undesirable or impossible. It has many forms, some
clearly innocent, some open to grave objections. One
form of sabotage which has been adopted by shop
assistants is to tell customers the truth about the
articles they are buying; this form, however it may
damage the shopkeeper's business, is not easy to
object to on moral grounds. A form which has been
adopted on railways, particularly in Italian strikes,
is that of obeying all rules literally and exactly, in
such a way as to make the running of trains practically
impossible. Another form is to do all the
work with minute care, so that in the end it is better
done, but the output is small. From these innocent
forms there is a continual progression, until we come
to such acts as all ordinary morality would consider
criminal; for example, causing railway accidents.
Advocates of sabotage justify it as part of
war, but in its more violent forms (in which it is
seldom defended) it is cruel and probably inexpedient,
while even in its milder forms it must tend to encourage
slovenly habits of work, which might easily persist
under the new regime that the Syndicalists wish
to introduce. At the same time, when capitalists
express a moral horror of this method, it is worth
while to observe that they themselves are the first
to practice it when the occasion seems to them appropriate.
If report speaks truly, an example of this
on a very large scale has been seen during the Russian
Revolution.