The Red Army Faction, a Documentary History

by J. Smith

  The second revision in the May Paper concerned the potential for revolution in the First World, more commonly referred to as the “metropole” or even just the “center.” Whereas the RAF had traditionally held that theirs was a rearguard position, with the central struggle being found in the Third World, the May Paper argued that the struggle in the metropole had itself now become an important variable in the world revolution. The system was apparently slipping into deep crisis, and in its desperation might even resort to nuclear annihilation. At this critical juncture, imperialism needed to maintain its control everywhere at once; it therefore followed that it could be destabilized by resistance breaking out anywhere at any time.

  Within this global field, pregnant with possibility, Western Europe was singled out as occupying a particularly important position, it being the “point of intersection between East and West, North and South, state and society,” a “cornerstone” for the world revolution, and “ripe” for radical change.

  Although never explicitly stated, by repeatedly describing the proposed guerilla front as “West European” (as opposed to West German), the May Paper also raised the prospect of greater formal cooperation between guerillas in different countries, an idea that would be more fully taken up in due course. With some ambiguity, over the years to come, the term “the front” would be used to refer to each of these concepts: the front formed by aboveground and underground combatants, the front formed by the revolutionaries of the metropole and those of the Third World, and eventually even a front formed by different West European guerilla groups working together.

  The May Paper’s third theme was an appraisal of the events and consequences of ‘77. Admitting it had made mistakes, and that ‘77 had dealt the guerilla its largest setback to date, the RAF nevertheless proposed that the overall effect had been to push the movement forward:

  [I]n the autumn of ‘77, all real opposition was faced with a new situation and new operating conditions, both in terms of the existing reality and in terms of the prospects for future struggle. This forced everyone to fundamentally redefine their relationship to power—or else renounce their identity…. This leap in consciousness was the personal, living moment within real people where the conditions of struggle here changed: IN FAVOR OF DEVELOPING A REVOLUTIONARY FRONT IN THE METROPOLE.

  The RAF noted the stark contrast between the optimistic, student-based, sixties left and the eighties “no future” rebels in the squats—“Cold, without illusions, expecting nothing from the state”—and, furthermore, viewed this as a positive development, explaining that, “This is the terrain upon which the revolutionary front in the metropole is now developing.” Despite conceding that it had made some errors, the RAF largely credited its own actions for this new hardline attitude:

  [T]he dialectic of the ‘77 confrontation led to qualitatively new subjective conditions of struggle here and to the definite integration of contradictions in the center into the development, the imperative, and the possibility of international class war. In this sense, it came at the right time.

  Finally, although Western Europe now stood alongside the Third World as a key site of struggle, the RAF continued to avoid the usual approach of identifying and naming social sectors that had a material interest in revolution. In no way did the May Paper represent a turn to the working class. Neither was it quite the same as the RZ’s embrace of movementism, of variegated citizen complaints giving rise to multiple sites of resistance; nor, despite the appearance of groups like WAIW, were the antipatriarchal politics of Rote Zora in any way approximated.7 Rather, the May Paper continued to build upon the RAF’s traditional (ungendered) radical subjectivity, the idea that by experiencing the violence and repression of the capitalist state, and the sense of collectivity that came from fighting back alongside others, people might undergo a psychological break with the system. In Serve the People, written in 1972, it had been proposed that this break would lead people to join the guerilla; now the May Paper updated this to the somewhat more realistic view that they would rally to the “resistance” and its front:

  We have already had this experience ourselves, and we are ready to share it with those we know: the decisive moment for the breakthrough, which shows how far we’ve come, is the struggle of those who have begun to act within the framework of this strategy, or who want to participate as subjects within the framework of the anti-imperialist front. They have started to anticipate this within themselves and for themselves and to determine all political initiative and action from this perspective and toward this end. They think of everything they do from the perspective of the fighting front.

  Initially, the RAF’s line on radical subjectivity had drawn upon ideas circulating in the New Left, ideas which signaled a break with what was (somewhat unfairly) looked down upon as the narrow class focus and cultural conservatism of their predecessors. Radical subjectivity emphasized the view that for all its wealth, life in the metropole left people psychologically and culturally bereft. At times sounding like a distant echo of the Situationists or the Frankfurt School, the RAF had applied this analysis in a unique way by combining it with violent action and an anti-imperialist worldview.

  It is not surprising that when the May Paper was released over ten years later, it too contained themes that one could hear being voiced by quite different political thinkers—thinkers who in the 1980s were now pondering the shortcomings of the New Left. Although the RAF had retained the idea of a primary contradiction, this had been projected outwards, onto the Third World; as such, within the metropole the RAF was now able to embrace not only the reality of multiple sites of resistance, but also the way in which a revolutionary identity could be forged sui generis, out of resistance itself, with no blueprint for the future required. At its most simple, this was expressed in the phrase (often mocked by detractors), that, “The revolutionary strategy here is simply a strategy against their strategy.”

  While some might object that this could not provide a sustainable basis for action, and that its proponents were opening themselves up to a new host of errors, it did reflect the zeitgeist of the day. From the Revolutionary Cells to post-structuralist Marxists like Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, by 1982 the blueprint and the big-theory-that-explains-it-all had fallen out of favor, in a philosophical turn whereby opposing suddenly seemed infinitely better than proposing. Such ideas were particularly attractive after the 1970s—a period during which the K-Groups in particular had pushed the grand narrative to absurd lengths—and especially among the Autonomen. Where the RAF distinguished itself was in declaring that it would harness this micropolitical anomie to what remained a quintessentially macropolitical project, the destruction of imperialism.

  Yet, if the May Paper was intended to woo the Autonomen, it would have mixed results at best. While the idea of the guerilla and the militant left working in tandem was appealing, it was noted that even in this “self-critical” document, the May Paper’s authors continued to place themselves at the center of the struggle, taking it for granted that the left should orient itself around the RAF. Furthermore, many people felt that the entire front strategy echoed that of the Revolutionary Cells, and yet the RZ was never directly referred to at any point in the document.

  As one Autonomen critique, published in radikal, put it,

  The so-called new, positive orientation is woolly and ill-defined. The new movements are not named nor are their motivations analyzed. They are only referred to in the context of the conflict between the state and the guerilla. The authors see the guerilla in the traditional vanguardist manner in which it is coterminous with the RAF. The armed struggle of the RZ and the independent cells, which played an important role in spreading armed and militant struggle within the left, is never mentioned. For the first time, the political significance of militant struggles alongside the guerilla is recognized. It is suggested that all three milieus must form a common front. The paper says little about what the nature of this front will be. The RAF is seen as the for
ce around which other movements are arrayed, without the nature of the connection between them being clarified. The “strategy” as expressed in the paper is formal and empty, presenting little more than an “everyone together against the system” line.8

  Twenty-five years after the fact, Karl-Heinz Dellwo (who had been transferred to Celle prison, where he would remain until his release in 1995) remembered his own reaction to the May Paper in very similar terms:

  I was rather appalled by the paper. I felt as if I had been cheated out of a reappraisal of 1977. It was the same old thing: what lay behind us was glossed over with something new. Those of us in prison had withheld our criticisms for years in order to allow those on the outside the space to assess things.

  In 1980, it appeared to me that, with the resistance against the Bremen swearing-in exercise, the years of defensiveness and paralysis had been overcome. My view at the time was that this radical left resistance had developed in spite of the RAF’s politics, that there existed independent radical positions in society. The “Front Paper” presented it as if these events occurred suddenly as a result of the dialectic created by the ‘77 offensive! If one saw things that way, reflection was no longer necessary. I felt that was wishful thinking, so as to avoid a necessary self-criticism. In addition, the paper contained platitudes like “our strategy is the strategy against their strategy,” about which those of us in Celle could only shake our heads.9

  Regardless, at the time, Dellwo and the others at Celle continued to hold their tongues, and their criticisms remained unknown.

  While they could not have seemed more different at the time, in retrospect the May Paper might be compared to the RZ’s Revolutionärer Zorn no. 5, released in 1978, which (with far more practical advice, and much less theoretical fanfare) had similarly called for members of the aboveground left to form their own cells and carry out low-level actions. That move by the RZ had been a striking success, but it was an open question whether it could be replicated, especially by a group which had a much heavier reputation and continued to engage in a much more intense conflict with the state. (Of course, another critical difference was that the RZ’s strategy consisted of taking its lead from the aboveground left and encouraging attacks on multiple fronts, whereas the RAF remained wedded to the idea of the guerilla and its aboveground supporters concentrating their fire on specific targets.)

  At the same time, the RAF’s focus on NATO, and its claim that Western Europe was a cornerstone of the world revolutionary process, did not sit well with all of its supporters. Some saw in this new strategy a distressing departure from the anti-imperialist line they had spent years defending. This included individuals who could trace their relationship with the RAF back to the West Berlin commune scene of the APO days. In some cases they had known the founding members personally, and, unlike so many others, they had never stopped supporting the guerilla. While there were no immediate public recriminations, behind the scenes many of these traditional supporters were not at all happy with this new analysis. Indeed, in some cities a generational split would eventually occur around the May Paper, some seeing it as a bold step forward, while others considered it to be a dereliction of the RAF’s internationalist duties.

  These criticisms remained whispered, if not unspoken, for two years. It was a heavy thing to be an anti-imp or a RAF supporter, and leaving the scene or repudiating the guerilla’s choices was not something that was done lightly, at least not while trying to remain true to a pro-guerilla perspective.

  It was 1984 by the time a public version of this critique appeared, in the form of a series of scathing articles in Antiimperialistischer Kampf, a sporadic and very small circulation magazine that had emerged from the Marxist-Leninist Knastgruppe Bochum (Bochum Prison Group), which had taken its distance from the RAF following the 1981 hunger strike. Without presenting the AIK as more than it was, for the purposes of exposition we will go over their critique in some detail, as it summed up many of the misgivings shared by these older supporters. According to AIK:

  The RAF was ideologically anti-white. It consciously placed the anti-imperialist struggle in the metropole under the hegemony of the liberation struggles of the oppressed peoples and nations of the Third World. This made them simultaneously the protagonists of the proletarian position in the class struggle within the FRG and the opponents of the modern revisionism of the left in the FRG. While the student movement’s proletarian parties were developing the chauvinistic specter of a revolution in the FRG, simultaneously reducing their politics to the wage-labor/capital contradiction in the imperialist metropole… the RAF continued to develop the student movement’s ideological dividing line: the criterion for dividing friend from foe in the class struggle in the metropole is that any struggle against imperialism that is not an unconditional struggle against the subjugation of three quarters of the world’s population to the interests of finance capital is in the final analysis a direct betrayal of the international revolution.

  Now, however,

  The better part of the May Paper… consists of a new chauvinist ideology… as the basis for “anti-imperialism.” There are two issues. First, the historical revisionism and the destruction of the anti-imperialist position held by the RAF up until ‘77. Second, the assertion of an international relationship of forces that reflects a true chauvinism, and from which, conversely, that chauvinism can draw nourishment, support itself, and meet its needs.

  The critique continues,

  The RAF’s 1982 May Paper… constitutes a complete revision of the line the RAF formulated in the 1970s, which served as a reference point for an entire section of the anti-imperialist movement in the FRG, laying the groundwork for an entire concrete political experience.

  Such a revision obviously doesn’t occur overnight. It developed in the heart of the RAF itself, and within the anti-imperialist movement, following the execution of the leading RAF cadre in Stammheim in autumn 1977. With the 1981 hunger strike, the Kroesen and Ramstein communiqués, and the trial statements from 1981 on, a strategy and tactic was formulated, on the basis of which the RAF and its section of the anti-imperialist movement would in the future take a position concerning the national and international class struggle that was completely different from the one held in the 1970s. The May Paper is the programmatic document for this new line, and with regard to the important anti-imperialist questions, it constitutes a break with the historical continuity associated with the RAF’s name.10

  The AIK’s critique was twofold. First, by reorienting itself toward the radical left in West Germany, the RAF was no longer operating within the framework of Third World revolution. Second, by adopting an anti-NATO focus and mentioning the Soviet bloc alongside the national liberation movements as factors opposing imperialism, the RAF was adopting a pro-Soviet position. (The AIK, like many Maoist groups, held to a staunchly anti-Soviet version of Marxism-Leninism; its chief criticism of the peace movement, for instance, was its alleged close ties to the “social imperialist” Eastern Bloc. That such views had never been shared by the RAF, either before or after the Stammheim deaths, was well known in the support scene, making these accusations of “betrayal” all the more disingenuous.)11

  While the vehemence of the AIK’s charge does not seem obviously justified by the document itself, there is the intriguing coincidence that at the time the May Paper was being written, the RAF was indeed receiving aid from the GDR. What’s more, during the period that the May Paper was being implemented, the idea did gain currency in anti-imp circles that that the Soviet Union was being threatened with NATO’s new first strike missiles, and that this was what prevented it from intervening to counter imperialism’s attacks on the Third World liberation movements.12

  This was anathema to AIK, which saw the Soviet Union as a major threat to the Third World in its own right:

  [T]he Soviet Union presents its own hegemonic aspirations as a struggle against U.S. imperialism and as the “strategy of world revolution” for the people in the
countries lying between them—through bloody or bloodless neocolonialism in the Third World and with political and military pressure in the Second World… For the peoples of the world, the Soviet Union is an enemy that is as dangerous as U.S. imperialism…

  In the May Paper, the RAF makes this “world revolution” strategy into the anti-imperialist line for the FRG, and as such becomes a direct agent for Soviet hegemonic aspirations and, as such, a section of the social imperialist united front, which intends to conduct its conflict with U.S. imperialism on the backs of the peoples of the world.

  And finally, the May Paper,

  provides a chauvinist ideological basis for a new “anti-imperialism” that focuses on “resolving” the class struggle by developing a white socialism in the FRG, which achieves a fraternal accommodation with social imperialism, because it corresponds to the latter’s social base.13

  While the AIK was always a tiny group even by the standards of the far left, and its magazine was never widely read, its critique of the May Paper became a reference point for a goodly number of older RAF supporters who rejected the guerilla’s new strategy. Even if one did not agree with the AIK—even if one had not read the actual article in question—many of its arguments against the May Paper seemed on point. Within the broader radical left, this critique was of marginal importance (if it was even noticed at all!), the various criticisms from the Autonomen clearly speaking for far more people. However, within the ranks of the RAF’s traditional supporters, the kind of criticisms made by the AIK gave form to many people’s unease and provided a way to step away from the project while retaining one’s anti-imperialist identity. Although in retrospect the AIK itself seems to have been little more than another variant of eighties Maoism, at the time this critique was experienced by some supporters as a way to make sense of changes in the anti-imperialist milieu.