New Leader Of UK's Green Party: Nuclear Power Is The Betamax Of The Energy World

[Confusious]

30. You seem to think having a small part of something

means you have the whole thing. it doesn't.

There are thousands of parts in an engine, having everyone means that the engine runs, otherwise, it doesn't, or it tears itself apart.

Same with history. Thousands of people coming up with ideas, ingratiated into a whole. Just because some tries something that seems similar in some way, doesn't mean they had the whole idea as we see it now.

It also doesn't mean that things are the same as now. There were no capitalists in 1812 as we now know them. The dominate economic theory of the time was mercantilism, which is a far cry different then capitalism.

The industrial revolution started of with small factory owners, and only later got to the big factory owners. The luddites wanted to protect their interests, the making of textiles within the guild system.

As Ogilvie (2004) argues, the guilds negatively affected quality, skills, and innovation. Through what economists now call "rent-seeking" they imposed deadweight losses on the economy. Ogilvie says they generated no demonstrable positive externalities and notes that industry began to flourish only after the guilds faded away. Guilds persisted over the centuries because they redistributed resources to politically powerful merchants. On the other hand, Ogilvie agrees, guilds created "social capital" of shared norms, common information, mutual sanctions, and collective political action. This social capital benefited guild members, even as they hurt outsiders.[14]

The guild system became a target of much criticism towards the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century. They were believed to oppose free trade and hinder technological innovation, technology transfer and business development. According to several accounts of this time, guilds became increasingly involved in simple territorial struggles against each other and against free practitioners of their arts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guild

So really, we just replaced one master with another, not some high minded "freedum" with slavery. They also weren't "heros of the working class" most people were still peasants. They wanted to protect their privileges.

If anything, at that time, a "hero of the working class" was a freaking peasant.