By Lobo x99 (Franklin Rosemont) - Industrial Worker, May 1988
(Review of) Ecodefense, A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching – Edited by Dave Foreman and Bill Haywood, Forward! by Edward Abbey.
Nearly seventy-five years ago—on November 8, 1913, to be exact—the Industrial Worker’s sister paper Solidarity ran a notice headed “Attention, Rebels!,” which proposed, “a handbook on sabotage as complete as possible.” The author, Fellow Worker Wilfurd Dennis, asked Wobblies to let him know “of any and every kind of sabotage you ever heard of and any kind possible that you can think of.”
We do not know what happened to Fellow Worker Dennis’s ambitious project, but it does not seem to have reached book form. The IWW did publish some notable literature on the subject, however, including the humorous pamphlet, Sabotage, by Industrial Worker editor Walker C. Smith, and another of the same title by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, these were initially published by the autonomous IWW Publishing Bureau in Cleveland and later under the Union’s official imprint in Chicago. The original classic treatise, also titled Sabotage, by French anarcho-syndicalist Emile Pouget. was translated and introduced by the great Wobbly poet Arturo Giovannitti, published by Charles H. Kerr, and regularly included on the IWW’s literature list.[1]
Old-time Wobblies defined sabotage as “the conscientious withdrawal of efficiency,” a simple means of working class self-defense against the tyranny of capitalist slave masters. Non-violence was its essence; the only things hurt by Wobbly sabotage were the bosses’ profits and pride. During World War I the Establishment’s professional liars in government, business and the press cooked up ludicrous horror-stories in an effort to hood-wink people into believing that sabotage was a synonym for terrorism. Such contemptible falsehoods helped send many Wobs to jail, but the fact remains that, as Eldridge Foster Dowell pointed out in his scholarly History of Criminal Syndicalism Legislation (Johns Hopkins, 1939), “no case of an IWW saboteur caught practicing sabotage or convicted of its practice is available.”
Ecodefense is the kind of comprehensive compilation called for by Fellow Worker Dennis in Solidarity so many moons ago. It does an old Wobbly’s heart good to see that this new how-to book sets the record straight in regard to the dignity and decency of sabotage. “We’re not terrorists, we’re saboteurs,” Dave Foreman declares, and specifies clearly that sabotage, or monkeywrenching, is a form of “nonviolent resistance . . . It is not directed toward harming human beings or other forms of life. It is aimed at inanimate machines and tools. Care is always taken to minimize any possible threat to other people (and to the monkeywrenchers themselves).”
Now this is a manual by and for environmentalists, designed to help them resist “the destruction of natural diversity and wilderness” But like all great works of literature, Ecodefense abounds in suggestions that are open to a wide variety of applications. Everyone who works for a living (and the unemployed, too) will find plenty of food for thought in these 312 well-illustrated pages.
The titles of some chapters and subsections give an idea of its scope: “Roads and Tires”, “Vehicles and Heavy Equipment”, “Animal Defense”, “Fence Cutting”, “Miscellaneous Deviltry”, “Fun with Slingshots”, “Billboard Revision”, and “Silent Agitators” (now I wonder where they got that one?).
In his preface, Edward Abbey truly says that “Never was such a book so needed, by so many, for such good reasons, as here and now. Tomorrow may be too late … No good American should ever go into the woods again without this book and, for example, a hammer and a few pounds of 60-penny nails.”
Of course, as Foreman points out, Ecodefense is “for entertainment purposes only.” And while disclaimers are on tap (this is for any timid souls who may be hiding among our subscribers), please don’t anyone get the idea that us Wobblies actually advocate any of the impolite and (gasp!) illegal things set forth in this excellent and invaluable book.
But then again, don’t forget that lots of great books have advocated illegal things. Tom Paine’s Common Sense urged American independence—the British called it “treason.” Wendell Phillips wrote many a pamphlet urging mass disobedience of the U.S. law upholding slavery. And right now, at any time, President What’s-his-name[2] could declare unions illegal, couldn’t he? (Remember PATCO!) So let’s not worry too much about the bosses’ laws, okay?
Far and away the best book of its kind, Ecodefense is highly informative, wildly humorous, philosophically right on target, and chockfull of helpful anecdotes and playful cartoons. It is also a marvelous inspiration, damn good reading, and unreservedly recommended to all rebel workers and free spirits every-where.
Footnotes:
[1] However; by 1917, the IWW officially was rethinking “sabotage”
[2] Ronald Wilson Reagan