ARCHISM) is not strictly included in this, though in polemical writers the two types of action are often confused. The common est form is destruction of machinery, but the doing of very bad work, deliberately designed to break down, is also frequent. De struction of the tools of blacklegs is an allied form of sabotage (it was common in Sheffield in the '6os under the name of "rattening") ; and, like sabotage in general, is only common when peaceful picketing is forbidden.
Sabotage as a policy has been advocated by the French trade unions and the (mainly American) Industrial Workers of the World. In both cases the reason given is that the workers are engaged in a class struggle in which the capitalist class shrinks from no methods however brutal, and that the workers cannot afford to abstain from any weapon for sentimental reasons. Its chief advocates, the French syndicats and the I.W.W., emerged from the war of 1914-18 and the ensuing crisis much weakened, and the Russian Revolution of Nov. 1917 had injured the general
case for sabotage.
Sabotage is also, of course, a weapon commonly employed in war time, or even in peace, against the essential industries of a hostile power. It may be the results of spy action (probably un common) or due to the action of nationally oppressed workers. It is commonly supposed that the Czech workers employed in the arsenals took effective and extensive sabotage action after the invasion by Germany in March 1939. But facts about such sabotage are naturally unobtainable, it being to the interest of both sides to conceal them.
See Georges Sorel, Reflexions sur la Violence (Iwo) ; E. Pataud and E. Pouget, Comment nous ferons la Revolution (Eng. tr. 1913) ; E. Pouget, Le Sabotage (Iwo) ; and SYNDICALISM, Somusm, TRADE UNIONS, DIRECT ACTION and INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD.
(R. W. P.)