“Men Shall Rule, Not Machinery”: Ernst Toller amongst the Luddites

• In Event: Luddism: Epistemological and Political

Abstract

Written while its author was in prison, for his participation in the Bavarian revolution, Ernst Toller’s 1922 play The Machine Wreckers was an early attempt to reclaim the legacy of the Luddites from history’s condescension. Toller explained that in the play he had sought to describe the “conflict and the instability of rebels and revolutionaries, the struggle of man against machinery,” and he noted that he “found many parallels” to the struggles of his own day “in the history of the Luddites.” By seeing the Luddites as an opportunity to reflect on “the struggle of man against machinery,” Toller anticipated the way they are still seen, but Toller’s significant move was in aiming to reinscribe the Luddites into the history of “rebels and revolutionaries.”

Through a consideration of The Machine-Wreckers—including the way Toller framed the project in his correspondence—and an analysis of Toller’s other comments on the Luddites and technology, this paper argues that Toller’s play represents an important contribution to the development of the idea of Luddism. Toller sought to turn the Luddites into revolutionary forebears decades before Marxist historians sought to do the same. Beyond considering the play as a footnote in the transformation of the Luddites into an ism, this paper will argue that Toller’s experience as a participant in a failed revolution lend his observations on violence and democracy particular insight. For Toller, the question of strategically un-building technology, had to be linked to a utopian vision of building a different world.

Author

• Zachary M Loeb, History & Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania