the
machines in their blind revolt. The contest between the capitalist and
the wage-worker, which, as Karl Marx says, dates back to the very origin
of capital, took on a new form when machinery was introduced.
Henceforth, the worker fights not only, nor even mainly, against the
capitalist, but against the machine, as the material basis of capitalist
exploitation. This is a distinct phase of the struggle of the
proletariat everywhere.

In the sixteenth century the ribbon loom, a machine for weaving ribbon,
was invented in Germany. Marx quotes an Italian traveler, Abbe
Lancellotti, who wrote in 1579, as follows: "Anthony Mueller, of Danzig,
saw about fifty years ago, in that town, a very ingenious machine, which
weaves four to six pieces at once. But the mayor, being apprehensive
that this invention might throw a large number of workmen on the
streets, caused the inventor to be secretly strangled or drowned."[20]
In 1629 this ribbon loom was introduced into Leyden, where the riots of
the ribbon weavers forced the town council to prohibit it. In 1676 its
use was prohibited in Cologne, at the same time that its introduction
was causing serious disturbances in England. "By an imperial Edict of
the 19th of February, 1685, its use was forbidden throughout all
Germany. In Hamburg it was burned in public, by order of the Senate. The
Emperor Charles VI, on the 9th of February, 1719, renewed the Edict of
1685, and not till 1765 was its use openly allowed in the Electorate of
Saxony. This machine, which shook all Europe to its foundations, was in
fact the precursor of the mule and power loom, and of the industrial
revolution of the eighteenth century. It enabled a totally inexperienced
boy to set the whole loom, with all its shuttles, in motion by simply
moving a rod backward and forward, and in its improved form produced
from forty to fifty pieces at once."[21]

The introduction of machinery has universally caused the workers to
revolt. Much futile denunciation has been poured upon the blind, stupid
resistance of the workers, but in view of the misery and poverty which
they have suffered, it is impossible to judge them harshly. Their
passionate, futile resistance to the irresistible moves to pity rather
than to condemnation. As Marx justly says, "It took both time and
experience before the work people learned to distinguish between
machinery and its employment by capital, and to direct their attacks,
not against the material ins