The Red Army Faction, a Documentary History (30 page)

However, not everything in this “dissolution paper” is so funny. For instance, the assertion that the 2nd of June Movement “was founded in contradiction to the RAF.” The 2nd of June Movement resulted from the fusion of three West Berlin groups that wanted to develop and organize the armed struggle.

The largest group was the “Tupamaros West Berlin,” which since 1968 had been carrying out various actions in Berlin. Imperialist and
Zionist facilities and symbols were attacked. Factories where workers were being laid off were attacked. And, above all, in the context of the APO's 1969 Justice Campaign, courthouses, judges, and state prosecutors were attacked.

The 2nd of June Movement was able to learn from this practice. The broad range of targets and forms of struggle came out of the experiences of the youth revolt at the time.

The 2nd of June Movement was certainly correct to not develop an
Urban Guerilla Concept
theory like the RAF. That was completely unrealistic. This was a country where after twelve years of Nazi terror and a twenty-year anticommunist campaign, a youth movement was just beginning to consider socialist ideas; a country where after a few years of grappling with the fact that they had no unbroken tradition to fall back on, a mass of proletarian youth began to tentatively and selfconsciously take up the struggle against antisocial policies and oppression, against apathy in the face of genocide and imperialism, against the absurd capitalist machinery of consumption, which hideously deforms human needs into alien sources of profit. Their resistance developed out of their own distress, and they drew their strategic and tactical understanding from the experiences this led to, an ever-deepening analysis of the overall social situation. This dialectical development, based on theory and practice, is the process that Marx recognized as the precondition for revolutionary politics to succeed.

At the time, there was no satisfactory practical experience from which to develop such a definitive
Concept.
The fact that at the time the RAF couldn't put their
Urban Guerilla Concept
into practice proves this.

The contradiction between the RAF and the 2nd of June at that time was the result of the different ways the groups had evolved: the 2nd of June Movement out of their members' social scene and the RAF on the basis of their theoretical revolutionary model. And, equally, as a result of the RAF's centralized organizational model on the one hand, and our autonomous, decentralized structures on the other. Another point of conflict was to be found in the question of cadre going underground, which the RAF insisted on as a point of principle.

As such, the immediate forerunners to the 2nd of June Movement were always open to a practical—proletarian—alternative; an alternative that had nothing to do with competition, but more with different visions of the revolutionary struggle.

There was strong mutual support and joint actions in the early period of both groups, for example the expropriation actions at the three West Berlin bank branches in September 1970. At the time, both groups
proceeded with the idea that the future would determine which political vision would prove effective in the long run.

In this obscure
Dissolution Paper,
Lorenz's capture by the 2nd of June Movement and the freeing of a number of prisoners is heavily attacked. It is argued that “all the errors that we've made over the past ten years are to be found in it.”

Obviously, in the years leading up to 1975, and even in the Lorenz action, mistakes were made—the setback of September 1975
²
proves that all too clearly. But what is passed off here as “self”-criticism reveals a hilarious ignorance that would be hard to beat.

Apparently, “The Stammheim comrades' struggle had given rise to a national and international mobilization, which the widespread hunger strike had brought to a highly developed point with which Schmidt was having difficulty coping.” (And because of this he was on the point of collapse?) And this was barely four weeks after they broke off the hunger strike, because the demand for association in Stammheim could not be achieved at that time.

What “highly developed point” could this be referring to?—perhaps the hunger strike? Or maybe the Berlin election campaign? Or is the struggle in Wyhl part of the political situation? Mass unemployment? Inflation? and and and…

And Schmidt? Now he has a little more to deal with (a shame).

So, this
Dissolution Paper
reads as if the hunger strike nearly led to the downfall of the Western Zones, which, however, didn't happen because the 2nd of June—those bastards of historic proportions—through the “choice of prisoners, politically shifted” the almost hopeless situation that Schmidt faced in his favor.

The 2nd of June, saviors of the nation and Schmidt's aides. (Helmut, where are our Federal Crosses of Merit?!) And all of that just before the RAF was going to tip the balance of power in their favor. That simply can't be true.

To be blunt: whoever today looks at the Lorenz action, the single biggest victory in twelve years of armed struggle, and spreads this sort of shit, is in fact truly brainless, absolutely and totally!

How can these comrades arrive at such ivory tower “appraisals”? The answer can be found in the paper itself.

In this way, revolutionary politics are sold to us as “the attack” that pushes the rupture between society and the state to the breaking point.

Yeah, whatever!

Apparently, we should help to widen the rupture between capitalist society and the form in which it is expressed, the bourgeois state. Sounds like: free the leaders from their roots and then we'll have free leaders.

At least you can't go downhill from there.

This paper is an example of bloated prose, flippancy, hubris, arrogance, contempt for the masses, and resignation.

What is expressed by these contradictory statements is a mirror image of bourgeois society, where, on the one hand, capitalist interests dictate social conditions, and, on the other, armed struggle is an end in itself. In any event, nothing is asked of the people. They are reintegrated into a state of alienation.

Debray described this process correctly in
A Critique of Arms:
the question of what organizational form the revolutionary struggle will take cannot be answered, without other questions also being answered: which class interests does the guerilla serve? Posing the technical problems of the method divorced from its relationship to the goals and aspirations of the masses, whom this method is meant to serve, or tackling the organizational problems of the vanguard independent of the class or the class relationship, of which the vanguard is an instrument, means confusing the means with the ends, and, thereby, losing one's footing. The painfully real decline can be analyzed step by step as follows: initially the military instrument is separated from the social class and the violent method from its economic and social point of application; thereafter, it follows logically that the instrument sets itself above the class and the method above its real point of application, so that these become the governing and determining factors (“the key aspect of the dialectically unified dichotomy”): eventually the instrument—the army or party—takes the place of the class and the method—armed struggle—the place of its objective purpose; in this way the instrument eventually begins to act in its own interests and the revolutionary armed struggle becomes “left-wing terrorism.”

What kind of guerilla is this, the purpose of which is never to be “favorably representing the people so as to gain their approval”? For what and, more importantly, with whom can such a guerilla hope to struggle?

The construction of the dichotomy “populist line vs. political orientation” makes no sense. The problem of an “incorrect populist strategy” isn't the issue—it is a question of the guerilla lagging behind the interests of the people and their willingness to struggle.

Yeah, obviously the 2nd of June Movement's actions were meant to be populist—in the most obvious sense of the word: popular. They were meant to politically win people over to our side, not to push them into
the arms of the state. There's nothing particularly revolutionary about shitting all over the sympathies of the people.

And approval, that is to say, gaining affirmation for an action or for the politics of the guerilla, obviously involves breaking through the rigidity of standard bourgeois consciousness, and that in turn creates the initial support for revolutionary politics. “Approval” creates a situation which allows the guerilla to grow, to remain mobile, to develop its logistics, and to develop options for action.

Ten years ago, we all acted on the basis of the slogan “Serve the People.” In Mogadishu, were the people served? In a single stroke all of our efforts to counter the cops' propaganda about how it could also happen to the “lady selling flowers on the corner” lost all credibility.

The difference between terrorism, which can affect anyone equally, and the revolutionary struggle is that a revolutionary action, both in its intended impact as well as in the way it is conducted—targeting class enemies and their henchmen—does not provide the cops with easy arguments. Otherwise, the action rebounds against those who carry it out. And this is not a question of tactics, but of principles!

Revolutionary politics can only be developed in connection with the potentially revolutionary class—and not against it. Those who constantly complain about the “campaign to break solidarity” should take a moment to consider that they themselves made the basic errors that facilitated this.

It is a key error to fetishize the armed struggle—struggling in order to struggle: “The political attack—made material through armed means—is always a victory, even in cases where the operation is militarily defeated, because it anticipates this process and sets it in motion.” This sentence is a masterpiece of dialectical thinking! Or more plainly: of mental acrobatics. The punch always lands because it initiates and anticipates this process (augurs), even when it misses its mark…

We judge a political attack on the basis of whether it serves a purpose, whether it is advantageous to us and weakens the enemy. And that is the case regardless of the form of the attack—armed/legal/illegal. The political content determines the form of struggle, and not the other way around!

In any event, all of the “classics,” from von Clausewitz, through Mao and Che, slam the idea of the guerilla separating the political from the military!

Continuous military defeat is always the result of political errors.

Not paying attention to one's base, losing any connection to the daily struggle of the people, incorrectly analyzing the political and concrete national/regional conditions of struggle—these are cardinal errors!

Any sober appraisal also shows that this has nothing to do with the much-touted “continuity of the guerilla strategy.” The consistent use of the same strategy over a ten-year period while ignoring ongoing developments and changes has not produced a particularly glorious chapter of political activity.

Debating the overall position presented in this
Dissolution Paper
is almost impossible. For example, “Schmidt has given Western Europe—under the leadership of the FRG—its political definition: the project and model for imperialism in the crisis created by the liberation struggles in the Third World
and in the West European metropole.”
Making political sense of this sentence would require an effort akin to emptying the North Sea with a sieve.

The “unconditional integration of Western Europe into U.S. military strategy” is simply a fabrication, and this should be obvious to everyone given that France has effectively withdrawn from NATO. NATO expresses the common interest of its member states to maintain and extend the “Free West” in opposition to the Soviet Union.

Competition between the different countries in the metropole is a dominant feature within the context of these common strategic interests. From the EC-USA steel war to the Japan-USA-EC automobile war. From the EC's Iran boycott, which really isn't a boycott, to Japan's economic advances in China against the USA/EC. The imperialist states are sometimes appropriately described as “rival siblings,” united by a common enemy, the Soviet Union.

That the countries of the metropole are arming themselves for internal reasons is a characteristic of every capitalist state, now as in the past; they must do so in order to suppress their own “citizens” in times of crisis—not because there is an “increasing unity of revolutionary struggles worldwide.” This mindset can only lead one to disregard all of the specific conditions of particular struggles, the basis for these struggles, their fundamental nature, etc. so as to suggest an “objective” connection between the uprising in Southeast Asia and the recent ÖTV
³
collective agreement. The masses, who make history, make it wherever it is that they find themselves. Those who live here, but set their watches by the time in Tehran or Hanoi, are deluding themselves, are falling into a form of lunacy that has nothing to do with proletarian internationalism.

Those who constantly work themselves up into an almost Teutonic sense of cataclysm, claiming that imperialism is facing defeat in the
Third World and will depart the world stage with sound and fury, are throwing sand into their own eyes and the eyes of others! The “chain of defeats from Angola to Kampuchea” they refer to is only impressive if you overlook imperialism's victories: Egypt, Somalia, China, and Iraq, and the ongoing situation in South Korea.

The everyday realities of imperialism and the way it develops are persistently mistaken for its death struggle. That, however, will occur in the metropole; here where its wealth is produced by working people and where it draws the strength to rule other countries. This is why it is not the case that the national liberation of Third World countries creates a problem that imperialism cannot solve.