The Dig Breaking the Machine w/ Peter Linebaugh
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Feb 17, 2026 Peter Linebaugh, historian of commons and working-class resistance, shares vivid stories of Luddite machine-breaking and their defense of artisanal life. He traces links between enclosure, capital punishment, and state violence. He connects past commons struggles to modern tech control, gig work, and the fight to reclaim shared resources.
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Luddites Defended Livelihoods
- Luddites smashed machines to defend craft quality and subsistence against capitalist mechanization.
- Peter Linebaugh stresses their literacy and political thinking, countering the myth of technological ignorance.
Looms To Computers: A Direct Line
- Early textile machines anticipated computational machines through the loom-to-computer lineage.
- Linebaugh links Luddism directly to modern struggles against surveillance and algorithmic control.
Atlantic Expropriation Links Workers
- Linebaugh connects Atlantic migrations and labor reconfiguration after enclosure and Irish dispossession.
- He argues global expropriation and displacement create linked workers' struggles across continents.
