---
title: "Luddite"
chunk: 3/4
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:36:49.155061+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

== Legacy ==
The Luddites (specifically the croppers, those who operated cropping machinery) are memorialised in the Yorkshire-area folk song "The Cropper Lads", which has been recorded by artists including Lou Killen and Maddy Prior. The croppers were very highly skilled and highly paid before the introduction of cropping machinery, and thus had more to lose and more reason to rebel against the factory owners' use of machinery. Another traditional song which celebrates the Luddites is the song "The Triumph of General Ludd", which was recorded by Chumbawamba for their 1988 album English Rebel Songs.

== Modern usage ==
Nowadays, the term "Luddite" is often used to describe someone who either opposes or is resistant to the use of new technologies.
In 1956, during a British Parliamentary debate, a Labour spokesman said that "organised workers were by no means wedded to a 'Luddite Philosophy'." By 2006, the term neo-Luddism had emerged to describe opposition to many forms of technology. According to a manifesto drawn up by the Second Luddite Congress (April 1996; Barnesville, Ohio), neo-Luddism is "a leaderless movement of passive resistance to consumerism and the increasingly bizarre and frightening technologies of the Computer Age".
The term "Luddite fallacy" is used by economists about the fear that technological unemployment inevitably generates structural unemployment and is consequently macroeconomically injurious. If a technological innovation reduces necessary labour inputs in a given sector, then the industry-wide cost of production falls, which lowers the competitive price and increases the equilibrium supply point that, theoretically, will require an increase in aggregate labour inputs. During the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century, the dominant view among economists has been that belief in long-term technological unemployment was indeed a fallacy. More recently, there has been increased support for the view that the benefits of automation are not equally distributed.

== See also ==
Neo-Luddism
Postdevelopment theory
Ted Kaczynski
Ruddington Framework Knitters' Museum – features a Luddite gallery
Simple living
Swing Riots
Technophobia
Turner Controversy – return to pre-industrial methods of production

== Explanatory notes ==

== References ==

== Sources ==
Ford, Martin R. (2009), The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future, Acculant Publishing, ISBN 978-1448659814.
Hobsbawm, E. J. (1952). "The Machine Breakers". Past & Present (1): 57–70. doi:10.1093/past/1.1.57. Archived from the original on 13 April 2021. Retrieved 19 September 2012.
Jones, Steven E. (2006). Against technology: from the Luddites to Neo-Luddism. CRC Press. ISBN 978-0-415-97868-2.
Sale, Kirkpatrick (1995). Rebels against the future: the Luddites and their war on the Industrial Revolution: lessons for the computer age. Basic Books. ISBN 0-201-40718-3.