The Red Army Faction, a Documentary History, Volume 1 (21 page)

This will not always be the case. In contradistinction to its anti-imperialism, this class orientation at times approximated left-communism in its focus on working class self-activity and alienation. Partly, the explanation for this can be found in the political experiences and trajectories of the core members of the RAF at this point: the sixties revolt and the APO, with their grounding in not only Marxism-Leninism and anti-imperialism, but also Frankfurt School Marxism, the “apprentices collectives,” and, via the SPK, radical therapy.

At the same time, the period between 1969 and 1973 was one of heightened class conflict in the FRG, beyond and at times against the trade union leadership, with wildcat strikes often being led by women, youth, and immigrant workers. Combined with the sudden turn of many former APO comrades to the new “proletarian” K-groups, this created a context in which it would have been difficult to elaborate a revolutionary strategy without dealing with the question of the working class.

As we shall see later on, some of the ideas in this document were soon qualified, if not rejected, while others were sharpened, finding their place in the centre of the RAF’s worldview.

Finally,
Serve the People
provides the RAF’s response to Karl-Heinz Ruhland, who had been turned into an instrument of police propaganda. Similarly, two drop-outs from the guerilla, Beate Sturm and Peter Homann, were also excoriated as traitors.

Unlike Ruhland, Sturm’s main crime seems to have been that, subsequent to leaving the RAF, she contacted the media, providing
Spiegel
with a highly unflattering portrait of the group.

Homann’s story, on the other hand, was more complex; some controversy about his falling out with the group remains even today. While there are radically different versions of the circumstances, it is clear that he was on very bad terms with his erstwhile comrades upon his return from the Jordan training trip in 1970. Immediately after this, he and his friend Stefan Aust traveled to Sicily where Meinhof’s seven-year-old twin daughters were being cared for by comrades. Pretending to be members of the RAF, the two men took Meinhof’s girls with them, delivering them to their father,
konkret
editor Klaus Rainer Röhl.

It seems likely that this direct intervention to thwart Meinhof’s plans for her children played some part in provoking his denunciation as a traitor in
Serve the People
. There are contradictory versions of why Homann did what he did,
¹
but regardless of the facts surrounding this initial “treason,” he would fully earn the sobriquet later that year, going so far as to provide the police with information, and to testify against the guerilla in court.
²

In retrospect,
Serve the People
is significant not so much in its contents, but in its timing, by which it serves as the end of a chapter. With its explanations of the bank robberies and the painstaking preparations undertaken, it allowed the guerilla to deal with some preliminary questions before moving on to grander schemes.

It would be the last theoretical document produced by the RAF outside of prison for almost ten years.

The cops will continue to fumble about in the dark, until circumstances oblige them to see that the political situation has become a military situation
.

Marighella

The truth of the matter is that no further information has come out about the group since the first twenty were trained in Jordan. The RAF’s work is clandestine. The “security forces,” the security agencies, the police, the BND, the
Verfassungsschutz
, the BAW,
Spiegel
, and the Springer Press know nothing.

They know nothing about the size, the number of members, the organization, the firepower, or the tactics of the group. Everything written about us by the police state for public consumption over the past year and a half is false, is speculation, or is counterpropaganda with the objective of discrediting the theory and practice of the urban guerilla and driving a wedge between us and our base.

I haven’t considered turning myself in. No RAF members have considered turning themselves in. So far no RAF prisoner has provided testimony. Announcements of successes against us have only been about arrests or killings. The guerilla’s strength lies in the determination of each of us. We are not on the run. We are here organizing armed resistance against the regime of the propertied classes and the ongoing exploitation of the people.

The RAF’s current activities are directed towards the formation of politico-military cadre, acquiring better arms and training for revolutionaries, and the anchoring of the group in a sympathetic scene that is ready to support armed resistance. The tactical line that we are currently following is to develop the propaganda of the urban guerilla through the revolutionary organizations that are still legal and to develop broadbased logistical support amongst all layers of the population.

None of us see any subjective or objective basis for betraying the struggle to which we have committed ourselves; not Genscher’s dirty amnesty deal, not Ruhland, the Social Democrats’ van der Lubbe,
¹
not the extensive militarization of the police, not prison, not torture, and not the police terror against the population. “The stones they have thrown will fall at their own feet.”
²

If the price for our lives or our freedom is to be the betrayal of the anticapitalist struggle, there is only one response: we won’t pay it.

The armed struggle does not develop from one headline to the next. The politico-military strategy of the urban guerilla is based in the resistance to parliamentary democracy’s fascist drift and the organization of the first regular units of the Red Army in the people’s war. The battle has just begun.

Andreas Baader
January 24, 1972

Everyone dies, but death can vary in its significance. The ancient Chinese writer Szuma Chien said, “Though death befalls all men alike, it may be heavier than Mount Tai or lighter than a feather.” To die for the people is heavier than Mount Tai, but to work for the fascist and die for the exploiters and oppressors is lighter than a feather
.

Mao tse Tung

“The armed struggle is a technical issue and therefore requires technical knowledge: training, morale and last of all practice. In this area, improvisation has cost many lives and led to failed attacks. The ‘spontaneity’ that some people romanticize, speaking vaguely about the people’s revolution and ‘the masses,’ is either simply a dodge or it indicates that they have decided to rely upon improvisation during a critical phase of the class struggle. Every vanguard movement must, if they want to remain true to themselves at the decisive moment in the class struggle, analyze and understand the violence of the people, so as to correctly direct it against oppression, thereby achieving the goal with the least sacrifice possible.”
¹

ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE!

20,000 die every year because the stockholders of the automobile industry only care about profit and, therefore, don’t stop to consider technical safety issues for automobiles or road construction. 5,000 people die every year at their workplace or on their way to or from it, because the owners of the means of production only consider their profits and don’t care about an increase or a decline in the number of accidental deaths. 12,000 commit suicide every year, because they don’t want to die in the service of capital; they’d rather just get it over with themselves. 1,000 children are murdered every year, as a result of living in low quality housing, the only purpose of which is to allow the landlord to pocket a large sum.

People treat death in the service of the exploiter as normal. The refusal to die in the service of the exploiter leads to what people think of as “unnatural deaths.” The desperate actions of people, coping with the working and living conditions that capital has created, are perceived as crimes. People feel there’s nothing to be done about the situation. To ensure that the incorrect perspective of the people is not replaced with a correct perspective, the Federal Minister of the Interior, the
Länder
Ministers of the Interior and the BAW have set up police death squads. Without this incorrect perspective about crime and death, the ruling class could not maintain its rule.

Petra, Georg, and Thomas died in the struggle against death at the hands of the exploiters. They were murdered so that capital could continue killing undisturbed, and so that people would continue to think that nothing can be done about the situation. But the struggle has begun!

“Murdered—The Struggle Continues”: poster protesting the police killings of Petra Schelm, Thomas Weissbecker, and Georg von Rauch
.

I.
PERSIA AND THE
CONTRADICTION WITHIN THE NEW LEFT
Brandt has flown to Tehran to visit the Shah and calm his remaining distress about the greeting he received from West German and West Berlin students during the summer of 67; to inform him that the left in the Federal Republic and in West Berlin is dead, that what remains will soon be liquidated, that the Confederation of Iranian Students
¹
is effectively isolated, and about the Foreigners Act that is in the works and that will allow for their legal liquidation.

In this way Brandt has revealed the true nature of his foreign and domestic policies; they are the foreign and domestic policies of the corporations meant to control foreign and external markets and to determine who holds political power

In Tehran Brandt said, “The foreign policy of the Federal Republic must be based on its own interests and must remain free of ideological bias.” The interests of the Federal Republic in Persia are the interests of the German enclave in Tehran, which is to say Siemens, AEG-Telefunken, Bayer, BASF, Hoechst, Daimler-Benz, Deutsche Bank, Mannesmann, Hochtief, Klöckner-Humboldt-Deutz, Merck, Schering, Robert Bosch, the Bayerische Vereinsbank, Thyssen, Degussa, and others. They are the ones that had the greetings to the Chancellor published in Tehran’s newspapers.

The Shah also contributed a statement to the daily press celebrating the Chancellor as a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, because the Shah also has no ideological biases; concerning cheap labor in Iran, concerning stable political conditions in Iran, not to mention raw materials and certain nearby markets.

Under “ideological biases,” the Chancellor and the Shah subsume the interests of the German and Persian peoples regarding the relationship between their two countries. Three days before Brandt’s arrival, four comrades were murdered in Tehran and Thomas Weissbecker was murdered in Augsburg. A week after Brandt’s return, nine death penalties were carried out against comrades in Tehran. Meanwhile, Attorney General Martin
²
praised the police officers for so impressively proving their worth in the manhunts in Augsburg and Hamburg.

German capital in Persia is taxed at a lower rate than other capital in Persia. German development aid credit finances German projects in Persia; and the imperial arsenal in Persia is to be modernized with the help of the German military. A 22 million
DM
³
investment in the Persian arms industry in 1969 meant 250 million
DM
⁴
in follow-up orders for the German arms industry. The Shah’s regime plans to use
G
-3s and
MG
-3s
⁵
in the struggle against “crime” in Persia, so that in the future wages will remain low, political conditions will remain stable and the conditions of exploitation will remain favorable for German capital. Meaning that pressure for increased wages at home can be handled with threats to move production out of the country. Pressure will also be applied to the public at home, because antifascist protest against the Shah threatens the foreign policy interests of the Federal Republic of Germany.

After prostrating himself in Poland,
⁶
the Chancellor now prostrates himself before the murderous Shah. The repression of the Polish, Russian, Czech, and Hungarian peoples by German fascism is no longer gong on. The repression of the Persian people under German imperialism is what is going on now. The Nuremberg Conventions are no longer in effect, but laws against Iranian students, against Greek, Turkish, and Spanish workers, who all come from countries with fascist regimes, are a current reality. German corporations profit from the fascism in these countries, controlling foreign workers here with the threat of what the fascism at home means for them. They are safe from the death penalty, which imprisoned comrades here are spared, but which is enforced in Persia, Turkey, Greece, and Spain.