Symbolised by the famous black cat drawn by Ralph Chaplin, sabotage is closely associated with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). However, France was where this practice was theorised (if not invented) in the middle of the 1890s, particularly by the revolutionary syndicalist Emile Pouget. The Confédération Générale du ...
(Show more)Symbolised by the famous black cat drawn by Ralph Chaplin, sabotage is closely associated with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). However, France was where this practice was theorised (if not invented) in the middle of the 1890s, particularly by the revolutionary syndicalist Emile Pouget. The Confédération Générale du Travail (General Confederation of Labour, or CGT) officially adopted sabotage as a means of struggle in 1897.
At the beginning, certain French revolutionary syndicalists conceived of sabotage as a voluntary and clandestine degradation of the quality of work, of materials, or of the product itself, in order to harm the interests of the employer alone. The IWW enthusiastically embraced the concept of sabotage, including using the French term, and routinely advocated this tactic from at least 1912 until the great Chicago trial of 1918. Many historians have studied the defence of this means of action, its real or ostensible influence on the practices of the Wobblies, as well as its use by local and federal authorities to repress the organisation. However, fewer have studied the very definition of the concept of sabotage and its evolution during this period. The extreme malleability of this concept raises another question: was sabotage, such as propounded and denounced in the United States during the period when the IWW considered it a legitimate means of struggle, merely the prolongation of the tactic adopted by certain French syndicalists and revolutionaries since the mid-1890s? This paper contends that, far from being reduced to a French influence, IWW defenders of sabotage actually did so based upon a reinterpretation of this concept, which, while used by the Wobblies’ enemies to justify their attacks, ended up acquiring characteristics peculiar to the United States, the likes of which did not appear in France.
Studying the IWW from the standpoint of the practices and concepts it used distinguishes the influence of French revolutionary syndicalism on the organization but also qualifies it. Certainly, sabotage as a concept originated with the CGT. However, the IWW redefined it according to the American context. Despite the very limited conception of sabotage promoted by the IWW, its enemies associated this tactic with a form of treason in wartime. Paradoxically, a rather reductive version of sabotage, while being denounced in the U.S. as an anti-patriotic practice, subsequently contributed to the emergence of a new and much broader concept that included subversive and clandestine acts in the service of a foreign power. However, it was in the United States rather than in France, that sabotage was conceptualised as such and this transformation occurred. The defense of sabotage by the IWW, far from being the pale imitation of a French syndicalist tactic quickly reduced to nothing by the federal government, gave rise to a concept adapted to the U.S. context that indirectly contributed to the international dissemination of yet another iteration of the concept after 1918.
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