Emile Pouget Archive
Written: 1898.
Source: RevoltLib.com
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
This booklet is not written for capitalists nor for the upholders of the capitalist system, therefore it does not purpose to justify or excuse Sabotage before the capitalist mind and morals.
Its avowed aim is to explain and expound Sabotage to the working class, especially to that part of it which is revolutionary in aim not in method, and as this ever-growing fraction of the proletariat has a special mentality and hence a special morality of its own, this introduction purports to prove that Sabotage is fully in accordance with the same.
We shall endeavor to prove that it is not incompatible with proletarian ethics, — either as represented by the tenets of conservative unionism or as codified by political Socialism, as Sabotage, in our opinion, can equally stand the test of Mr. Gompers’ Pentateuch and Mr. Berger’s Papdects, if it only be given a fair trial by a jury of its peers and no ex post facto laws be made against it, as was done at the Indianapolis Convention of the Socialist Party.
The first bona fide admission we ask from its opponents is that Sabotage, whether a good or a bad thing, has an honest purpose — that is to say that whether it injure or not the capitalist or be just or unjust, wise or unwise, its sole aim is to benefit the working class. This cannot be denied. The only injury to the cause of the workers that has been laid at its doors is that it discredits their cause before the public mind and that it debases the moral value of those who practice it, by making them sneaks and liars. These charges we shall examine later — just now we want to be granted, in all fairness, the admission that we are prompted by an honest desire to benefit our class. The fact that it is upheld and advocated by the most fearless champions of the workers’ cause throughout the world, such as Pouget, Yvetot, Herve, Labriola, DeAmbris, Mann, Haywood etc., all men who have proven by personal sacrifice their staunch and firm loyalty to there class, takes away from Sabotage all shadows of suspicion that it is the theory of disrupters and agents provocateurs. It then remains to prove that the means as such is “ethically justifiable,” and this Mr. Pouget does in a clear concise and masterful way. However, it may not be amiss to add a few remarks in relation to American conditions and the American labor movement.
Let us therefore consider Sabotage under its two aspects first as a personal relaxation of work when wages and conditions are not satisfactory, and next as a mischievous tampering with machinery to secure its complete immobilization during a strike. It must be said with especial emphasis that Sabotage is not and must not be made a systematic hampering of production, that it is not meant as a perpetual clogging of the workings of industry, but that it is a simple expedient of war, to be used only in time of actual warfare with sobriety and moderation, and to be laid by when the truce intervenes. Its own limitations will be self-evident after this book has been read, and need not be explained here.
The first form of Sabotage, which was formerly known as Go Cannie, as Mr. Pouget tells us, consists purely and simply in “going slow” and “taking it easy” when the bosses do the same in regard to wages.
Let us suppose that one hundred men have an agreement with the boss that they should work eight hours a day and get $4.00 in return for a certain amount of work. The American Federation of Labor is very particular — and wisely so — that the amount of work to be done during a day be clearly stipulated and agreed upon by the two contracting parties — the workers and their employers, this for the purpose of preventing any “speeding up.”
Now, to exemplify, let us suppose that these one hundred workers are bricklayers, get fifty cents an hour, work eight hours and, as agreed, lay fourteen hundred bricks a day. Now, one good day the boss comes up and tells them he can’t pay them $4.00 a day but they must be satisfied with $3.50. It is a slack season, there are plenty of idle men and moreover, the job is in the country where the workers cannot very well quit and return home. A strike, for some reason or another, is out of the question. Such things do happen. What are they to do? Yield to the boss sheepishly and supinely? But here comes the Syndicalist who tells them, “Boys, the boss reduced fifty cents on your pay — why not do the same and reduce two hundred bricks on your day’s work? And if the boss notices it and remonstrates, well, lay the usual number of bricks, but see that the mortar does not stick so well, so that the top part of the wall will have to be made over in the morning; or else after laying the real number of bricks you are actually paid for, build up the rest of the plumb line or use broken bricks or recur to any of the many tricks of the trade. The important thing is not what you do, but simply that it be of no danger or detriment to the third parties and that the boss gets exactly his money’s worth and not one whit more.”
The same may be said of the other trades. Sweatshop girls when their wages ar reduced, instead of sewing one hundred pairs of pants, can sew, say, seventy; of, if they must return the same number, sew the other thirty imperfectly — with crooked seams or use bad thread or doctor the thread with cheap chemicals so that the seams rip a few hours after the sewing, or be not so careful about the oil on the machines and so on. But examines are not lacking and we shall not indulge in them. Is this truly and honestly criminal?
The American Federation of Labor has for its motto: “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work.” Let us reverse the equation and we find this motto also means “An unfair day’s work for an unfair day’s wages.” If it is not so, then we must believe that the motto should be more appropriately changed as to read “A fair day’s work for any kind of wages whatever.”
We would like to know what Mr. Gompers and some of his Socialist confreres would advise their adepts to do when they have their wages reduced, and have all means of redress precluded except such a retaliation as this, which, it must be remembered is not intended to be a more spiteful revenge, but a direct attempt to obtain redress. Would they advise them to keep on producing just the same amount as before, regardless of their changed conditions? If so, what becomes of the fairness of the former and the class struggle of the later? They would both become the preachers of passive nonresistance and abject resignation and take away from the workers not only their natural impulse of rebellion, which is the original germ of self-emancipation, but also the very dignity of their labor and manhood. Sabotage, in this case, is just the expression of this dignity and this manhood. It is a logical as a punch in the jaw in answer to a kick in the shins. If anything, it is more manly and more just because it is done under provocation and it does not hit the boss below the belt, as it does not take away from him anything, robs him of nothing, and has no sinister reverberation in his famiilv as a cut in wages has in the family of the toiler. This form of Sabotage is too much like human nature to need any further comment.
This is not the case with the other kind of sabotage. Here we are confronting a real and deliberate trespassing into the bourgeois sanctum — a direct interference with the boss’s own property. It is only under this latter form that Sabotage becomes essentially revolutionary; therefore, to justify itself, it must either create its own ethics (which will be the case when it is generally practiced), Or borrow it from the Socialist philosophy. Mr. Pouget extensively dwells on this subject, therefore I leave it to him to explain the importance of Sabotage during a strike. I only want to ethically justify it before the tribunal of respectable Socialists. Now, it is the avowed intentions of both Socialists and industrial Unionists alike to expropriate the bourgeoisie of all its property, to make it social property.
Now may we ask if this is right? Is this moral and just? Of course, if it be true that labor produces everything, it is both moral and just that it should own everything. But this is only an affirmation — it must be proven. We Industrial Unionists care nothing about proving it. We are going to take over the industries some day, for three very good reasons: Because we need them, because we want them, and because we have the power to get them. Whether we are “ethically justified” or not is not our concern. We will lose no time proving title to them beforehand ; but we may. if it is necessary, after the thing is done. hire a couple of lawyers and judges to fix up the deed and make the transfer perfectly legal and respectable. Also, if necessary, we ,will, have a couple of learned bishops to sprinkle holy water on it and make it sacred. Such things can always be fixed — anything that is powerful becomes in due course of time righteous, therefore we Industrial Unionists claim that the Social revolution is not a matter of necessity plus justice but simply necessity plus strength.
Such, however, is not the case with our respectable comrades, the pure and simple political Socialists. They claim, and are very loud in their protests, that the workers are really entitled by all sorts of laws, natural, human and divine, to the mastership of the world and all that is in it, and in justice to them we must admit that they prove it beyond the shadow of a doubt.
Now, we say this: If the instruments of production rightfully belong to the workers, It means that they have been pilfered from them, and that the capitalist class detains them in an immoral way. It is legal for the bourgeoisie to keep them in accordance to its own laws, but surely it is not “ethically justifiable” from the point of view of our aforesaid comrades. If these instruments of production are ours, they are so as much now as they will be a hundred years hence. Also, being our property, we can do with it whatever we best please — we can run them for our own good, as we surely will; but, if so we choose, we can also smash them to pieces. It may be stupid but it is not dishonest. The fact that the burglars have them in their temporary possession does not in the least impeach our clear title of ownership. We are not strong enough to get them back, just now, but we cannot forego any chances of getting something out of them.
Suppose a band of brigands swoops down on a family and carries away all its belongings. Suppose among these belongings there is a powerful Gatling gun. Suppose the only man who can operate this gun is a member of the said family and that he is forced by the band to do so during the ensuing schedule. Has he not the right to break a spring or do something or other to the gun so as to make it useless? By all means — he has a double right to do so — first, because the gun is his whether the bandits have it or not; second, because he is not supposed to leave such a dangerous machine in the hands of the enemy when it can be used against himself and his own kin.
Now if the workers are the original owners of a factory which is fraudulently held by a gang of pirates, in their struggles to regain control of it they are truly and undoubtedly justified in spiking there whatever guns can be aimed at them.
If it is just and right to force the capitalist to grant us certain concessions by withdrawing our labor and remaining inactive, why is it not equally just to render equally inactive our own machines, made by our own selves, especially when they are operated not by the capitalists but by the traitors of our own ranks, the scabs?
If tomorrow we shall be fully justified to take away from the master class all of its industries, why shouldn’t we, when it is a question of life and death to us to win or lose a strike, be entitled to mislay or hide for a short while a bolt, a wheel or any other small fraction of its machinery?
We admit that our attitude is indefensible before the capitalist code of ethics, but we fail to see how it can be consistently condemned by those who claim the capitalist system to be a system of exploitation, robbery and murder.
We can’t possibly understand how it is possible that we are fully entitled to all we produce and then are not entitled to a part of it.