Direct Action & Sabotage: Three Classic IWW Pamphlets from the 1910s

The pamphlets reprinted here were first published in the 1910s amid great controversy. Even then, the tactics of direct action and sabotage were often associated with the cartoonists’ image of the disheveled, wild-eyed anarchist armed with stiletto, handgun, or bomb—the clandestine activity of a militant minority or the desperate acts of the unorganized.

The activist authors of the texts in this collection challenged the prevailing stereotypes. As they point out, the practices of direct act...