The Failure of the Luddites

 How the Luddites harmed the future of working class struggle in England.

A depiction of General Ned Ludd
 "The Leader of the Luddites".

Supposedly "laughed out of history" along with the Technocrats according to Henry Hazlitt, "Luddism" was a peculiar movement that emerged in the 19th century English Midlands. Skilled craftsmen who had thought themselves guaranteed a livelihood suddenly found themselves rendered obsolete by the introduction of labour saving technology, and suffered wage reductions and replacement by cheaper unskilled workers. In 1811, public petitioning was the first reaction but as the months went on, in the dead of night violence continually erupted throughout Nottinghamshare and other textile districts, and countless weaving frames were destroyed in protest.
 The Luddites successfully kept their identities unknown, writing their declarations under the alias "General Ned Ludd" and as a result managed to almost completely avoid arrest. The movement itself was very short lived however, and due to their small numbers (2000 according to Richard Jones) and their lack of unity or coordination, it was easy for the authorities to quell their behaviour. (2012, pp.79) The harshest of government measures against the Luddites was the Frame Breaking Act of February 1812 which made the destruction of weaving frames a capital offense.
In response to this act, Lord Byron himself gave a passionate defense of the Luddites in the House of Lords and opposed the bill:

Lord George Gordon Byron (1788-1824)

"...By the adoption of one species of frame in particular, one man performed the work of many, and the superfluous labourers were thrown out of employment. Yet it is to be observed, that the work thus executed was inferior in quality, not marketable at home, and merely hurried over with a view to exportation... 
 The rejected workmen, in the blindness of their ignorance... imagined that the maintenance and well doing of the industrious poor, were objects of greater consequence than the enrichment of a few individuals by any improvement in the implements of trade which threw the workmen out of employment, and rendered the labourer unworthy of his hire. And, it must be confessed, that although the adoption of the enlarged machinery, in that state of our commerce which the country once boasted, might have been beneficial to the master without being detrimental to the servant; yet, in the present situation of our manufactures, rotting in warehouses without a prospect of exportation, with the demand for work and workmen equally diminished, frames of this construction tend materially to aggravate the distresses and discontents of the disappointed sufferers..." (Available in full here)

 Despite sympathy from such an influential figure, the Luddites according to Richard Jones, received a "lack of sympathy among the wider public". This was because "New technology had already replaced many unskilled workers in the decades leading up to the Luddite uprisings" (2012, pp.79). Eric Hobsbawm on the other hand, argues that "a surprisingly large body of local businessmen and farmers sympathised profoundly with these Luddite activities of their labourers, because they too saw themselves as victims of a diabolical minority of selfish innovators."(2011, pp.55). 

 Nevertheless, regardless of how much public support the Luddites received, it was clearly not enough. After 1813, seventeen Luddites were hanged. The conservative nature of the movement, and the fact that it focused on the poverty of one small portion of the English working class and not on alleviating poverty in general, makes it hard to label Luddism a precursor to the rest of the working class movements. It is true that later movements such as Chartism contained within their ranks many former Luddites, but they were rarely open about their involvement and "had no more wish than a man with a criminal record to be reminded of their youth". This was due to the possible attention from the authorities. Arguably then, "Luddism ended on the scaffold" (1991, Thompson E.P, pp.541).

Not only did the Luddites fail to achieve their goals and go into hiding as a result, they arguably harmed working class movements to come. As Karl Marx noted "...the Luddite movement, gave the anti-Jacobin government, composed of such people as Sidmouth and Castereagh, a pretext for the most violent and reactionary measures." (1976, pp.554). Indeed, even the various friendly societies that existed throughout the late 18th to 19th centuries were treated with suspicion by the state and the influential classes. As early as 1871, the government called for investigations into the activities of the friendly societies. Although they were occasionally acknowledged as useful for alleviating poverty, they were oftentimes seen as a mask to cover up insurrectionary activities, and it was believed that without proper regulation they could be a menace to the existing order. A memorial sent to the Home Office from five engineering employers in London, complained of the conduct of their journeymen:

"(The Combination Laws) are artfully and efficaciously evaded and defeated by and under the mask of Benefit Societies, institutions which have cheated, cherished an given effect to the most dangerous combinations among the several journeymen of our district... 

This state of things cannot long exist, and if there is not shortly some legislative regulation adopted, your memorialists are deeply impressed with the apprehensions that absolute ruin will overtake the master manufacturers of the empire and the journeymen will assume an overbearing, oppressive and mischievous character that will be alike dangerous to the prosperity and tranquility of the country. 

Your memorialists are fully persuaded that the recent mischievous associations, disgraceful riots and ruinous burnings in the neighbourhoods of Nottingham and Manchester have had much of their origin in compacts of this nature, and as long as bodies of journeymen are allowed to constitute themselves into into societies under any denomination of benefit while the present laws of management of such societies exist, your memorialists have no hope of having the evils redressed which they have lamentably experienced." 

- (Home Office Document 42/133).

 Note the mention of Nottingham and Manchester as the locations of these "disgraceful riots" and "ruinous burnings". Manchester, Nottinghamshire, Lancashire and Yorkshire were the areas where the Luddites set about destroying the frames, thus making it clear that the paper refers directly to them.  Ultimately then, despite this hostility from the government being far from recent, the Luddites arguably exacerbated this type of attitude and provoked further government regulation of the benefit societies.  This harmed the ability for workers to fight for higher wages and organize, and potentially crippled future working class movements.

References/ Notes:

(1905) A. Aspinall, Early English Trade Unions, (This book contains reprints of Home Office paper 42/133 and many others.)
(2011) Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution; 1789-1848, Abacus, pp.55.
(2012) Charlotte Hodgman & Richard Jones, BBC History Magazine: Volume 13, no 5, May, pp.79.
(1976) Karl Marx, Capital: Volume One, A Critique of Political Economy, 4th Edition, Penguin Books, pp.554. (Marx goes on the criticize the Luddites for attacking the "material instruments of production" rather than the "form of society which utilizes those intruments." For more on Luddism from a Marxist perspective, visit Brendan M. Cooney's blog: Kapitalism101)
(1991) E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, Penguin Books, pp.541.

Lenin, Marxism & the New Economic Policy

(The following are the answers I gave today for my second year exam on Russian history. It won't be identical but I think I can remember it almost entirely. When reading these you may notice slight inaccuracies or neglect for important points. Please remember this was written under exam conditions so I had no access to books or websites at hand. When I get my grades back I will put them here, that way this answer can be given as an example of either how or how not to get a decent grade.)


(Update 1st July 2012, I got a high 2.1 for these answers)

Was Lenin successful in his efforts to adapt Marxism to Russian conditions?

Lenin's attempts to adapt Marxism to the unique conditions of Russia were generally a failure, and those that can be considered a success were not "adaptations" in any meaningful sense of the word, but were on the contrary almost complete concessions to Narodnik ideology of peasant socialism.


To begin with, one of Lenin's main adaptations was the implementation of the peasantry into the revolution. Marx and Engels had entirely dismissed the peasants as part of the petite-bourgeoise and of no revolutionary capability. Lenin on the other hand called for a union between both agrarian and proletarian workers, an understandable move given that the peasantry roughly made up for 80 percent of the overall population at the time. Like the next adaptation to be discussed, this can largely be seen as a complete concession to the ideas of Alexander Herzen and the Narodniks who when agitating for an egalitarian revolution, had emphasised the role of the peasantry instead.

The next adaptation Lenin made was the role of the 'dictatorship of the proletariat'. Lenin recognised alongside Marx and Engels that the Paris commune of 1871 had resulted in failure due to the inability (or unwillingness) of the French Communards to use suitable measures to quell counter-revolutionary sentiments. Marx in particular however, had partly been in agreement with Bakunin and the anarchists that the workers had the potential for revolutionary spontaneity and were capable of maintaining their own revolution. Lenin however, saw politics as a constant process of conquest and therefore urged for an elite group of intelligentsia to not only give orders and command the revolution from the top down, but to use brutal repression when the need arose. This advocacy of terror was reminiscent of the tactics advocated by the populists and once again may be seen as a concession to the ideas of an ideology at odds with Marxism. 
 Although it may have been a revision of Marxist theory, one could argue that it was successful on practical grounds. Indeed, it was remarkable that the Bolsheviks were able to overpower both the Black and White armies and defend their revolution for as long as they did. Nevertheless, the extent to which violence was used must be looked upon as a moral outrage. A perfect example of the lengths to which terror was used is the Kronstadt incident which resulted the deaths of thousands in response to their call for political reform. On Marxist grounds it may immediately be seen as necessary to protect the revolution against reactionary activity however the vast majority of those killed in the Kronstadt uprisings were anarchists, social democrats and other groups that would have been fairly ideologically sympathetic. Clearly then, this was anti-populist and cannot be viewed as any kind of success through a Marxist lens.


Perhaps Lenin's greatest failure was his attempt to bypass the bourgeoise revolution. According to the Marxist analysis of history, in order for socialism to take place there must already be an established industrial base brought about via the period of capitalism. Russia's proletariat then, according to orthodox Marxist such as Martov had to wait for the bourgeoise anti-monarchist revolution of February 1917 to mature, long before they could even consider establishing a worker's state. Lenin however, noting the conservative nature of the bourgeoise that made up the February revolution (many of whom were former aristocrats and elites from the Tsarist years), and insisting that a world wide proletarian revolution was imminent believed that there was no time to wait for such a process and that the provisional government therefore was illegitimate. 
 Russia's ability to mature industrially without (according to orthodox Marxism) the necessary stage of capitalism taking place was seen as a false hope, and as a result the New Economic Policy (NEP) was implemented in 1921 which made multiple market based concessions in order to help her economy recover.


Ultimately then, I conclude that those few "successful" adaptations Lenin made were in actual fact complete revisions of Marxist theory, and in substance were revivals of the ideas of his second (only to Marx) ideological patron saint Alexander Herzen. The rest of which had extreme social costs, one of which lead to the greatest capitalist concession in Russian history.


Describe the main characteristics of the mixed economy of the NEP years (1921-1928) and account for why this system was abandoned?

The main characteristic of the New Economic Policy from 1921-1928 was the concession to a capitalist mode of production which was ultimately incompatible with the more revolutionary segments of the Russian population. This conflict would lead eventually to the disappearance of the NEP.


Firstly, one of the main features of the NEP was the Soviet government's decision to replace obligatory agricultural produce seizure with a light taxation. Rather than the peasant population being forced to give up their surplus produce, they were granted permission to maintain and trade it at their own leisure. This resulted in the reappearance of multiple marketplaces throughout the countryside, and also saw the reemergence of a handful of "well to do peasants" referred to as Kulaks. In order to boost grain output, peasants were also granted lengthy but temporary tenure over small plots of land. Although the land was formally "nationalised" in practice this was a revival of private property. This type of concession was at odds with the communist government which despite various economic reforms, remained increasingly illiberal in the political sphere.

In addition to the agrarian reforms, there were also various capitalist concessions in regards to Russia's industrial base. Many former owners and managers were granted their old factories, as their expertise was needed in order to bring Russia out of her industrial malaise. Those who benefited from the NEP reforms were referred to as "Nepman" and were viewed with increasing suspicion by the politburo. Even those who advocated the NEP such as Stalin and Bukharin agreed that it was only to be temporary measure until their knowledge and expertise had spread and the economy could be centrally planned efficiently. 
 Because of this, there were still various important sectors of the economy still controlled by the state (such as transport and heavy machinery) that worked alongside the new private sector. However, even these sectors made concessions of their own. In order to incentivise harder work and increase industrial output, rewards were granted to favourable workers such as furniture, cars and home appliances. This can be seen as a concession to the desire of self betterment and the profit motive, something Adam Smith had long since agreed was more effectively harnessed by the free market.


 Economists such as Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek and Eugene Bohm-Bawerk had long since defended interest and profits as necessary for determining the appropriate direction of resources. In addition, Mises and Hayek had argued that economic planning was impossible without the use of a medium of exchange to aid calculation. These prophecies were proved completely accurate in Russia, not only by the Soviet's decision to abandon the utopian aim to do away with money and restore the old currency (ruble), but also by the opening up of a network of banks in 1922. These banks were state owned, nevertheless they were a concession of the need for interest in aiding the distribution of wealth.  Despite instability in the initial stages, hyperinflation was completely under control by the mid twenties.


The reforms made in agriculture successfully resulted in a return to prewar output by 1924-27, however   the concessions also made it difficult to encourage the transport of grain to the inner cities to feed the growing urban population. The Russian proletariat desired egalitarianism and an equality of fortunes, naturally therefore it was viewed with resentment and hostility that the peasants were able to better themselves and make profit while they were experiencing shared food shortages. 
These same sentiments were being increasingly mirrored within the politburo, and the initial plan to increase the size of Russia's industrial base by increasing the urban population was being undermined by the lack of trade from the peasantry to the cities.
 Although it was intended for the partial privatisation of industry to be a temporary stage, and for the state sector to quickly replace the private sector once enough expertise had been gathered from the former managers and elites, the former continued to lag behind relentlessly. The "left" wing of the politburo increasingly recognised that these two opposing modes of production could not exist alongside one another forever and that one had to disappear for the former to survive. By the thirties, all remnants of the NEP had disappeared until the state eventually controlled 97 percent of the means of production.


To conclude, the NEP represented a consistent concession to market measures which lead to successful improvements to the economy. However, there was an increasingly instability in the pairing of communist and capitalist policies.  Despite the successes in rebuilding the economy, the market reforms bred ideological hostility from the more orthodox sections of the politburo and the urban public which ultimately lead to its abolition.

The Holocaust. Getting to the bottom of things. (Part 2)

 Last week I went off on a rant about how difficult it was to find primary sources giving clues as to the details of the Nazi Holocaust. I mentioned that Peter Longerich's Holocaust, The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews had been recommended to me by Richard Evans.

 The book arrived a few days ago, and despite already being fairly preoccupied with my revision, I have read quite a bit of it. Evans described it as "The most thorough and reliable account" and that it "deserves to be in the library of anyone interested in the history of the greatest genocide in history", and I am already beginning to see why. Last week I mentioned David Irvings complaint of "inter-historian incest" which referred to how reliant other historians were on each others written works, and how few referred to the primary sources for their claims. Longerich's book has a refreshingly wide array of sources including countless Nazi reports.
 Perhaps in the coming months when I can be a little more active I will write a proper review. In the meantime, here is a snippet from Chapter 13:

Enforcing the Annihilation Police: Extending the Shootings to the Whole Jewish Population.

pp.219-220

 In the area behind the mid-section of the front the SS Cavalry Brigade was responsible for bringing the murder campaign to a completely new level. (1) This brigade, composed of two former cavalry regiments, carried out an initial 'cleansing operation' in the Pripet Marshes between 29 July and 12 August under the leadership of Higher SS and Police Commander Russia Centre, Erich von dem Bach-Zewalski. For this operation the brigade received special 'guidelines for combing marsh areas using mounted units' that had been signed by Himmler himself: 'If the population as a whole is hostile, sub-standard in racial and human terms, or even, as is very often the case in marsh areas, made up of criminals who have settled there, then all those who are suspected of supporting partisans are to be shot, women and children are to be transported, cattle and provisions confiscated and secured. The villages are then to be burned to the ground.'(2)
 Shortly afterwards, on a visit to Baranowicze on July 30 at which he briefed Bach-Zewalski, Himmler toughened that order still further. He now ordered the shooting of all Jewish men and in addition demanded that violent measures were to be taken against women. He deliberately avoided making explicit a requirement to shoot women, as is indicated by a radio message from the 2nd Cavalry on 1 August: 'Explicit order from the Reichsführer SS. All Jews must be shot. Drive Jewish women into the marshes.'(3) There was a similarly brutal order given by the commander of the mounted unit of the 1st Cavalry Regiment on 1 August to his men, albeit one that was not wholly clear with regard to the treatment of women: "No male Jews are to be left behind, no families left over in the towns and villages."(4)

Longerich's notes:

1. The most detailed account is in Cüppers, Wegbreiter , 151 ff.; see also Büchler, 'Kommandostab' and Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 555 ff.
2. KTB Commando Staff RFSS, 28 July 1941, published in Unsere Ehre, 220 ff.
3) BAM, RS 3-8/36; on the meeting with Himmler see also BAB, R 20/45b, Bach-Zelewski's diary, 31 July 1941.
4) BAM, RS 4/441, Divisional Order no.28.

For those of you who are interested, I've added a short video of Longerich describing his book.

The Holocaust. Getting to the bottom of things. (Part 1)

 What has baffled me lately is just how difficult it actually is to find primary sources relating to the Jewish Holocaust. Holocaust denier David Irving often remarked that most historians only quoted each other when it came to Hitler's alleged part in the extermination of the Jews 'For thirty years our knowledge of Hitler's part in the atrocity had rested on inter-historian incest.' (1) In his Telling Lies About Hitler, acclaimed historian Richard J. Evans responded to this complaint rather aptly by pointing out that there was nothing wrong with Historians relying on each other's work 'where the work relied on conformed to the accepted canons of scholarly research and rested on thorough, transparent and unbiased investigation of the primary sources. 

 'So vast was the material with which historians dealt, so numerous were the subjects they covered, so consuming of time, energy and financial resources was the whole process of historical research, that it would be completely impossible for new historical discoveries and insights to be generated if every historian had to go back to the original sources for everything he or she wanted to say' (2)

 I think Prof Evans has a good point here, and it is perfectly understandable how impractical it would be to demand every historian go back to the primary source for every claim they make, and it is precisely for this reason that we have a system of impartial review. Then again, it is in Evans' interest to defend such extensive reliance on the works of other historians. I looked through all the notes to his three volume history of the Third Reich and was amazed to see how much of it was simply quotations from other books! I can't give an exact figure because I was looking through as quick as I could, but I saw probably no more than three actual primary sources, (public records, diary entries etc).

 With this in mind, I still want to remark how difficult it is I have found it to come up with a solid figure for the amount of Jews systematically killed by the Nazis in the Holocaust. Out of pure intellectual curiosity, I sent emails to both Professor Evans and to Professor Richard Overy at Exeter University asking them to give me their current estimates.

Overy informed me that in Yad Vasham so far they have "still only got just over 3 million". This is something I will be interested to find more about in future. However, the figure of 3 million is vastly higher than the average Holocaust deniers care to admit, Nick Griffin and David Irving for instance often allowing for "hundreds of thousands" at most.

Evan's responses were a little more informative, and he recommended two books for me to check the footnotes to. One being Raul Hilberg's classic The Destruction of European Jews written in the sixties, the other being the new book by Peter Longerich; Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews. The unabridged versions of the former are available on Amazon.co.uk for a whopping £113 as of today, which obviously makes it a little bit out of my price range. I also tried consulting my university library but not a single copy was available. Fortunately, the cheaper second book came with a greater recommendation from Evans as Hilberg's estimate was "on the low side" (5.1 million) according to him. Nevertheless, it would still be nice to see the the footnotes for both books, so linked at the bottom of this page is my paypal account where you can send me your generous donations so I that may purchase the book (just kidding). It would have been nice of Prof Evans to have consulted his own copy of the book and picked out a few of the footnotes he considered the most significant for me, but I suspect he is a busy man in his profession.

I'll be making a follow up to this once I've gathered more info and had time to do a little more research into the matter. That's all for now.

For more on Hilberg, his book, his low estimate of 5.1 million, as well as his attitude to Holocaust denial I suggest reading Prof Norman Finkelstein's 2007 memoir; Remembering Raul Hilberg available at his website http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/remembering-raul-hilberg-2/

References:

1. (1977) Irving. D. Hitler's War, pp.10.

2. (2002) Evans. R. Telling Lies About Hitler, pp.24.

The War of 1812, a Victory for whom?

An interesting article written by Andrew Lambert appeared today in the BBC History Magazine, titled: When Washington Burned. In this article, Lambert contests the old assumption of many American historians that the war of 1812 between Britain and the US was a victory for the latter.
I agree with the overall sentiment and would like to elaborate further why this was the case.

The article begins by documenting the defeat of the American frigate Chesapeake by the HMS Shannon, captained by James Lawrence and Sir Philip Bowes Vere de Broke respectively. According to Lambert, the battle ended within 11 minutes, and resulted in the deaths of 48 American seamen out of a crew of 370, compared with the deaths of 23 British seamen onboard the Shannon with a smaller crew of 320 (pp.53). Despite Broke taking both a musket and a cutlass to the head, he survived to become a national hero, unlike Lawrence who died six days later after receiving a gunshot to the wound and severing his femoral artery.

This victory was far from a one off incident, the history of the conflict is written in American blood. A common occurrence throughout the war was the fear the Americans had towards the Indian warriors who at the time had sided with the British. For instance, Brigadier General John. P. Boyd, clinging on to Fort George (one of the few victories the Americans were able to claim) decided to set up six outposts around the entrenchments. Throughout the days and nights, the British and Indians made quick and brutal strikes, thereby keeping the Americans on edge. After being attacked on July the 8th, Lieutenant Joseph Eldridge and thirty men pursued the Indian attackers deep into the woods. None returned. The few who's mutilated carcasses hadn't later been found became British prisoners. (2010, Taylor. A, pp.228)

In the article, Lambert also remarks that one of the reasons for the US declaring war was in response to the British practice of impressing former subjects and forcing them to serve in the British navy against the French. This was considered by Madison to be a form of imperialism and thus the US had no choice but to defend itself. Having said this, many 'War Hawks' in congress had imperialistic motives of their own, for instance Henry Clay (Kentucky) and John Calhoun (South Carolina) - saw the war as a means of expanding west into Indian territory and north into Canada. (2010, Reynolds. D, pp.116)

Lambert also remarks that in august 1813, 4,000 men lead by Admiral Cockburn marched on Washington and occupied the capital. Not only this, but after the Americans had burned their own navy yard, the British were left to eat the dinner President Madison had prepared at the White House! (pp. 55) By the time the British had arrived at Capitol Hill it was abandoned. Cockburn had no intention of sacking the city, but he did wish to avenge the burning down of the parliament building in York (now Toronto) at the hands of the Americans. For revenge, he decided to burn down the newly constructed White House, the Senate building and the President's Mansion (2010, Reynolds. D, pp.117).

At the end of the article Lambert remarks that:

"Despite the facts, American historians have spent the past 200 years claiming to have won the War of 1812. Canadians, with better cause, celebrate their success in defending their country. But the British quickly forgot the war." (pp.56)

It is a strange thing that a war consisting of so few victories for the Americans would be considered a victory. Prior to the war, ideological and national ties were not deeply rooted, and a a result many people crossed the border at whim in order to serve their own self interest and obtain land and various other promises from the respective governments. According to Alan Taylor, it was not until after the war that the patriotic historians:

"Made foils of the people on the other side of a newly significant border. Those histories subtly distorted the war by imposing on the past the nationalism spawned after the conflict and because of it. By writing of the Americans fighting the British as distinct nations, each united, the patriotic historians obscured the civil war waged for the future of the empire and of the continent, a civil war that had divided Americans, Indians, and the Irish during a lingering age of revolution." (2010, pp.458)


In that sense, the war was a victory for the US. A victory because it united a previously divided country under false pretenses and helped turn peaceful attitudes towards the British into treason, as evidenced by the demonisation of the Federalist party from then on.

References:
(2012) Lambert. A, When Washington Burned, History Magazine, BBC, Volume 13, no. 5, May 1st, pp.53, 55, 56)
(2010) Reynolds. D, America, Empire of Liberty, Penguin Books, London, pp. 116-117.
(2010) Taylor. A, The Civil War of 1812, Vintage Books, New York, pp.228,458