The proletariat, compelled to struggle by the very conditions of its existence, for a long time did not recognize its class interests and the opposition of these interests to those of the bourgeoisie. Striving to alter the conditions of society, workers turned their anger on machines, seeing them as the source of their plight. One such movement was that of the Luddites, the name given to English handicraftsmen in the early 1 9th century who because of a poorly developed class consciousness rioted for the destruction of machinery in reply to cruel exploitation by their capitalist employers. But life convinced the workers that the machines were not to blame, but rather the social system under which these machines were employed for the enrichment of industrialists, so riots against machinery were supplanted by isolated actions at factories against capitalists. Despite all, the workers did not yet see capitalists as their class enemies and treated them as individual evil employers. Only gradually, as capitalism developed and the class struggle advanced, did the proletariat recogn ize their real enemies and realize their own class interests and the antagonism of these interests with those of the ruling class.