The purpose of this paper is to characterize simple sabotage, to
outline its possible effects, and to present suggestions for inciting
and executing it.
Sabotage varies from highly technical _coup de main_ acts that require
detailed planning and the use of specially-trained operatives, to
innumerable simple acts which the ordinary individual citizen-saboteur
can perform. This paper is primarily concerned with the latter type.
Simple sabotage does not require specially prepared tools or equipment;
it is executed by an ordinary citizen who may or may not act
individually and without the necessity for active connection with an
organized group; and it is carried out in such a way as to involve a
minimum danger of injury, detection, and reprisal.
Where destruction is involved, the weapons of the citizen-saboteur are
salt, nails, candles, pebbles, thread, or any other materials he might
normally be expected to possess as a householder or as a worker in his
particular occupation. His arsenal is the kitchen shelf, the trash
pile, his own usual kit of tools and supplies. The targets of his
sabotage are usually objects to which he has normal and inconspicuous
access in everyday life.
A second type of simple sabotage requires no destructive tools
whatsoever and produces physical damage, if any, by highly indirect
means. It is based on universal opportunities to make faulty decisions,
to adopt a noncooperative attitude, and to induce others to follow
suit. Making a faulty decision may be simply a matter of placing tools
in one spot instead of another. A non-cooperative attitude may involve
nothing more than creating an unpleasant situation among one’s fellow
workers, engaging in bickerings, or displaying surliness and stupidity.
This type of activity, sometimes referred to as the “human element,” is
frequently responsible for accidents, delays, and general obstruction
even under normal conditions. The potential saboteur should discover
what types of faulty decisions and the operations are _normally_ found
in this kind of work and should then devise his sabotage so as to
enlarge that “margin for error.”