Luddism in the age of AI: why the progressives should embrace technological progress

When it comes to progressive social change, the progressives are the ones that embrace the arrival of the new social norms. They are usually not afraid of the future, unlike the conservatives whose idea of the ideal future is quite often a return to the past, even if sometimes largely imagined. For the latter everything was supposedly much better at some moment in the past, not to mention that the changes en cours are threatening the stability of their civilization. Interestingly, however, such balance seems to disappear over certain new technologies and their potential impact upon our social world. The general relationship between social progress and technological progress has been discussed here. Our focus within this commentary will be the ever-present tension between technological innovations and the labour market.

It would be interesting to inquire whether those championing the golden ages of the past would agree to give up their mobile phones, their air-conditioned cars, or even private jets. Most probably, they would prefer to maintain the material comfort that historical technological change has so far provided. The problem, of course, is that humanity’s economic development has also conditioned the social development that the conservative people would like to halt and even to turn back. Essentially, they want the rain to fall from the crystal clear blue sky. But it is not the acceptance by the conservatives of modern technologies that constitutes the most problematic aspect of the above mentioned imbalance. Rather, it is the fact that there appears to be a significant amount of reservation regarding technological innovation within the progressive camp.

As it could have been expected, the emergence of artificial intelligence has likewise provoked some alarm regarding the future of the job market. So much that we even do find references to the famous Luddites of the early 19th century. The following quote is a perfect example:

“Now, more than 200 years later, their rebellion feels newly relevant. As artificial intelligence continues to transform the world, age-old questions about labor and technology have reemerged.”

However, one may inquire whether these questions have always been posed correctly. For it would be disappointing to see the benefits unfairly overlooked in favour of the negative consequences. Take, for instance, the most recent alarm that has been raised over the announcement of Amazon’s plans to cut around 14 000 workers from their staff due to the AI possibilities. And to that, in fact, we could add other corporations, such as Google or Microsoft. Could it be here that the progressives are committing a historical mistake by treating such technological development as largely detrimental?

Of course, the lives of the individuals to be laid off will be affected negatively. But it would be wrong to put the blame directly upon the AI. Our modern day unemployment as such is a capitalist phenomenon. It is not caused by technology as such. Within a post-capitalist socially organized economy every individual whose previous tasks would become obsolete due to technological advance would be seamlessly transferred to another branch of activity. So should our technological progress be halted as a result of the great imperfections in how we still organise our economic life? As a rule, the best method to properly evaluate this question is to look at the numerous historical precedents.

Our global trade today is dominated by container shipping. Before the containerisation we obviously had less advanced ways of placing various goods onto the ships. “Before shipping containers, all goods were manually loaded into sacks, barrels and wooden crates loaded directly onto cargo vessels – known as break-bulk shipping. It could take up to 3 weeks to unload and load each ship. Today’s massive container ships can be unloaded and loaded within 24 hours.” Everyone would agree about the efficiency and the time-saving being positive aspects. But such a technological shift inevitably also reduced the amount of manpower required to load the ships. But should we treat this today as a negative development? Well, aside from providing income, what other benefits would long hours of manually loading ships provide for the workers? Injuries and other health problems? As it stands, from our contemporary perspective it seems more of an upside to no longer have these types of jobs. And to have them replaced by more modern ones.

And that was not the end of the story within this sector. Today on the West Coast of the US “there's a fight to keep high-paying union jobs from going to robots. On one side, 22,000 dockworkers who play a critical role in the global supply chain, moving cargo off of ships onto trucks and trains - on the other, the shipping companies that say they need to automate more of that work in order to stay competitive.” Again, the protests by the workers here may remind us of the Luddites who “weren’t strictly anti-technology - they protested a system that was displacing them”. But such protests equally concern the negative consequences that rather stem from a market based economic system, and not the technology itself. And aside from the wages, what is beneficial about spending long working hours during many years in a cabin that controls a crane? Could a person not develop the same skills and agility, for instance, by playing a game on a console, for that matter? And there are plenty of other activities that could provide as great a sense of utility to the society as being a crane operator. Just as decades ago, the death of yet another type of job would by no means be detrimental from society's perspective.

Moving away from shipping and containers, coal mining provides another perfect historical example. No explanation is needed today about the risks and negative health consequences for the miners that would go down into the pit. “Mining coal was incredibly dangerous work. During the industrial coal boom between 1880 and 1923, more than 70,000 miners died on the job. Many more perished from occupational diseases, but weren’t tallied in official statistics. Miners were crushed to death in roof collapses, killed by gas explosions and by machinery, and more. In the first decade of the twentieth century, three major mine disasters—one each in Utah, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania—killed 201, 362 and 239 miners respectively. The West Virginia and Pennsylvania disasters occurred within two weeks of each other in 1907, during the winter period that miners called “explosion season” because the dry air amplified the dangers from methane and coal dust.” For various reasons the 2nd half of the 20th century saw a great reduction in coal mining jobs both in the US as well as in western Europe. For instance, in Germany “in the late 1950s, the Ruhr’s hard coal production began a rapid decline due to international competition. In 1955, at the peak of the industry, there were nearly 480,000 workers, by 1980, there were roughly 143,000.” One can only rejoice that at least in the so-called developed world very few people today would go down into those mines and take such risks for the sake of making a living. “‘You're risking your life and definitely risking your health to take care of your family,’ said Shane Simmons, a former mine worker”.

To wrap up, potential changes are also in line within the modern trucking sector. Once again, “the potential benefits of autonomous trucks have led to concerns about job displacement among millions of truck drivers”. And once more, it would appear ridiculous to abandon our technological achievements for the sole reason that our society is not yet capable of overcoming the limitations of capitalism. Here not only the “freight will arrive at a destination faster”, but we will also have got rid of yet another pointless waste of human labour. In the same manner that we today can feel the sense of relief over the fact that the manual ship loading or deep underground coal mining activities are largely behind us, the future generations will be excited to not have anyone suffer as our contemporary long-distance truck drivers. “Last week, I put 73 hours in. You're not getting home through the week’, says one driver. Another claims that “after a full day's driving you're mentally knackered but physically fine”. After one day maybe. But after many years of the sedentary nature of the task, what are the chances of not having back pain, hemorrhoids, or obesity? And what about those long-haul drivers that endure many weeks of sleeping in their cabins? Given these considerations, it appears that the end of the truck driver activity can not come too soon.

To return to the lay-offs planned at Amazon, one might inquire over how many of those jobs would constitute what has aptly been called “bullshit jobs”? Do they provide the employees anything worthy apart from their income? Are they to any extent useful to society? For example, a cashier position at a supermarket is a superlative cost from the perspective of the society. Even ignoring the fact that these individuals would be much more useful in the shape of nurses or teachers, for instance, we would simply save labour time by switching to self-checkout. But here is the crux of the problem. Who appropriates these savings? Is it the society as a whole? Or is it the private corporation? Who gets the benefits, for instance, from the launch of the autonomous trucks? Do we get reduced freight costs or do the logistics companies pocket higher profits?

To conclude, since the technological innovations that we have discussed above have been the private property of particular entities, society has not had the chance to fully appropriate their benefits. But most importantly, capitalism has not allowed to properly mitigate the potential negative consequences. However, this does not mean that the progressives should push back against innovation for the sake of “saving the jobs”. From a long historical perspective it is much more rational to fight for greater control over the economy in order to make sure that there are no people left behind by this technological progress. In the case of the Luddites, they “were ultimately unable to stop the tide of industrialization. The number of British handloom weavers collapsed from 250,000 around 1800 to just 7,000 only 60 years later.” This does not necessarily mean that today we would be incapable of halting the spread of AI into the workplaces. Nevertheless, is there any point in doing so?

Sources:
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/28/amazon-layoffs-corporate-workers-ai.html
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/luddite-industrial-revolution-anti-technology
https://energyhistory.yale.edu/coal-mining-and-labor-conflict/
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240703-coal-mining-created-community-and-culture-can-clean-energy-do-the-same
https://www.wri.org/snapshots/germany-ruhr-regions-pivot-coal-mining-hub-green-industry-and-expertise
https://incodocs.com/blog/history-of-shipping-container-1956-world-trade/
https://www.npr.org/2022/09/08/1121690513/california-dockworkers-are-worried-about-losing-their-good-paying-jobs-to-robots
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56332388

Image by Freepik.com