Intervention In The Trial Of Commando Holger Meins [1]
Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof [2]
end of April 1976
What is going on is that Social Democracy, by means of the enormous
potential of West German imperialism under the hegemony of US capital,
which controls all of the strategic industries in the
FRG - electronics,
chemicals, petroleum, automobiles, mechanical construction - is
organizing
the reactionary process in West Europe on two levels that serve as the
intermediary
for the development of Social Democracy. Credits which are tied to
political conditions and which prepare for capital investments by
imposing, through recourse to economic extortion, the militarization of
politics. Brandt
[3] wrote, "Stability is
anticipating catastrophe so as to avoid it" (in a letter to Olaf Palme [4]) to dictate - and this
is his project on a larger political strategic level - his model of
fascism to States
subordinate to the FRG in the imperialist chain, that is to say,
institutional
strategy, counter-insurgency, organization of the State on the model of
parliamentary democracy with, at the same time, the elimination of
communist
parties, so that the power bloc can in all cases only be
that
of US capital.
In West Europe the main enemy is the USA; within the FRG it is Social
Democracy.
Because, as a result of its history, Social Democracy has the Socialist
International and contacts with the unions at its disposal to impose
the consolidation of new fascism in Europe.
As such, any attack against the presence of American
capital here immediately confronts the imperialist State and, sooner or
later,
directly confronts those US military forces which operate openly. In every
case, attacks against American installations here force the State to
react in function of what, since 1945, it is: a branch of US capital and
a piece of the system of States under US control, reflecting, in spite
of institutional camouflage, the real status of the FRG as a territory
militarily occupied by the USA.
This is also a line of mobilization. But what is essential is that
Social Democracy, unmasked in this fashion by the attacks
of small armed groups, finds itself placed in a situation where it is
impossible
to organize West Europe in a bloc of military powers at the service of
the
strategy of US capital.
Because fascism has been rendered visible here, it will necessarily
mobilize against the FRG all of the political feelings which exist in
foreign countries against her, an old anti-fascism, and all feelings
which exist against German imperialism, against her desire for
hegemony, in all the
groups of the spectrum from extreme-left to Social Democrats, as well
as
within the governments of each nation. And with the precise line: The
main
enemy is the USA. As such, with the strategic line, the primary
demarcation
- better still, the FRONT - the north-south conflict, which is the
armed
struggle, the world proletariat vs. US imperialism. From this comes the
second line of demarcation in the metropoles, which is determined by
the
dialectic of repercussions within the metropoles of the wars of
liberation
at the periphery of the system, as such by the attempt at the
reconstruction
of US capital on the strategic level by retreating from these fronts
towards
the centers, on the ideological, political and military levels, but
also
on the economic level (which we will not clarify any
further
at this point). And this acts to transform it into one front, one
politico-military
confrontation, a process which defines the class struggle in the
metropole
as part of the war for liberation in the Third World, anticipating here
that which is the proletarian politic today, the war of liberation.
That, in short, is the strategy that we have in view, taking into
account our experience and what we have learned here.
That is the line along which capital and its State are obliged to react,
and in an exaggerated fashion, to the attacks of small groups of
revolutionaries, thus leading to the multiplication of such groups.
That is to say, it is the mechanism of the apparatus itself which
develops a front and, at the
same time, its antithesis within the imperialist system. This is a
process
of polarization that is underway, in which the resistance, in its
illegal
structure, the guerrilla, can be and is understood as the cause of each
and
every person who has become conscious of their situation within the
imperialist
system.
There is something to be added here about organizational
structure-guerilla structure in the metropole, so as to struggle in
this front. At this point we will obviously leave this aside.
Finally, it is necessary to analyze at some point the military project
which the Americans developed through their servant Social Democracy,
the integration of the internal and external security structures (that
is to say, the integration of the police structures into the NATO
structure),
the transformation of the entire State apparatus, including the
ideological
institutions (schools, media, all administrative sections), into a
gigantic
information gathering network, a process which obliges all bureaucrats
and
employees to have a relationship with the Council for the Protection of
the
Constitution [5]. Only
one newspaper
has discussed this so far.
That is the strategy of this new fascism at the institutional level,
which makes justice policy into an instrument of counter-insurgency,
while
at the same time setting in place the State security machine, the BKA [6], and within the BKA the
terrorism division (T) in Bonn [7],
the BGS [8], the mobile
intervention sections, the development of barracked police, the
homogenization of provincial police under the command of the BKA and
the multiplying of police regulations. And the computer represents
another qualitative leap; the manual file system is replaced by an
electronic computer, which permits, for the first time, new repressive
techniques, imprinted on the mass communication system,
and the application of psychological warfare.
The strategy on the institutional level foresees, vertically and
horizontally in West Europe, as such both between and within States,
the creation of
a military apparatus, which penetrates the societies and
integrates the States under the Ministers of the Interior, thereby
integrating the
mechanisms of repression, without themselves being politically
accountable.
This signifies a total escape from public control. A structure of
transnational
power, which is, in the final analysis, under Pentagon
control.
A military machine, which is at the same time its propaganda organ for
total manipulation using tactics of psychological warfare, and insofar
as the
system of obtaining and using information in psychological warfare
constitutes
a closed system, within which the manipulation and control, and, as
such,
the new schemas of manipulation can be and are developed, tested, and
further developed.
What the official left has not understood at all is that clearly,
within this totality, their containment has already been achieved by
the BKA computers, as has that of their entire circle of friends and
acquaintances. This is quite clear. If the BKA can grab 394 gun
collectors in a single well-coordinated action, it would also be
possible for them to take out the entire official urban
left in a single action.
Urban guerilla warfare is a tactic that indicates the strategy that it
anticipates; the reconstruction on the international level of
proletarian politics and, as a consequence, the reaction its
international development will entail.
On the level of revolutionary strategy, this means understanding that
the nation State is an apparatus of internal repression, based on its
function at the international level in support of US multinational
capital.
The system of nation States within US imperialism's orbit is a system
of divided fronts within a war that the repressive apparatus of US
capital conducts on two fronts, along the divide between rich and poor
in the North-South line of demarcation, and on the second line of
demarcation, inside the metropole; in the latter case to prevent a
massive proletarian counteroffensive.
It is important to add here that the State, at the service of capital,
acts on the basis of constraints that the movement of capital, the
material base of the whole affair, imposes on it; it is a function of
capital. But, on the other hand, capital can no longer develop, based
on itself, any productive perspective, or, to use an expression from
bourgeois economy, it is no
longer capable of innovation. It has ceased to be the subject of the
social
reproduction of State activity.
It is clear to a man like Schmidt [9] that, without finding a solution to the problems of
the economy, of the crisis, of inflation, of unemployment, in a word,
the problems of the world market, that the existence of the imperialist
system on the level of the State is a giant with feet of clay.
But the new development, which is also new in this fascism, is that
they don't only act to assure the domination of capital and of markets,
and
to consolidate them, but to form a military-economic power structure
that
can be imposed as a system of States, independent of their political
base
and the constraints of the movement of capital.
In this the State as an area of politics is no longer governed by rival
factions of capital, but is the immediate expression of capital,
because, under the hegemony of US capital, there is neither economic
nor political autonomy from US capital.
It is necessary for us to here indicate that a result of
the internationalization of capital is the dialectic by which nation
States subservient to US imperialism are transformed into the new
fascism. These nation States operate on the international level and, by
so doing, indicate the new function of nation States resulting from the
defensive strategic constraints that imperialism finds itself faced
with since its defeat in
Vietnam.
The central point that must be indicated is that from the moment when
we recognize reaction to be internationally organized
and planned, revolutionary strategy must be
internationalist; that is to say, if we can say that the
politico-economic conceptual schemata of Marxism coincides with the
contemporary situation, then that signifies that the
strategy of the Communist Manifesto, “workers of the world unite”
has found new expression on the organizational level in the guerrilla,
which
anticipates the international reconstruction of proletarian politics.
The
organizational form of the international proletariat in the centers of
capital
is the metropolitan guerilla.
Footnotes
N.B. All footnotes in this document were
added by the translator and editor. None are originally from the RAF.
[1] Commando Holger Meins, a RAF Commando that seized
the German Embassy in Stockholm on April 25th, 1975. They demanded the
release of 26 political prisoners. Siegfried Hausner, a RAF member,
and two hostages were killed when the police stormed the building.
[return to text]
[2] Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof - RAF prisoners
and two of the founding core of the RAF. [return to
text]
[3] Willy Brandt – head of the German Social
Democratic Party (SPD) from 1964, Chancellor of Germany from 1969-1972,
head of the Socialist International (Second International) from 1976.
[return to text]
[4] Olaf Palme - head of Swedish Social Democratic
Party. [return to text]
[5] Council for the Protection of the Constitution,
German intelligence and counter-insurgency body. [return
to text]
[6] BKA-Federal Criminal Bureau, played a key role in
anti-guerrilla strategy. [return to text]
[7] Bonn was the capital of the Federal Republic of
Germany. [return to text]
[8] BGS - border police, played an important
anti-guerrilla role. [return to text]
[9] Helmut Schmidt - Social Democratic Chancellor at
the time this text was written. [return to text]
