ABSTRACT
The considerable support that Auguste Comte gained from the elites of European society was largely due to what was occurring in Europe in the 1840s and 50s. To industrialists of the time, the immediate future seemed to suggest anything but “order and progress.” The very survival of society as they knew it seemed at stake. In the factory towns of Britain, the first rumblings of discontent with the effects of capitalism were being felt by the 1810s. These took the form of the Luddite rebellion, a widespread, spontaneous effort by unemployed craft workers to break into factories after hours and destroy the machinery that had displaced them from their jobs. In 1811 alone, more than 1,000 factory looms were destroyed surreptitiously by disgruntled former workers around Nottingham in the English Midlands, and the rebellion soon spread throughout the country. Because these acts of sabotage appeared to be uncoordinated, individual actions, they were exceedingly difficult to detect and suppress. Parliament responded with severe penalties as a form of deterrence, specifying in 1812 that anyone who destroyed factory equipment would be punished with hanging.1 The Luddites (Figure 4.1) drew their name from their supposed leader, a shadowy unemployed weaver by the name of Ned Ludd, who, not coincidentally, was believed to live in Sherwood Forest like his rebellious predecessor Robin Hood. Police and employers searched in vain to apprehend this “mastermind,” but it was likely that the character of Ludd was a fiction designed to throw the authorities off track. By the way, the term “sabotage” originated around this time and was derived from the Dutch word “sabot,” referring to a kind of wooden shoe worn in Holland. Dutch factory workers found that if they inserted their shoes into their machinery they could disable or damage the equipment, in effect gaining a break during their 16-hour work day.
