Sales, K. Rebels against the Future

Meanwhile I have been reading Kirkpatrick Sales' book on the Luddites - Rebels Against the Future. He has sympathy with the Luddites, but is unfortunately caught in the academic language and the concepts which that language supports. Thus, "The Industrial Revolution". This is one of those thought stopping cliches which seems to say something.

I have been wondering whether it be not a flaw in our language that nouns are too easily made into adjectives. Thus "industrial revolution" gives a false direction to the mind. It does not quite mean a "revolution in industry". There is a problem as well in the mis-use of "revolution". Properly stated the changes might be called an "upheaval in industry". Or sinking of human energy into a near frozen form of production, intolerant of flexibility.

Sales, alas, goes on to connecting recent movements - highly abstract and intellectual - such as the ecology business with the efforts of the Luddites. All such movements fail to allow for human beings as animals. They demand that humans act as moral creatures only, taking moral as some abstract notion, not rooted in some more central notion. He has an inkling when he refers to native respect for the gods of rivers; he does not take the further step, which our civilization offers, of considering that there is but one God who made all the rivers.
Sales considers the problems which have arisen with the use, and too great exploitation of the "resources" (the wealth) of nature. He refers to multi-national corporations and "their" efforts to escape from local controls. He does not see that you can no more escape local controls than you can escape gravity; we are made to be in one place or another. He has been suckered by the notion of these agglomerates as "persons", making rational decisions. He does not see that the "rationality" of the decisions is not reasonable. Thus, all the talk about the bottom line, a purely numerical measure, which can easily be cooked. He has a sense that such measures are misapplications, but cannot connect it up with the problem. The problem is simple enough: a currency has value only to the extent that it is backed up by a country, which is to say by its police: local control.
Sales' account of the actions of the English government during the Luddite revolution (revolution being a return to old morals) is one of a brutal rejection of those morals. The argument for laissez faire is not only disingenuous; it is pusillanimous. Che sera sera. It is a sneak's trick to change "content yourself in the situation in which you find yourself" to "content yourself in the situation to which you have been assigned". This is the meaning behind "natural selection".
Underlying the problem of "capitalists" is that no man can really handle the amount of wealth which the system diverted into private hands. Who dies rich, dies disgraced. There are few monuments created by men who were merely rich. Monuments of poetry and philosophy, monuments of our arts, the enduring treasures, are created by men always on the verge of bankruptcy. J.P. Morgan could but collect the works of men whom he would not have invited to dinner. But he supported no artists or writers of his own generation. Like Henry James, and Justice Holmes, his playing with the "English" tradition sucked out his soul. He drowned in money. The fatal flaw in Sales' book is to be found in the title: correct it from Rebels Against the Future to Rebels Against the "Future". The flaw becomes apparent.