Review by SYBILLE PLOGSTEDT "The Tip of the German Iceberg' of police repression has already been documented in The Red Mole (50). The article showed that this encompassed every section of society, with the primary aim of suppressing all manifestations of the growing class struggle. The German bourgeoisie has used the urban guerilla actions of the Red Army Fraction (also called the Baader-Meinhof group) as a pretext for the testing of its military-police apparatus.
ESCALATION The armed struggle, according to the editors of this pamphlet, signifies an escalation of the forms of struggle of the revolutionary left: "Their intervention has materially changed the situation in West • the kind of resistance that the RAF has begun will continue".
This is the conclusion and perspective seen by the editors for the development of the Left in West Germany. Certainly it is true that armed struggle will not be confined to Latin America and South East Asia. The Irish revolution has already brought it nearer home and if we are prepared to see this applied as a tactic of the revolutionary struggle in other countries of Western Europe then we must be concerned with the problems of the "armed revolutionaries of the first hour", as the authors put it, and above all understand the conditions under which this struggle was taken up. "The RAF chose bombings as their weapons of attack, but bombings are a very limited tactic. They are valid if they are acts of sabotage and they then materially affect the capabilities of the enemy, if they develop directly from a specific struggle and open up new possibilities for that struggle to use and to relate directly to people's political experience". For the RAF, on the contrary, the method of struggle was to be more than an aim. They believed that the logic of the growing state repression was the banning of organisations of the revolutionary left; that this could not be prevented, and must be met by a conscious acceptance of illegality and the use of illegal methods, Through this line the RAF wanted to give an instant demonstration to the demoralised new left that a revolutionary experience was still possible.
EXEMPLARY ACTIONS They took this line in contradiction to the arm-chair marxists who are more tortuted when one discovers them quoting a sentence of Marx incorrectly than when they are disThe authors vaguely realise the necessity of this, but propose a "power tax", an "amortization tax" and a "raw materials" tax (presumably on producers) as measures to be-taken. They again fail to see that the solution to the problem will not be found within the framework of the private ownership of the means of production - - such taxes would make no sense in a situation of collective ownership.
REACTIONARY Some of the proposals are downright reactionary and nationalistic though the authors go to lengths to claim no such intention - for example they see as a logical adjunct to a commitment to a population policy (an aspect of the problem we have had no chance to cover here the banning of all immigration.
Finally when detailed proposals are inadequate, they fall back on vacuous cliches 'open style of government inspiring the trust and co-operation of the general public", "sense of social responsibility", "stability", "community feeling" and "global awareness" as though these can be somehow dolloped out in handfulls -totally idealist conceptions, unrelated to the economic and social relations of capitalism, which they don't challenge.
Space does not permit a mention of the many other methodological and theoretical inadequacies in this book. Its only value is to demonstrate the total impotence of liberal solutions in the crisis facing us and thus (unintentionally) to provide a launching pad for an alternative and realistic understanding of the problem which could attract many people to the banner of the working class and away from the misguided diversions offered here.
*A Blueprint For Survival (Penguin Special, 30p) Police display weapons, ammunition and tools found in a raid on Ulrike Meinhof's flat covered lying in their practice". Their criticisms of these people are justified, but the RAF merely goes to the other extreme: only in practice, they say will all the instruments that will defeat the state machine be forged. And since, to destroy the state, you have to attack the state's means of repression, the RAF look on all transitional methods as reformist or economist. In the mass struggle or its preparation, they believe, the only task of the vanguard is to lead the proletariat by exemplary actions. The RAF were unable to develop any political movement which went beyond support activity for the armed actions. As the editors point out, this "can make it quite difficult to counter the 'anarchist, nihilist, devilish destruction' labels stuck on them by the reactionary press". While the RAF criticised the weakness of the other left groups, the knowledge of its own ideas was confined to the narrow circle of these same groups, thanks to systematic police seizure of their publications.
POSITIVE It is very positive that the documents of the armed struggle in West Germany are now available to the British left. The pamphlet contains a comprehensive selection of the RANK AND FILE TECHNICAL TEACHERS Meeting: Tuesday, 19 September, at 6.30 D.m. at South Bank Poly Students Union, Rotary Street (near Elephant and Castle).
To discuss: the need for and election of officers of a Rank and File technical teachers' group; the 1973 ATTI conference;
salaries; and staff-student ratios.
RED PAMPHLETS SOCIAL SECURITY A pamphlet on the Social Security system, incorporating the latest experiences of the working class in the Manchester sit-ins. This is a useful handbook for all militants needing practical advice on how to claim. PRICE 2p.
AFTER THE MINERS' STRIKE WHAT NEXT?
This is much more than just a description of events. It places the strike firmly within the comer of the heightened class tension of the last few years, and puts forward a programme around which militants in the pits can organise. PRICE 10p IRELAND UNFREE by Bob Purdie CAPITAL: A READABLE INTRODUCTION THEORIES OF WORKERS CONTROL by R. Davis All the above arailable from:
IMG Publications, 182 Pentonville Road, London N.1. (please add for postage) RAF's most important writings and those of its sympathisers. It also contains a reliable history of the group, situated in the context of the development of the left in West Germany. Its activity and mistakes are criticised from a revolutionary standpoint which places the armed struggle as one tactic within the unfolding of the class struggle.
From the recent events in Germany, one impression remains exceptionally strong: the freeing of Baader from prison where he still had thirty-four months to serve started the armed actions of the group. This action has been defended by the members of the RAF only with moralistic arguments. In fact, the freeing of Baader was a completely artificial condition for the launching of armed struggle and the group's military actions were therefore not the product of the real development of the class struggle. For this reason, the armed recolutionaries of the "first hour' remained in complete isolation till their "last hour.
*Armed Resistance in West Germany (Stoke Newington Eight Defence Committee)
ANTI-INTERNMENT LEAGUE Sunday, 12 November - assemble Speakers Corner, Hyde Park, at 2.00 p.m.
For further details: John Gray, Basement Flat, 139 Holland Road, London W.14.
(01-603 3085)
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