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Acknowledgements

Writing this book has required a journey through three cities, two continents, multiple jobs and gigs, and even a spate of unemployment. This is to say that it, for better or for worse, is a product of academic precarity. As far as I know, all my subsequent work will be. And I also know first-hand how difficult it is to produce under such conditions: frantic bursts of overwork punctuated by stretches of debilitating underwork, uprooting from intellectual and social networks, the Sisyphean feeling of starting in a new place, yet again, from scratch. You lose track of people, they lose track of you. Plans and projects easily dissipate in such an atmosphere. I can only imagine the wonderful work that won’t see the light of day due to these conditions. It is a fate that could have just as easily befallen this book.

The fact that I was able to produce this book is only due to the consistencies and continuities I was able to establish in my life. First, above all was my wife, Katie. Second, was my ongoing commitment to "Viewpoint Magazine,"" where I concretized much of the perspective that marks this book: my resistance to teleological views of history and ontological accounts of class, my abiding interest in struggles from below and beyond official institutions and ideologies of the left. This is, I am confident saying, a very "Viewpoint" book in its theoretical and political commitments.

The Marxist intellectual tradition has never been content to rest on credentialed experts, but spreads its purview widely to all manner of homegrown theoreticians, hobbyist auto-didacts, zine-writing worker-militants, roving antinomian bohemians, and, yes, its share of university professors. This motley assemblage of intellectual production, its contentious and fragmentary unity, is one thing that makes Marxism so exciting to me, and in this book I have attempted to be true to the heterogeneity of its practitioners. To put it another way, I strive to be faithful to Marxism’s heretical side, its unofficial channels and para-academic spaces, as in spite of my academic credentials, these are what have ultimately shaped me and my work. And so here, somewhat oddly for a book on Luddism, I’d like to acknowledge the vibrant corners of my social media networks that have made an indelible mark on this book, in particular the Relaxed Marxist Discussion Facebook group.

I would also like to acknowledge a few individuals significant in the genesis of this work. My erstwhile colleague at Dallas, Andrew Culp, provided important conversations and a leg up in the formalities of proposing a book. Lisa Furchgott provided me with crucial historical sources at an early stage. I would especially like to thank the patience and perspicacity of my editor at Verso Books, Ben Mabie, who stuck with me on this longer-than-expected journey.