Science does not reach its goal in the hermetically sealed study of the scholar, but in flesh-and-blood society. All the interests and passions that rend society asunder, exert their influence on the development of science, especially of political economy, the science of wealth and poverty.
Leon Trotsky- Marxism in Our Time
We know that it has been mentioned to our great men and
Ministers in Parliament by those who have Factories how many poor they employ,
forgetting at the same time how many more they would employ were they to have
it done by hand, as they used to do. The
Poor house we find full of great lurking Boys.... I am informed by many that there will be a
Revolution and that there is in Yorkshire about 30 thousand in a Correspondent
Society.... The burning of Factories or
setting fire to the property of People we know is not right, but Starvation
forces Nature to do that which it would not.
A letter from "A Soldier Returned to his Wife and
weeping Orphans" to a Member of Parliament from Wiltshire (1802)
"But whilst these outrages must be admitted to exist to
an alarming extent, it cannot be denied that they have arisen from
circumstances of the most unparalleled distress... nothing but absolute want
could have driven a large, and once honest and industrious, body of the people,
into the commission of excesses..."
Lord Byron-Song for the Luddites 1816
"[The Luddites] contained within them a shadowy
image... of a democratic community, in which industrial growth should be
regulated according to ethical priorities and the pursuit of profit be
subordinated to human needs."
E.P Thompson
Recently, several articles have explored the emergence of a
“neo-Luddite anti-AI backlash." One notable example is “The New Luddite
Movement," which was recently published in the Financial Times, a
prominent newspaper serving Britain's financial elite.
Camilla Cavendish, the author of the latest article, is a
senior columnist at the Financial Times and a former head of the Downing Street
Policy Unit under David Cameron. She comes from the liberal-technocratic wing
of the British establishment, a perspective focused on improving capitalism
rather than replacing it. When a figure like Cavendish advocates for "new
Luddism," a reader must first consider: which class interests does this
perspective promote?
The Financial Times, along with the New York
Times and other outlets representing the liberal bourgeoisie, has
increasingly published sympathetic articles attacking anti-AI and
anti-technology sentiments, portraying them as a progressive social response to
capitalism's technological progress. It's important to recognise what the
Financial Times truly represents, as it serves as the official publication for
global financial capital, representing the interests of the City of London and
Wall Street. When it features sympathetic profiles of "new Luddism,"
it does not express solidarity with workers. Instead, it channels genuine
working-class frustration into politically harmless outlets, ideological dead
ends that do not threaten the system. The FT will never ask: who owns these AI
systems? That is the one question it is inherently unable to address.
The Real Luddites vs
the New Luddism
The early 19th-century Luddites were skilled textile workers
who opposed not just technology, but the capitalist exploitation enabled by
machinery that threatened their jobs. Engels and Marx saw them as an early form
of working-class resistance, imperfect in method (such as machine-breaking) but
sincerely rooted in class antagonism. The "new Luddism' promoted by
the FT represents a fundamentally different phenomenon:
a middle-class ideological stance that confuses the tool with the
social relations that determine how it is used.
The scale of this new capitalist pushback is remarkable;
over 300,000 jobs were eliminated by American companies in just the first four
months of 2026, with AI being the main cause for two consecutive months.
Despite investing $145 billion in AI infrastructure, Meta is cutting 8,000
jobs. Oracle is reducing its workforce by up to 30,000 employees, including
those who spent their last month training AI systems that eventually replaced
them. The stock market responded positively to these developments. This goes
beyond simple disruption; it appears more like a form of class warfare.
A consequence of this class struggle is the development of
Socialism AI, which seeks to protect workers and serve as a tool against
capitalism. Recently, it countered a bourgeois commentary in the New York
Times, claiming that capitalism—rather than AI—is to blame for mass layoffs,
healthcare denial, and wealth concentration among a few oligarchs.
The development of Socialism AI by the ICFI directly
challenges the new Luddite viewpoint. Instead of rejecting AI, it is vital to harness
the technology to serve the working class. David North and Evan Blake's
responses to critics of Socialism AI highlight this stance: the petty-bourgeois
critic who calls AI a "bullshit machine" is not showing genuine
scepticism but rather engaging in "romantic anti-capitalism that criticises
the current social order in a
conservative and even reactionary way."
