The Red Army Faction, a Documentary History

by J. Smith

  Western Europe is the point of intersection between East and West, between North and South, and between state and society. So the centers themselves are both the launching pads and the bases for restructuring projects. It is here that they must attempt to develop the necessary military power to pressure the socialist states and the national liberation struggles, as well as to develop the economic power necessary to get a grip on the internal waves of economic and social crisis. It is also from these bases that imperialism must intervene to dominate and integrate the emergent developing states. And—as a precondition for all of this—domestic political unity must be imposed; if there is not a consensus, there must at least be peace on the home front. In this sense, imperialism has been forced back to its centers. Using all its resources, it must offensively and aggressively impose the global reactionary project at all levels and with maximum force in the center.

  Medium-range missiles, neutron bombs, conventional weaponry, concentration and centralization of capital, rationalization, plans for massive unemployment, turning humans into simple extensions of machines, the inevitable forceful shaping of energy policy based on its use as a weapon of war on the global market, the destruction of social structures to serve the interests of the police and big capital, exploitation of the means of subsistence, training programs functioning as factories, police, justice, prison, etc. are the initial blows in this militarily conceived offensive. This is the iron vice squeezing all sectors of society in the metropole, which long ago made it irrelevant whether or not we want the front in the center—the war has already begun. The only question today is whether there will be a revolutionary front to oppose the reactionary offensive.

  This is what is behind the emergence of the anti-imperialist front in the center. Its significance is not just measured by whether or not it is able to stop this or that current imperialist project. Whatever it achieves, it achieves as a fighting section within the international front. It is primarily on the basis of the overall conflict between imperialism and liberation that the power relationship is developed that will make social revolution here possible.

  RESISTANCE TO THE IMPERIALIST MACHINE BASED HERE—AND THIS IS ALSO OUR DEFINITION OF GUERILLA ACTION AND BUILDING THE ANTI-IMPERIALIST FRONT—IS BASED ON THE ATTACK AND ON BUILDING THE REVOLUTIONARY FRONT IN THE CENTER WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF THE GLOBAL STRUGGLE.

  The attack, which the overall situation demands, must occur here. On the world stage, the two blocs confront each other with weapons, locked in overkill mode, neither one willing to back down. The liberation movements have become states, and those that have not yet become states behave in a quasi-state fashion. International policy and international relations constitute the principal terrain for these liberation movements and emergent states. They are forced to function within the context of both the East-West contradiction, which reproduces itself within these countries, and the global market, in which and in opposition to which they are forced to pursue their development. At the same time they are forced to attempt to expand the power of the newly liberated states within international bodies, so as to create some room to maneuver for themselves. This development makes complete sense. It is both the expression of the strength achieved through the national liberation struggles and of the weakness that obliges them to continue to function within the imperialist-controlled state system.

  In this situation, development in these countries creates a double-edged contradiction for the leadership of the emergent states. On the one hand, increasing misery, mass poverty, and underdevelopment call for radical solutions. On the other hand, the inevitable nature of the struggle to obtain the resources necessary to address these problems, resources over which the imperialist states have almost complete control, pushes them to come to terms with imperialism. This has the tendency to push them into ever-greater contradictions, which can easily end in divisive disasters, such as civil wars, famine, hopelessness, repression, and intervention. These contradictions are not of their making. They are above all the result of colonial history, from which imperialism continues to profit by exploiting the ruin it leaves behind when it is forced out of a country.

  The guerilla and the militants in the metropole struggle today on the basis of a dynamic created by the liberation movements, and if a movement has existed here for thirty years, it is thanks to the struggles of these liberation movements, just as the situation there is significantly conditioned by the fact that the struggle here is so underdeveloped.

  There can be no way to destroy imperialism as long as there is no way to destroy imperialism’s power, command structures, and productive centers here. In other words, politics must take forceful material form, becoming a significant factor in the international struggle, so as to achieve its goals and establish continuity, and to develop the will and the way forward that will put an end to the system. Only then will the revolutionary leap forward be possible. Imperialism will not collapse on its own. Nor will it collapse by being encircled and strangled from the outside. Unless the front develops here, the world will repeat the historical experience that has been fatal to class struggle in Europe and on the political level in the East-West conflict: irresolvable, bitter trench warfare. This militarily and politically aggressive imperialist system, with its highly developed technology and highly developed productive and organizational techniques, is intent on once again being the sole world power, by militarily opposing the desire of the Soviet Union and the socialist states to remain equal powers and by politically opposing the consciousness of the people of Africa, Latin America, and Asia. This is no longer feasible—but it does have sufficient political, military, and economic power to control, and thereby prevent, development in the countries that have achieved national liberation. It may also be powerful enough to undercut the socialist states by imposing an arms race and using the global market to disrupt their economies. And within the metropole, the state never stops trying to establish imperialist hegemony, using shows of force, police state tactics, and crisis management to keep a decaying society in its place.

  THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERATION

  Steadfast resistance and revolutionary attacks tailored to conditions here are our only option—and it is an option that only we have—for opening up the way to put an end to the system—a way which achieves its purpose by destroying imperialist power.

  As the situation in the metropole ripens, with the development of social production transforming into a source of extermination, the revolutionary struggle here, through its goals and its structure as a fighting front, points the way to a social future beyond the historical threshold of the existing system of states. In the current historical stage, in which the external boundary has been rolled back and the disintegrating imperialist system is in complete internal crisis, the metropole is ripe for change. It is, in fact, ripe for a radical struggle to overthrow social relationships and shift society to communist goals. In this context, life is not simply a series of transitional steps, nor is victory conceived of as seizing state power, but rather as a seamless process of resistance that creates a counterforce and a transition to freedom.

  REVOLUTIONARY POLITICS HERE IS THE STRATEGY THAT UNDERSTANDS EVERYDAY RESISTANCE AS A STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM, AND AS A PART, A STAGE, AND A FACTOR WITHIN THE GLOBAL STRUGGLE, IN WHICH THE GOAL CAN ONLY BE REACHED BY COMBINED ACTION.

  These politics have nothing to do with a global theory. They are not about creating one of those endless successions of ideological blueprints which one pretends will be realized at some future date. It can only be a real process. The route to utopia is a clear, long-term strategy—one might say it is a way of life—within which the strategic goal of destroying imperialist power is tied to a real and immediate transformation. The step-by-step process by which the front develops liberates both political terrain and individuals, destroying the state in the process—by building a counterforce, this process creates the necessary conditions for the politico-military offensive and establishes, as a material development,
the renewal of fully human relationships between the combatants. Immediate transformation, liberated territory, and revolution are fully achieved in the process of resistance—and only as such do they become real. The revolutionary strategy here is simply a strategy against their strategy.

  RESISTING THEIR STRATEGIC PLANS OR THEIR CONCRETE PROJECTS AND USING MATERIAL ATTACKS TO POLITICALLY DISRUPT IMPERIALIST OFFENSIVE OPERATIONS BOTH AT HOME AND ABROAD CREATES THE CONSCIOUSNESS NECESSARY FOR BOTH THE NATIONAL AND THE INTERNATIONAL FRONT TO BLOCK THEIR PLANS BEFORE THEY CAN EXECUTE THEM.

  A SIGNIFICANT FIGHTING FRONT HERE WOULD MATERIALLY DISRUPT THE CONSENSUS IN THE IMPERIALIST CENTER AND, THROUGH THIS DISRUPTION, WOULD MEDIATE A BREAKDOWN AT THE INTERNATIONAL LEVEL DEPRIVING THE SYSTEM OF ITS LEGITIMACY AND APPEAL, BOTH OF WHICH IT REQUIRES TO REPRODUCE ITSELF ECONOMICALLY, AND TO REPRODUCE ITS SYSTEM OF MANIPULATION AND DESTRUCTION INTERNATIONALLY IN THE NEW STAGE.

  SUCH A RADICAL SHIFT IN THE METROPOLE WOULD MAKE IT POSSIBLE TO PUT AN END TO IMPERIALIST POWER AND ITS LEGITIMACY IN THE EYES OF THE PEOPLE, WHO WOULD SEE THAT THE TIME WAS RIGHT TO ESTABLISH A FREE SOCIETY.

  REGARDING ‘77

  The problem that we faced during the Schleyer kidnapping—given our concrete goal of liberating the prisoners—was that we did nothing to advance our political goals during the offensive, nor did we elaborate on the growing contradictions created by the overall crisis. Even though the action touched a nerve for the state, we did not react politically to the challenge we were presented with.

  In the summer of ‘77, the prisoners’ situation had reached such a critical point that we could no longer put off an action to liberate them. The prisoners were on a thirst strike and Gudrun was dying.

  We knew that, at that point, any action would be carried out from a position of relative weakness, but we wanted to act anyway, because war is not a condition that de facto exists between us and them. It only exists if it is developed materially as a question of power. Ever since Stockholm, the question of the prisoners had been central to the conflict between the guerilla and the state, a central question within which the demand for the prisoners’ freedom combined two issues and made them manifest: the relationship of the guerilla to its imprisoned comrades, and the role of this relationship in the struggle, as well as the importance of each individual to the whole—and of the power relations in general, given that the guerilla materially and directly challenged state power, as the attack intentionally aimed to create a political crisis by targeting Schleyer, one of the pillars of the state power structure (this was the only realistic option), thereby forcing a reaction that would expose the internal characteristics of their power structure by forcing them to react, while simultaneously creating divisions among them.

  We hoped to force the SPD to decide whether to exchange these two figures who embodied the global power of West German capital in a way that no more than ten other individuals do: Ponto for international financial policy (revealing how all the German banks, especially his own Dresdner Bank, work to support reactionary regimes in developing countries, as well as the role of the FRG’s financial policy as a tool in the institutional strategy to control the way in which European integration unfolds)—and Schleyer for national economic policy (the large corporations, concerted action, the FRG as an international model of social peace). They embodied the power within the state that the SPD, as the ruling party, must respect if it wishes to stay in power.1

  Our action was meant to expose the contradiction that lies in the tension between the strategy of American capital, which has determined the SPD’s understanding of the state and all of its reactionary maneuvering in matters of domestic and foreign policy since 1945, and the banks and corporations, or, if you prefer, national capital. Certainly, national capital cannot formulate its own policy in the face of the hegemony of the American line—unless you count the narrow, provincial variations of a Kohl or an Albrecht, etc., or Strauß’s grand plan, which he has been trying in vain to carry out for twenty years. But the strength of this national capital, which allows it to be competitive and to spread itself vertically within the overall capitalist structure, finds its natural expression in a consensus and in the consciousness of the national elites, so that Schmidt must represent it consistently at every level, both nationally and internationally.

  The action’s political escalation was defused primarily by the fact that the Ponto kidnapping fell through, and so one of the two pillars of the tactical and political plan was lost. But our critical error was in not completely reconsidering the action when the federal government let the first ultimatum pass, when it became obvious that they had abandoned Schleyer and were awaiting his death, which would allow them to rapidly consolidate their position. Given Schleyer’s efforts to achieve a trade, we recognized that his connections and his influence weren’t worth shit in the face of the united imperialist strategy.

  All along they followed the tactical and psychological program of the BKA: avoid any official government decision and draw things out by pretending to negotiate, all in order to use police tactics to settle matters; prevent any public pressure with a news blackout; use Wischnewski’s trips to so-called welcoming countries to impose an international “condemnation of terrorism,” with the focus, in this case, on the prisoners. All of this objectively gave us the time and the opportunity to exploit the situation politically. For example, to immediately use the conversations with Schleyer to aggravate the contradictions which were disrupting the “unity of all democrats,” contradictions which went as far as the CSU’s attempt to rid themselves of Schmidt by proposing the release of the prisoners, to be immediately followed by the declaration of a state of emergency, which would have signaled the end of any social-democratic policy through an open recognition of the state’s crisis, which would have had to then be resolved at any cost.

  In this situation, characterized by an escalation in which it became obvious that we were on the defensive, the Commando Martyr Halimeh decided to intervene in the growing crisis, in the way that they were able.

  It was the first time a commando from a liberation movement intervened directly in the confrontation here and made the metropolitan struggle their own. Much has been said about the tactical strategic error underlying this action, which provided the state with the opportunity to go on the counteroffensive. We take full responsibility for these errors.

  It was an error not to seek the solution in the metropole itself rather than using a young national state to intensify matters, because the decision should have been based on the balance of power here—because it concerned the prisoners, who embodied the struggle here, and because it was a question of isolating the FRG. In connection with an action in the metropole, the goal of which was to polarize the metropole and create a break between the people and the state, the method used—hijacking an airplane—could only neutralize the attack because the people in the plane found themselves in the same situation, treated as objects, as the imperialist state always and in all ways places people, thereby destroying the goal of revolutionary action.

  The incorrect thinking behind the action that played against the commando, and which the federal government could count on in its planning, started with the fact that it was obvious that the commando would do whatever it could, and would continue to negotiate as long as it saw any hope of the FRG freeing the prisoners. This played against the commando, allowing the government to develop its strategy. As for the SPD, it chose to resolve matters by carrying out a massacre, as it had in Stockholm, because it is always ready to discard its popular image when American interests—stable rule in the center—are attacked. At the time, Schmidt said, “It was impossible to know if it would result in an acceptable outcome.” It amounted to a decision in favor of a military solution at a time when a guerilla victory in the FRG, the key country for the reactionary integration of the West European states, would have meant a decisive setback for imperialist plans for reconstruction. It was a leap forward for the reactionary counte
roffensive to consolidate its internal security mechanisms in Western Europe. But with Stammheim and Mogadishu, a centerpiece of social democratic policy, the hidden war, was unmasked. The imperialist state appeared shamelessly and openly reactionary; it no longer shied away from comparisons with its fascist past, but embraced them. The “desert foxes” of Mogadishu were to be an example for German youth. But at the same time, the political weakness of the metropolitan states, the internal fragility of the entire structure that appeared so powerful from the outside, was made obvious as never before.

  Red Army Faction

  May 1982

  _____________

  1 A slightly different translation of this paragraph appeared in our first volume (478). The version presented here is more true to the German original.

  8

  Using Honey to Catch Flies

  SO FAR, THE PRESENT VOLUME of our study has examined how the guerilla groups met the challenges and answered the questions posed by the development of their conflict with the state in the 1970s. We have seen how the 2nd of June Movement split over the question of where and in what way to pursue the struggle, and how the Revolutionary Cells became an important reference point for the new protest movements, thanks to its fluid structure and movementist strategy. As for the RAF, the May Paper articulated a series of proposals that had been debated and discussed for several years and constituted an attempt to re-ground the guerilla in the new movements that were rocking the FRG in the eighties.

  At this point, we intend to discuss the state, which despite its hidebound proclivities, had not wholly avoided learning lessons from a decade of armed struggle. We have already seen how ‘77 spurred on preexisting tendencies of repression and control, witness the rise of the Zielfahndung and the use of Horst Herold’s computers to track its targets. What must also be appreciated is that some state actors were thinking outside of the box, examining methods other than repression, considering political rather than military means of terminating the armed struggle.