Part 1: Introduction by Arturo M. Giovannitti

Chapter 1

Of all the words of a more or less esoteric taste which have been purposely denaturalized and twisted by the capitalist press in order to terrify and mystify a gullible public, “Direct Action” and “Sabotage” rank easily next to Anarchy, Nihilism, Free Love, Neo-Malthusianism, etc., in the hierarchy of infernal inventions.

To be sure, the capitalist class knows full well the exact meaning of these words and the doctrines and purposes behind them, but it is, of course, its most vital interest to throw suspicion on and raise popular contempt and hatred against them as soon as they begin to appear and before they are understood, for the purpose of creating an antagonistic environment to them, and thus check the growth of their propaganda.

American Capitalism having succeeded in making the word Anarchism synonymous with disorder, chaos, violence and murder in the popular mind — with the complicity of the cowardly silence of so-called revolutionists — it is now the turn of Syndicalism, Direct Action and Sabotage to be equally misrepresented, lied about and defamed.

This is of no surprise to us — but what actually astounds and appalls us is that the Socialist Party, itself so much maligned and calumniated up to a few years ago, should now come come out to the aid of Capitalism in this ignoble work of prevarication, to the extent of actually taking the initiative in vilifying and discrediting these new theories.

Thus we find that whilst in the laws of no State in the Union is Sabotage classed among felonies or misdemeanors, the Socialist Party, first in its National Convention at Indianapolis and next by referendum vote, finger-printed and bertillioned Sabotage among “crimes” and made it a capital offense against its canon laws, punishable by immediate expulsion from the rank and file.

Therefore, whilst you cannot be fined or sent to jail for advocating Sabotage, nor do you risk being excommunicated for heresy by the Catholic Church, you can and will be expelled from the Socialist Party, which claims to be the political wing o the revolutionary labor movement.

This can have but two explanations. Either that the Socialist Party in its unbridled quest for votes and thirst for power wants to become respectable in the eyes of the bourgeoisie at at any price and risk, or that in utter ignorance of what it was judging and condemning it was induced to believe by a clique of unscrupulous politicians that Sabotage is the French translation of bomb throwing, assassination, incendiarsm and all around hell on earth.

We take the latter view and we are confirmed in our belief by the astounding fact that a committee of five has been selected by the Socialist Party to define Sabotage for the purpose of determining what it is ... after having damned it on general principles.

The aim of this pamphlet being precisely this, we shall make bold to offer our own definition whilst we wait for the response of the Solons aforesaid.

What, then, is Sabotage? Sabotage is

1. Any conscious and willful act on the part of one or more workers intended to slacken and reduce the output of production in the industrial field, or to restrict trade and reduce the profits in the commercial field, in order to secure from their employers better conditions or to enforce those promised or maintain those already prevailing, when no other way of redress is open.

2. Any skillful operation on the machinery of production intended not to destroy it or permanently render it defective, but only to temporarily disable it and to put it out of running condition in order to make impossible the work of scabs and thus to secure the complete and real stoppage of work during a strike.

Whether you agree or not, Sabotage is this and nothing but this. It is not destructive. It has nothing to do with violence, neither to life nor to property. It is nothing more or less than the chloroforming of the organism of production, the “knock-out drops” to put to sleep and out of harm’s way the ogres of steel and fire that watch and multiply the treasures of King Capital.

Of course, at least in respect to the first part of this definition, Sabotage is not a novelty. As Pouget says and proves, it is as old as human exploitation, and with very little effort we can trace it as far back in America as the day when the first patriotic and pious Puritan gentleman bought the first slave or mortgaged the body of the first redemptioner to the greater glory of his holy Bible and his holier pocketbook.

If so, why is it that only since the Lawrence Strike, Sabotage loomed up in such terrific Light? It is easily explained.

A certain simple thing which is more or less generally practiced and thought very plain and natural, as for instance, a negro picking less cotton when receiving less grub, becomes a monstrous thing, a crime and a blasphemy when it is openly advocated and advised.

It is simply because there is no danger in any art in itself when it is determined by natural instinctive impulse and is quite unconscious and unpremeditated — it only becomes dangerous when it becomes the translated practical expression of an idea even though, or rather because, this idea has originated from the act itself.

It is so of Sabotage as of a good many other things. Take, for instance, the question of divorce. To be divorced and marry again is quite a decent, legal and respectable thing to do in the eyes of the church, the state and the ’ third power, which is public opinion.

Now, a rich man having grown tired of his wife (or vice versa, or both ways), he properly puts her away through the kind intervention of a solemn-faced, black-robed judge, and marries a chorus girl through the same kind help of a very venerable and holy bishop. Nobody is shocked — on the contrary, the papers are full of this grand affair and everybody is well pleased, except some old maids and the regular town gossips.

The rich man may stop here if he is properly mated, and may go further if he thinks he is not. He can repeat this wonderful performance as many times as he likes — there is no limit to it and it is done quite often.

But, if you should — say at the third or fourth repetition of these public solemnities, find out that they are all quite unnecessary and that the aforesaid rich man could and should more properly keep his bedroom affairs to himself, if you should venture that he could as well dispense with judge and priest, you would be howled at that you are a filthy free lover, a defiler of the sanctIty of the home, and so on.

How do you explain that? It is because, the fact that a rich man (he may be a poor one at that) puts away three or four or ten wives is of little importance in itself, it is only when out of this plain everyday phenomenon you draw the theory of the freedom of the sexes that the bourgeois jumps up and screams, for though free love be and has always been a fact, it is only when it becomes an idea that it becomes a dynamic and disintegrating force of bourgeois society, in so far as it wrests from the political state one of its cardinal faculties

Again, it is a well-known and established fact that since Bible days, the practice of preventing generation has been more or less In general use. Over a hundred years ago an English clergyman, Malthus, came out with the astounding doctrine that humanity was reproducing itself too swiftly and in such alarming proportions as to impair the lives and welfare of the whole race, which some day would have to devour itself for lack of food. Immediately there was loud and jubilant praise from the bourgeois camp, where the new doctrine was heralded as a condemnation of Socialism in so far as it put the blame of poverty, not an the evil distribution of wealth, but on the excessive numbers of its consumers.

Malthus justified and even considered as a blessing, wars, famines, pestilences, earthquakes, everything that would tend to check the growth of population, and the bourgeois cheered himself hoarse. Then, suddenly the neo-Malthusian came out. He noticed how the bourgeois families throughout the world have an average of two or three children at the most and proceeded to advise the working class to do the same. Malthus was right, said his successor, but, instead of slaughtering the living, let us — reduce the number of those that are to come.

The bourgeoisie had been doing that already for years in France, as in America. Statistics show that the lower classes were innocent of race suicide, yet as soon as the idea came out of the undeniable facts, a chorus of condemnation rose against it; its preachers were condemned as immoral and criminals, laws were made against them, and the subject was tabooed as a filthy and indecent one.

We might go on with examples, but we must confine ourselves to our subject. The idea we wanted to convey is that a sin is absolvable only when it is confessed as such, but becomes a damnable one when an explanation is found for it in the same way as a simple act of general practice becomes a crime when a justification is found for it and it is advocated as a good thing.

The fact is that modern society rests only on appearances and illusions, and derives its raison d’etre not from the existence or nonexistence of certain things, but on the general accepted credence that these things do or do not exist. Truth becomes a menace to society and hence a crime, not when it is seen and felt by personal experience, though everybody see and feel it, but only when it is told and exposed, for then only it becomes subversive by being discussed and reasoned over.

This is especially true of the conditions of the working classes. Every working man is poor and miserable, but only when he hears his woes described from the speaker’s platform or sees his tragedy reenacted on the stage does he become conscious of it, and therefore dangerous to the digestion of his masters.

Hence, the necessity of agitators and “fanatics” and the frantic efforts of the master class to keep tightly the cover on the Pandora jar. That Sabotage has been practiced more or less generally. for centuries they unmistakingly know, but that it should be now told, explained, justified and perfected into a veritable weapon of attack and defense they cannot for one second countenance. For these gentlemen, there are no classes in America. There was no Socialism in America up to four years ago, when it yelled so loud that they had to jump up and bow to it.

Now there is no Syndicalism, and, of course, there never was and never shall be any Sabotage except in the vaporings of some frothy-mouthed foreign agitators.

It is the wisdom of the ostrich, say you. No, by no means — it is the wisdom of Argus who sees everything with his hundred eyes and knows that the only thing that can oppose the spreading of a truth is the spreading of a lie.