Emile Pouget Archive
Written: 1898.
Source: RevoltLib.com
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
Proletarian sabotage and capitalistic sabotage. The saboters of the mile. Saboters of the mills. Saboters of iron and steel. The great contractors of the fatherland. From the workers sabotage drops the gold of the bourgeoisie. From the capitalist sabotage oozes out human blood.
As we have stated, in examining the various systems of proletarian sabotage, under whatever form and at whatever moment it manifests itself, its chief characteristic consists — absolutely always — in hitting at the bosses’ pocketbook.
For the workers’ sabotage which is aimed only at the means of exploitation, against the machines and the tools, that is against inert, painless and lifeless things, the bourgeoisie has nothing but curses and maledictions. OD the other hand, the detractors and slanderers of the working class were never scandalized and never show any anger against another sort of sabotage truly criminal, monstrous and abominable, which is the very life essence of modern society: the sabotage of the capitalists which reaps human victims and deprives men of their health by sticking like a leech at the very sources of life.
This bourgeois impassiveness and indifference to this sort of sabotage which is actually criminal — arises from the fact that the bourgeoisie draws most of its profits from it.
Saboters are the farmers and traders who, by adulterating the milk, chief nourishment of childhood, sap the very root of the growing generation.
Saboters are the millers and boss bakers who, by mixing talcum, chalk or other cheap but harmful ingredients with flour, adulterate the bread, a nourishment of first necessity.
Saboters the manufacturers of chocolate made with palm and cocoa oil.
Saboters the manufacturers and sellers of coffee mixed with starch, chicory and acorns.
Saboters the grocers who sell pulverized pepper made with almond shells and olive stones.
Saboters the confectioners who sell glucose taffy, creams made with vaseline, honey with starch and chestnut meal.
Saboters the manufacturers of vinegar with sulfuric acid.
Saboters the dairymen who sell cheese made of starch and butter of margarine.
Saboters the brewers whose beer is distilled from corn leaves.
Saboters the great patriotic and public-spirited contractors of the great army supplies with paper soles, cartridges with dust and who sell fermented wheat, rotten canned goods, etc.
Saboters the iron and steel barons who build the powerful boilers of the warships with cracks and weak spots that will cause their explosion and the murder of thousands.
Saboters the great importers of meat from clandestine abattoirs where tuberculous cattle are slaughtered.
Saboters the building and railway contractors, the furniture makers, the manufacturers of chemicals and fertilizers — in short, all the captains of industry of any caliber, cut and make. All saboters — all, without one single exception, because all trick, fake, adulterate, defraud and swindle.
Sabotage reigns supreme in the capitalist world it is everywhere — in industry, commerce, agriculture.
Now, this sort of capitalist sabotage which saturates the present society and constitutes the element in which this society breathes, as we breathe in the oxygen of the air, this sort of sabotage which will only disappear with the downfall of capitalist society itself, is much more damnable than the sabotage of the workers.
The latter — it is well to emphasize the point — hits capital only in the bank account, whilst the former strikes at the sources of human life, ruins the health of the people and fills the hospitals and the cemeteries. From the wounds produced by the proletarian sabotage only gold flows out. From those inflicted by the capitalist sabotage, it is human blood which gushes out in streams.
The workers’ sabotage is inspired by generous and altruistic principles. It is a shield of defense and protection against the usuries and vexations of the bosses; it is the weapon of the disinherited who, whilst he struggles for his family’s existence and his own, aims also to better the social conditions of his class and to deliver it from the exploitation that strangles and crushes it.
It is the ferment of a better life. he capitalist sabotage, on the other hand, is nothing but a means of increasing exploitation and profits. It does nothing but whet the ravenous appetites of the exploiters, that are never satisfied.
It is the expression of a loathsome voracity of an unquenchable thirst of riches which does not even stop at crime!