I read Babel by R.F. Kuang about two months ago. It’s an interesting book, one which I’d argue is a Luddite book at it’s core. Now the author explicitly calls it a Revolutionary book, in the subtitle, but as I wrote in my post about AI and Ludditism the Luddites were revolutionary and they were in a civil war.

Just so you know, there are spoilers in this discussion. Somewhat obviously.

The book is something of an alternative of our own Earth, based at Oxford University. Which, R.F. Kuang did study at. So she actually does have significant experience at the university and in the surrounding city. In her first series, The Poppy Wars, she has shown her excellent historical research skills. She dug into the Rape of Nanking or Nanjing Massacre as it is called today.

In this version of Oxford there is a specific type of magic, which is an offshoot of the language arts. The source of magic is the tension and distance between the definition of a word in one language and the “same” word in another language. An example would be the difference between Gezelig or Hegge, Dutch/Danish, and Cozy in English. Cozy is the closest word we have in English to these similar words in other language. These other words includes the love of family in a comfortable warm environment often during winter.

The distance between the two words drives some sort of associated magical power. Perhaps it would create a warm comfortable space where people were happy and more likely to fall in love. In other cases, such as the difference in English run and Chinese characters representing a running human, could power a train.

There’s another material required to enable this, a specific type of Silver. This Silver was mined all over the world, but like historical artifacts, much of it found itself in Britain. Similarly to how raw materials have moved from the edge of empire to the core of empire. Both during the height of the British empire and during our own time of the US domination.

The creation of the magic is created by the translation group in Oxford students and researchers in “Babel” which of course is based off the Biblical name. The students were nearly all international students with significant competence in English and one or more languages. Generally the more distant the language is from English, the more significant the power of the magic.

The blocks of silver basically replace steam power in this world. There are power plants, cars powered by the silver, and machines powered by silver. This is the industrial revolution in this world. Instead of steam, it’s silver. Either way, it requires significant extraction from physical locations around the world to power the technology.

The silver and the power of the words gradually reduces, which continually requires more silver and the domination of new languages. Peoples and Languages are related. To exploit the language means you are exploiting the people. Those languages are made subservient to English.

Where this becomes a Luddite and revolutionary work, is that the foreigners that perform the work, revolt. They decide to share the power of the silver. First skimming material and stealing large amounts of silver to support liberation efforts elsewhere in the world.

The academics form a coalition with the workers that are being pushed to the edge because of silver power. This is the same struggle Luddites found themselves in. They fought against the use of steam power that dehumanize the people using the tools. Silver does the same. Silver enables child labor. Silver, like steam, crops up empire.

In fact, the response of the crown is strikingly similar to what Merchant describes in the Blood in the Machine. The crown decided to respond with force, sending significant number of troops. Using military might to force the academics back to work.

The workers they actually teach the academics how to protect themselves. They create barricades. They bring weapons. They drive strategy for fighting the military. This is truly a revolution.

However, like the Luddite revolution, the academic revolution in this book fails. The Crown does win.

I truly think this book does a great job explaining alignment between white collar workers and blue collar workers. It’s obvious that today, which has a lot of analogues to the 1870s in the UK, that engineers, developers, tech workers generally, should create coalition with union organizers for service workers and blue collar workers. We have more similarly with each other than we do with the owners of capital.

I think this is even more true with the backlash we’re seeing today in tech leadership. Zuckerberg just rolled back a lot of benefits/support for LGBTQ employees and users of his products. He’s claimed that companies have been neutered and need more masculine energy.

I think this ant-employee behavior. It is anti-user behavior. Claiming that a company needs more aggression is not a healthy way to manage a team. Yes, you want competition between companies themselves, but you do not want competition between employees. It breeds distrust and anxiety in the company.

The problem is that based on donations to Trump and general alignment between people like Musk, Bezo, and Zuckerberg the technology leaders aren’t interested in competing with each other. Instead they are dividing up the digital space and punch down by attacking their employees.

Babel, Blood in the Machine, and similar books highlight the solidarity we need with fellow workers. Tech white collar workers need to drop the solidarity with tech leadership. They do not care about engineers. They will drop you as soon as they can. They play on your emotions to stay working for them, because you’ll be hurting your coworkers.

Anything that negatively impacts your coworker long term is their choice. Leadership dictating the number of promotions and how to promote is a choice. Their hands are only tied by their own greed. If you have to wait another year for a promotion, fire your boss. You earned that promotion. With the sheer volume of layoffs, it should be clear to all tech workers that you only matter as long as they can exploit you for their gain.

You can figure out how to exploit your employers.