Withholding labor only gained real power with industrialization because production then ran through machines.

Evidence

One result of this staggering change was the formation of a new kind of power: the power of workers collectively to WITHHOLD their labor. This, in turn, created a new kind of politics, and new kinds of communities, known as unions, that enacted those politics. … Think, for a moment, of the feudal system from which industrial capitalism emerged: Back then, there was no such thing as a peasant strike. Feudal peasants could not “paralyze the machine” of feudal power because feudal power was not mediated by machines. Sure, peasants could revolt. But the food they refused to cultivate was the same food they then didn’t get to eat. This limited their leverage. But it was only with industrialization that the refusal to work, exercised independently of violence (torches, pitchforks, slave revolts), became a genuinely powerful way to push back against oppression. When the factories stopped churning, it placed the owners in a vise. — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 456

Categorization

• XREF: This is the manifesto’s load-bearing analogy: it claims attention-withdrawal (‘striking’ attention) will parallel industrial labor-strikes because attention is now the extracted capacity. Connects to Marx on the transition from formal to real subsumption. — connects to: Strikes became politically powerful only with industrialization — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 456; Industrialism is machinery-based production affecting far more than factories — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 151

Broader Connections

• Strikes became politically powerful only with industrialization #corroborates (0.92) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 456
• Industrialism is machinery-based production affecting far more than factories #expands (0.85) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 151