Sabotage and Solidarity: "the only thing that can oppose the spreading of a truth is the spreading of a lie."

"Sabotage is the most formidable weapon of economic warfare, which will eventually open to the workers the great iron gate of capitalist exploitation and lead them out of the house of bondage into the free land of the future." -- Arturo M. Giovannitti, Introduction to the English translation of Émile Pouget's Sabotage, Essex County Jail, Lawrence, Massachusetts, August 1912.

The fact is that modern society rests only on appearances and illusions, and derives its raison d’etre not from the existence or nonexistence of certain things, but on the general accepted credence that these things do or do not exist. Truth becomes a menace to society and hence a crime, not when it is seen and felt by personal experience, though everybody see and feel it, but only when it is told and exposed, for then only it becomes subversive by being discussed and reasoned over.

This is especially true of the conditions of the working classes. Every working man is poor and miserable, but only when he hears his woes described from the speaker's platform or sees his tragedy re-enacted on the stage does he become conscious of it, and therefore dangerous to the digestion of his masters.

Hence, the necessity of agitators and "fanatics" and the frantic efforts of the master class to keep tightly the cover on the Pandora jar. That Sabotage has been practiced more or less generally. for centuries they unmistakingly know, but that it should be now told, explained, justified and perfected into a veritable weapon of attack and defense they cannot for one second countenance. For these gentlemen, there are no classes in America. There was no Socialism in America up to four years ago, when it yelled so loud that they had to jump up and bow to it.

Now there is no Syndicalism, and, of course, there never was and never shall be any Sabotage except in the vaporings of some frothy-mouthed foreign agitators.

It is the wisdom of the ostrich, say you. No, by no means -- it is the wisdom of Argus who sees everything with his hundred eyes and knows that the only thing that can oppose the spreading of a truth is the spreading of a lie.