Sabotage, Anomie, and the Economy

n The Engineers and the Price System, Thorstein Veblen defined “sabotage” as “the conscientious withdrawal of efficiency” from productive activity. He then enlarged its meaning from signifying spiteful and covert destruction to embracing all restrictive practices—of firms as well as of workers—that aim to reduce supply as price-raising and market managing strategies. I shall extend this Veblenian notion of sabotage to: (1) the numerous work situations where adverse conditions also tend to generate this “conscientious withdrawal of efficiency,” and (2) a parallel and more general phenomenon whereby social interactions in modern industrial societies tend to generate “anomie” or “the...