has spent years developing and operating services. They, too, use AI to write code, review errors, and refine the structure so it will be easier to maintain. But the company decides that getting a feature to work is enough, and that it can use AI-generated work from less experienced staff at lower cost. The developer raises concerns about outages and maintenance, but the company prioritizes speed and cost right now. They have learned to use AI, and their pay and employment are still under threat.

We accept, explicitly or implicitly, that if AI makes our employment insecure, we should become better at using it. Whether the developer already uses AI is beside the point: doing more work than other people is what counts as the right career move. Labor market reports present AI skills as a form of personal competitive advantage.[15]15Microsoft and LinkedIn, “AI at Work Is Here. Now Comes the Hard Part”, 2024 Work Trend Index, May 8, 2024. An example of a report presenting AI skills as a condition of hiring and career competitiveness. ↩ www.microsoft.com Once we take that competition for granted, a colleague’s productivity gains become a threat to our own employment, a risk of being left behind. Before we can discuss the conditions we share as workers in the same market, each of us must prove we can survive. It is difficult to turn “let’s smash the computers” into collective action in such circumstances. After joking about going Luddite, we will turn AI back on and try not to fall behind one another.

The demand to stay capable enough to remain employed has a long history. Samuel Smiles’s Self-Help, first published in 1859, emphasizes diligence, restraint, and continued learning. He warns against expecting too much improvement from laws and institutions, arguing that people must change their own behavior and habits. He even writes of reform “by better habits, rather than by greater rights.”[16]16Samuel Smiles, Self-Help, Chapter I, 1897 edition (first published in 1859; includes the preface to the 1866 revised edition). Individual effort, habits, and the role of institutions. Quoted phrase: “by better habits, rather than by greater rights.” ↩ www.gutenberg.org Someone trying to change working conditions, judged by this standard, could easily be told to fix their own habits first.

A later revised edition tells the story of John Heathcoat, a mechanic who became an inventor. He learned how machinery worked as an apprentice and studied possible improvements in his spare time. His ability to set up and adjust machines earned him high pay, and he later invented a lace-making machine and built a business. Smiles praises his perseverance and learning. When he introduces the Luddites who destroyed those machines, however, he calls them “misguided Luddites.”[17]17Samuel Smiles, Self-Help, Chapter II, 1897 edition, pp. 47–55. Heathcoat’s apprenticeship and inventions, and the assessment of the Luddites. The 1866 preface identifies the Heathcoat passages as additions to that revised edition. ↩ www.gutenberg.org In the same book, one man’s mastery of technology and success become an example to follow, while the machine breakers become examples of bad choices. Reading this, you might think, wow, Heathcoat was pretty great, I should be more like him. But can holding up a successful individual as a role model establish that people protesting changes to their pay and employment conditions were wrong?

The view of Luddites as people who failed to adapt to their times persists. In “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto,” Marc Andreessen writes that progress through technology and markets has continued for hundreds of years “despite continuous howling from Communists and Luddites.”[18]18Marc Andreessen, “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto”, October 16, 2023, “The Techno-Capital Machine.” ↩ a16z.com In this account, what might have been a protest becomes a complaint. Accepting that view turns people protesting deteriorating working conditions into failures who obstruct social and technological progress. People can learn a technology and still oppose wage cuts made using it, but when we start by judging the protester’s abilities, there is less room to discuss those demands.

What might get better if we succeeded in smashing the computers? Every computer in the data centers has been destroyed overnight. I arrive at my job developing an online store and discover that my AI coding tool is gone. The store I was building will not load either. Customers cannot place orders, and the company has no sales coming in. Knowing how to write code by hand is not enough to get the store running again. Among the computers I smashed to protect my employment were the servers that made my work possible and paid my salary.

Apparently, the problem was that we smashed too many. This time, let’s draw up a hit list, leave the store’s servers alone, and pick out only the computers running AI. Suppose development work previously handled by AI comes back to people, and more companies start looking for developers. My employment could become more secure, and my pay could rise. This time, smashing machines has paid off. But things look different for the small shop owner who used AI to modify an order management program. A change they could make on their own yesterday now requires paying a developer. If they cannot afford it, they may have to give up a feature they need. The work that comes back to me becomes a new expense for them. They are making a living too. Would they agree to get rid of AI with me?

The same objection was raised in the Luddites’ own time. A handbill printed in Manchester in March 1812, “Fellow Weavers!,” argued that machinery made goods cheaper, increasing demand and employment. It asked what right someone had to riot and put others out of work because their own work had become cheaper. It also offered the analogy of a new bridge saving thousands of people time and money: should the bridge be removed because the ferrymen whose income had fallen opposed it?[19]19The National Archives, “Fellow Weavers!”, Manchester, March 1812, HO 40/1/1, f.108. A handbill signed “An Old Weaver,” with arguments about prices and employment and an analogy involving a new bridge and ferrymen. ↩ www.nationalarchives.gov.uk Even then, an action intended to recover one person’s livelihood could look to someone else like an attempt to take away their opportunities.

Positions are sharply divided, and raising these issues or designing policies to address them is difficult. In 2026, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez announced a bill to halt the construction and expansion of data centers until laws addressing worker protections, electricity costs, and environmental burdens are in place.[20]20Office of Senator Bernie Sanders, “Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez Announce AI Data Center Moratorium Act”, March 25, 2026; H.R. 9442, Section 3. ↩ www.sanders.senate.gov Halting new construction and expansion would not eliminate AI already in use, so the return of development work or the shop owner’s extra costs imagined above cannot be assumed to follow. The stakes include not only developers’ employment and the use of AI, but local residents’ electricity bills and environmental burdens. Judgments will depend on how long construction stops, who is protected in the meantime and how, and who bears the costs of the pause. People can support the need for protection while opposing a particular form of pause, or recognize AI’s benefits while demanding limits and conditions on its unchecked expansion.

Imagining smashing computers and joking about going Luddite assumes that we fear the same things and want the same things back. But imagining the day after the computers are smashed makes it less straightforward. Among people using the same AI, some face threats to their employment while others gain opportunities to make a living. Under pressure to adapt better individually, acknowledging those differences, reaching agreement, and turning them into shared demands is difficult. Yet difficulty reaching agreement is no reason to tell those harmed that they simply have to adapt. That is why a Luddite movement in 2026 feels far off. This essay was written as a thought experiment, but to add one last cowardly caveat in case it sounds too antisocial: of course, we should not actually do any of this.

Notes

1. 1.Kevin Binfield, “Luddite History”. Early machine breaking around Nottingham in March 1811. ↩campus.murraystate.edu
2. 2.Hinckley & District Museum, “The Art of Knitting”, p. 5. Adjusting fabric width on a knitting frame and sewing flat knitted fabric into stockings. ↩www.hinckleydistrictmuseum.org.uk
3. 3.Knitting Together, “Luddite Frame Breaking”, “Protests begin.” Wider frames introduced in 1776, the increased number of needles, cutting shapes from wide fabric, and reductions in production time and required skill. ↩www.knittingtogether.org.uk
4. 4.Kevin Binfield, “Luddite History”. Stocking workers’ grievances over the employment of workers without formal apprenticeships, wage cuts, quality, and their trade’s reputation. ↩campus.murraystate.edu
5. 5.Kevin Binfield, “Luddite History”. The destruction of wide frames in Arnold on March 11, 1811, and subsequent attacks in surrounding villages. ↩campus.murraystate.edu
6. 6.Kevin Binfield, “Luddite History”. Yorkshire cloth finishers’ work and the threat posed by shearing machines. ↩campus.murraystate.edu
7. 7.Luddite Bicentenary, “9th April 1812: Attack on the Mill of Joseph Foster at Horbury, near Wakefield”. A reconstruction based on contemporary newspapers, military correspondence, and Josiah Foster’s eyewitness account (The National Archives, HO 42/122). Estimates of the number of participants range from 300 to 600. ↩ludditebicentenary.blogspot.com
8. 8.Kevin Binfield, “Luddite History”. The 1812 law making frame breaking punishable by death. ↩campus.murraystate.edu
9. 9.UK Parliament, Report from the Secret Committee, July 14, 1812. The defense of Rawfolds Mill by its owner, workers, and soldiers, the failed entry, and two attackers’ deaths. Written from the perspective of the authorities involved in suppressing the unrest. ↩hansard.parliament.uk
10. 10.UK Parliament, Report from the Secret Committee, July 14, 1812. Horsfall was shot on his return from market on April 28, 1812, and died on April 30. On the Luddites’ involvement: Kevin Binfield, “Luddite History”. ↩hansard.parliament.uk
11. 11.Mike Harwood, “The Luddites of Liversedge”, Leeds Libraries. Executions and transportation following the York trials in January 1813, including sentences under existing laws for offenses such as murder. ↩secretlibraryleeds.net
12. 12.Katrina Navickas, “Afterword: Loughborough Luddism and the Pentrich Rising”, p. 1. The postwar depression and the background to wage cuts at Heathcoat’s firm. ↩uhra.herts.ac.uk
13. 13.Katrina Navickas, “Afterword: Loughborough Luddism and the Pentrich Rising”, p. 1. The late June 1816 attack on the Loughborough factory and the destruction of more than fifty lace machines. ↩uhra.herts.ac.uk
14. 14.Kevin Binfield, “Luddite History”. Skilled workers’ demands concerning wages, production practices, and reputation, and their targets. Nottingham stocking workers operated knitting frames; Yorkshire cloth finishers were threatened by machinery taking over work done by hand. ↩campus.murraystate.edu
15. 15.Microsoft and LinkedIn, “AI at Work Is Here. Now Comes the Hard Part”, 2024 Work Trend Index, May 8, 2024. An example of a report presenting AI skills as a condition of hiring and career competitiveness. ↩www.microsoft.com
16. 16.Samuel Smiles, Self-Help, Chapter I, 1897 edition (first published in 1859; includes the preface to the 1866 revised edition). Individual effort, habits, and the role of institutions. Quoted phrase: “by better habits, rather than by greater rights.” ↩www.gutenberg.org
17. 17.Samuel Smiles, Self-Help, Chapter II, 1897 edition, pp. 47–55. Heathcoat’s apprenticeship and inventions, and the assessment of the Luddites. The 1866 preface identifies the Heathcoat passages as additions to that revised edition. ↩www.gutenberg.org
18. 18.Marc Andreessen, “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto”, October 16, 2023, “The Techno-Capital Machine.” ↩a16z.com
19. 19.The National Archives, “Fellow Weavers!”, Manchester, March 1812, HO 40/1/1, f.108. A handbill signed “An Old Weaver,” with arguments about prices and employment and an analogy involving a new bridge and ferrymen. ↩www.nationalarchives.gov.uk
20. 20.Office of Senator Bernie Sanders, “Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez Announce AI Data Center Moratorium Act”, March 25, 2026; H.R. 9442, Section 3. ↩www.sanders.senate.gov