Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

“ Sabotage is simply a war measure and it will go out of existence with the war, just as the strike, the lockout, the policeman the machine gun, the judge with his injunction, and all the various weapons in the arsenals of capital and labor will go out of existence with the advent of a free society. "And then," someone may ask, "may not this instinct for sabotage have developed, too far, so that one body of workers will use sabotage against another; that the railroad workers, for instance, will refuse to work for the miners unless they get exorbitant returns for labor?" ”

“ Is this the brave new world the soldier in the fox-hole, the young wife at home, the girl in the bomber plant, the Negro pilot, dreamed of during the war? There was a common denominator of hope that ran like a golden thread around the world—of peace under a sunny sky and security out of the warm fertile earth and happiness with work and a family and a full life. It is all possible. This is a beautiful, bountiful country, abounding in natural resources. But they do not belong to the people. ”

“ The silk worker takes pride in his product! To talk to these people about being proud of their work is just as silly as to talk to the street cleaner about being proud of his work, or to tell the man that scrapes out the sewer to be proud of his work. If they made an article completely or if they made it all together under a democratic association and then they had the disposition of the silk—they could wear some of it, they could make some of the beautiful salmon-colored and the delicate blues into a dress for themselves—there would be pleasure in producing silk. ”

“ Surely we can profit in America by the experiences of other countries. Must we go through fascism in America to realize the menace of fascism and the importance of fighting against it? Do we have to go through the actual physical agony and material destruction of fascist occupation, see our homes destroyed, our women raped, our Jewish-Americans and Catholic-Americans murdered because of their religion, our books burned, our labor unions smashed, our cities despoiled and our government become a puppet state? ”

“ He knows freedom will come only when his class is willing and courageous enough to fight for it. He knows the risk, far better than we do. But his choice is between starvation in slavery and starvation in battle. Like a spent swimmer in the sea, who can sink easily and apathetically into eternal sleep, but who struggles on to grasp a stray spar, suffers but hopes in suffering—so the worker makes his choice. ”

“ We extend our invitation to the youth, whose lives were cruelly interrupted by a war, whose aspirations are thwarted, whose plans for a career in the arts, professions and sciences are cut short by poverty, whose success is bought only at the price of submission to commercialism, whose finest hopes and noblest ambitions are frustrated in the withering struggle for existence under capitalism. We offer to youth life with a purpose—a chance to help build a new, free world of Socialism. ”

“ But until you eliminate wage slavery and the exploitation of labor it is ridiculous to talk about destroying the moral fiber of the individual by telling him to destroy "his own product." Destroy his own product! He is destroying somebody else's enjoyment, somebody else's chance to use his product created in slavery. There is an other argument to the effect that "If you use this thing called sabotage you are going to develop in yourself a spirit of hostility, a spirit of antagonism to everybody else in society, you are going to become sneaking, you are going to become cowardly. ”

“ Do we have to go through this to realize that we need a powerful labor movement and a large and active Communist Party so that the people can say with assurance—"It will not happen here!"
Who are we—the Communists of America? We are Americans—native born and immigrants; we speak all languages; we are of all religions; of all colors; men and women; young and old. We are miners, steel, railroad, electrical, textile, office workers, trade unionists, farmers, veterans, professionals, housewives, students. We are a cross section of America—folks just like you. ”

“ If you believe that between the workers on the one side and their employers on the other there is peace, there is harmony such as exists between brothers, and that consequently whatever strikes and lockouts occur are simply family squabbles; if you believe that a point can be reached whereby the employer can get enough and the worker can get enough, a point of amicable adjustment of industrial warfare and economic distribution, then there is no justification and no explanation of sabotage intelligible to you. ”

“ We Communists arouse among them not only a burning hatred of exploitation but a strong sense of their own power, of their historical destiny to free themselves and all mankind from all forms of oppression. We need more workers with Communist consciousness to help their fellow workers overcome weaknesses, prejudices and backward notions—the influence of the capitalist class on their thinking. We need more workers—Communists to help educate and organize their fellow workers in the fight for all their immediate needs and for the ultimate establishment of Socialism. ”

“ If the workers consider that sabotage is necessary, that in itself makes sabotage moral. Its necessity is its excuse for existence. And for us to discuss the morality of sabotage would be as absurd as to discuss the morality of the strike or the morality of the class struggle itself. In order to understand sabotage or to accept it at all it is necessary to accept the concept of class struggle. ”

“ Communists had warned unceasingly in every country of traitors, fifth columnists, pro-fascists in government and among the economic royalists, scheming capitalists who flout the rights of the people, and who preferred Hitler to democracy. Communists had warned of those who would divide the people and pit one group against another by Red-baiting and Jew-baiting, labor-baiting and Negro-baiting—which were Hitler's sharpest and most divisive weapons. ”

“ Socialism does not exclude private ownership of personal property; in fact, most of us would have far more under Socialism than we have now. Socialism denies the right to use any savings or possessions to exploit the labor of others. Under Socialism, work is the right and duty of all able-bodied adults in accord with the precept, "He who does not work—neither shall he eat."
Under Socialism, as demonstrated in the Soviet Union, there is no unemployment, no danger of the inevitable crises of capitalism, no "over-production" accompanies by under-consumption. ”

“ But this form of sabotage, capitalist sabotage, is antisocial, for the reason that it is aimed at the good of the few at the expense of the many, whereas working-class sabotage is distinctly social, it is aimed at the benefit of the many, at the expense of the few.
Working-class sabotage is aimed directly at "the boss" and at his profits, in the belief that that is his religion, his sentiment, his patriotism. Everything is centered in his pocket book, and if you strike that you are striking at the most vulnerable point in his entire moral and economic system. ”

“ To be a Communist is not a career. Anyone who is found to be self-seeking or egocentric, who is not capable of collective thought and action or amendable to criticism is eventually eliminated from our ranks, no matter how important a place he may occupy. "The greatest good for the greatest number" is the ethical concept of the Communists. Communists practice an enlightened self-interest in a passionate willingness to work unselfishly so that by freeing the workers from wage slavery all humanity is freed from greed and tyranny. ”

“ Sabotage is one weapon in the arsenal of labor to fight its side of the class struggle. Labor realizes, as it becomes more intelligent, that it must have power in order to accomplish anything; that neither appeals for sympathy nor abstract rights will make for better conditions. For instance, take an industrial establishment such as a silk mill where men and women and little children work ten hours a day for an average wage of between six and seven dollars a week. ”

“ Communists had warned the people at the very beginning against Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and the scheming international bankers and capitalists who supported them. Even when the menace of these sinister figures was being minimized, the Communists clearly saw the dangers they foreshadowed. Later they warned against appeasing fascism by throwing one helpless country after another into its greedy maw—China, Spain, Ethiopia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, until all Europe was engulfed in a wave of terror. ”

“ Sabotage was adopted by the General Federation of Labor of France in 1897 as a recognized weapon in their method of conducting fights on their employers. But sabotage as an instinctive defense existed long before it was ever officially recognized by any labor organization. Sabotage means primarily: the withdrawal of efficiency. Sabotage means either to slacken up and interfere with the quantity, or to botch in your skill and interfere with the quality, of capitalist production or to give poor service. ”