The Luddites weren’t anti-technology—they opposed machines that destroyed their livelihoods and benefited factory owners at workers’ expense. Their resistance was a critique of the social and economic chaos caused by the Industrial Revolution. Over time, “Luddite” became an insult due to capitalist propaganda, dismissing their valid concerns about inequality and exploitation. Seen in context, they were early critics of unchecked capitalism and harmful technological change—issues still relevant today.
It’s honestly a bit cringe how these memes always need to pull some kind of capitalist Boogeyman into the narrative where it doesn’t belong.
Marx’s entire theory of history is built in the inevitability of technological progress, and how it shapes economic and social systems. From a Marxist lens, opposing such progress is pissing into the wind. It’s worse than being an actual aristocrat in many ways, because it actively harms the progression towards the post scarcity utopia where surplus labor has no value to exploit.
There’s a reason why the USSR and China formed their entire revisionist theory around rapid industrialization to compete with more advanced capitalist societies.