The Red Army Faction, a Documentary History, Volume 1 (34 page)

Overexploitation and Stockpiling
For one thing, the corporations over-exploit the raw materials of the Third World. In Kuwait, for example, the fear is that in 16 years—the oil boom in Kuwait began in 1934—the oil could be exhausted. 95% of Kuwait’s income comes from oil—800 million dollars per year for 740,000 residents. Kuwait, with 12.8% of the world’s annual oil income, has built up the royal treasury—a sort of nest egg. What will they do when the oil and the money is all used up, return to herding sheep? Libya and Venezuela have already reduced their oil production to safeguard their reserves.

At the same time, a policy of stockpiling has been developed in the EEC and the FRG, increasing stocks from 85 to 90 days—Iran’s portion of that is 10 million tons—the FRG needs approximately 133 million tons of oil per year.

The U.S.A. has undertaken a massive conservation program—by 1980, 365 million tons of oil will have been saved—however 770 million tons will still be required. The conservation measures will include shifting commercial transportation from trucks to the railroad, passenger traffic from the air to the ground, and city traffic from automobiles to mass transit.

Oil and Traffic-Related Deaths
In the FRG, to give one example, the automobile industry has demanded a tribute of 170,000 traffic-related deaths over the past ten years—in the U.S.A., 56,000 deaths are projected for 1972, in the FRG it’s 20,000—all in the service of greater profits for oil and automobile corporations.

This idiotic automobile production will be reduced to create a situation suitable to corporate interests: the wiping out of the liberation movements in the Third World. In this way the obstacle presented by the people of the Third World will be eliminated.

The fear and the circular logic of consumption—the anarchy of capitalist commodity production, which is governed by the market and not the needs of the people—can exceed the limits of the human psyche, especially with the drivel about “quality of life,” for instance. In a situation where everything has been reduced to consumption—“shitty products”—the decline of the masses’ loyalty has already begun. The mass mortality in the streets through the alienation and brutalization of the people is hitting the system in the pocketbook in a way they don’t like.

Boycott
The goal is another oil boycott like that of the early 50s against Mossadegh’s
¹
nationalization of Persian oil, which cleared the way for the Shah, that puppet of U.S. imperialism. In response to the nationalization measures in Iraq at that time, Iran quickly stated its willingness to increase annual production from 271 million tons to 400 million tons. This is the kind of government that suits imperialism.

In the 60s, it was hoped that atomic energy would allow for the gradual reduction of dependence on oil as the most important source of
energy. By that time—or so it was hoped—high temperature ovens with which coal could be converted to oil would also exist—which was the basis for the talk of the comeback of coal.

The objective of imperialist energy policy is not only to guarantee the continuing theft of oil from the oil-producing nations for all time to come, but also to prevent them from industrializing and establishing their political independence.

Encirclement Policy
Regarding the rest of the Middle East, imperialism is hoping its policy of quiet encirclement will succeed.

In the West, they are thoroughly implanted in the Maghreb—Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco. West German corporations have invested in mining (raw materials), in the clothing industry (cheap labor), in dam projects (electrical power), and in the automobile industry. Tunisia and Morocco are the main recipients of West German development aid among the Arab states—both countries also receive West German military aid.

In the East and the North, it’s Turkey and Iran. Both countries are also the sites of American military bases. In the context of NATO, the FRG supplies weapons to Turkey. In the context of the free market economy, Siemens has recently been supplying television relay stations, with which the government’s message—“This is the criminal police speaking”—can reach Eastern Turkey.
¹
The German enclave in Tehran is well known—the quantity of weapons being provided by West Germany is not.

Military Bases
There should be no illusions about the desire to transform the Maghreb in the West and Turkey and Iran in the East from markets into military bases.

And there should certainly be no illusions about what conditions will be like in Algeria in three years if natural gas development by American corporations—that is to say, by big money—has begun and Algeria still attempts to maintain its principled solidarity with the other Arab states. It could only end in disaster.

Imperialism is the Weapon
Imperialism is the weapon that the multinational corporations use to address the contradictions between developed countries and the desire for development in the countries they plunder, between states with elected governments and states with CIA-backed governments, between rich and poor countries. Imperialism unifies North and South as the centre and the periphery of a single system.

It is a system that allows the constitutional state to function in much the same way as fascism. It doesn’t eliminate the contradictions, it simply coordinates them, plays them off against one another, integrates them as various interrelated profit-making conditions for their various subsidiaries.

“Slaves of the System”
Outwardly, they adjust to the existing conditions—making use of them where possible—creating domestic capital reserves, surrendering middle management to the local population, learning the local language, respecting local laws, all the time using their normative power to establish their control of the market.

The
FAZ
condescendingly informs “developing countries” that are attempting to protect their mineral resources by reducing mining that they misjudge the marketplace. It informs them that they are actually establishing themselves as slaves of the system if they fail to take note of the “dilemma” created by their own foreign currency needs, on the one hand, and the necessity to protect their natural resources, on the other: “The developing countries, in implementing policies against international natural resource companies, are tying their own hands.”

This imperialism avoids provocation. Where possible, they absorb Third World governments into the facade of their system. They operate within the “confines of their means”—and they have more means at their disposal than any ruling class before them.

The Means at Their Disposal
They use illiteracy and hunger to control the people of the Third World; in the metropole, people are made stupid and alienated and are brutalized by television, Springer, and automobile accidents. they saw to the liquidation of the McGovern left. They use torture against the Persian, Turkish, and Palestinian comrades; against the antiimperialist left in West Germany and West Berlin, they use the BAW. In November, following on the heels of the September massacre of
Palestinian freedom fighters, they will hold free elections here, having used the spectacle of the Olympic Games to divert attention away from the horror.

This imperialism only reveals its fascist character when it encounters resistance—it has no need for a late capitalist seizure of power. Its historical tendency is towards fascism, towards exploitation and oppression, annihilation, waste, defoliation, the destruction of people, and the plundering of natural resources. It has a greater potential for destruction than any ruling class in history, the potential to leave a wasteland in its wake—wherever there is nothing more to be gained, where everything is devastated, the country and the people—shattered and crippled—Vietnam.

Black September’s Strategy
The bomb attack on the Strüver Corporation in Hamburg was an attack on one of Israel’s military suppliers.

With their action at the Olympic Village, they brought the conflict between the imperialist metropole of Israel and the Palestinians from the periphery of the system into its centre—they tore off the FRG’s “constitutional” mask and revealed the true objective nature of imperialism’s facade: that they are waging war against the liberation movements of the Third World and that their final objective is strategic extermination and fascism.

Through this action, the Arab people were mobilized for anti-imperialist struggle. They celebrated the revolutionaries as heroes, and their will to struggle received an enormous boost.

That it would have been better to take Genscher hostage is something that Black September itself knows full well.
¹
Functioning as it does at a very high level of Marxist theory combined with revolutionary practice, Black September doesn’t need to be told this. The fact is that it would have been better to exchange the Israeli athletes for people who make up the facade of the Social-Liberal Coalition, as this would have destroyed the complicity between Israeli and West German imperialism and isolated Israel. It would have forced the contradiction between the fascism of the developing imperialist system and Israeli
Nazi fascism (see the chapter on National Socialism) into the open. It would have made use of the system’s contradictions to split the imperialist forces!

These observations are not meant as a criticism of the action, but rather as an expression of our appreciation of the action. These observations are an excellent example of how practice leads to theoretical development and how theory leads to developments in practice—of the dialectic of theory and practice.

2.
OPPORTUNISM
Opportunism in the Metropole
The Marxist bible thumper—equipped with quotes and not thinking any further—will argue that Marx himself said that smashing machines was “stupid.” Marx:

Machinery, considered alone, shortens the hours of labor, but, when in the service of capital, lengthens them; since in itself it lightens labor, but when employed by capital, heightens the intensity of labor; since in itself it is a victory of man over the forces of Nature, but in the hands of capital, makes man the slave of those forces; since in itself it increases the wealth of the producers, but in the hands of capital, makes them paupers…
²

So it is not machinery that should be resisted, but its capitalist application.

On the face of it, it is not clear that everything about imperialist investment policy is intended to eliminate of the Third World liberation movements. “Considered alone” and not as a waste of raw materials and labor power, or as a means of war, one might even speak of military production as being a part of the civilian sector. However, it is meant to reinforce the unequal development between the imperialist centre and the countries of the Third World, which is to say, to reinforce the ongoing rule of the imperialist system.

Sabotage
The rejection of sabotage in the metropole, based on the argument that it would be better to take things over instead of destroying them, is
based on the dictum: the people of the Third World should wait for their revolution until the masses in the metropole catch up.

This ignores the problem of the labor aristocracy within imperialism, first addressed by Lenin. Furthermore, this demands that the people of the Third World allow all sectors of the world proletariat—most of whom form part of the backbone of the imperialist system—to ride on their coattails. It is the rallying cry of opportunism.

The Opportunistic Concept of Solidarity
It’s no surprise that the opportunists no longer know what to do with the concept of solidarity—they betray their claim to leadership with an incorrect analysis of imperialism. They must exclude a section of the disempowered from their concept of solidarity. This is the section that rejects their leadership, and instead turns to the people of the Third World. They must exclude anyone who by “serve the people” doesn’t mean sucking up to the people disempowered by imperialism, but rather means by this that one must struggle against the imperialism which is disempowering people.

Negt—The Pig
Negt, who in Frankfurt resurrected Noske’s
¹
axiom “One must be a bloodhound,” thereby formulated the opportunistic position, with all the jargon, all the contempt for the masses, all the appeals to “the politicians,” and all the pleas for sound, common sense that are fundamental to it. However—like Bernstein
²
—without the slightest hint of an economic analysis.

Given, however, that the problem of opportunism is not objectively a question of the theoretical level he has expressed, it is necessary to engage him in debate. Objectively, it is the result of unequal development within the system, of the inequality in forms of oppression employed by the system and of the inequality of experiences of exploitation under this system.

That Negt has generally been applauded, in spite of the feeble theoretical level of his work, is an objective indication of the pressure that exists here for people to take an opportunistic position. We are dealing
with Negt in the hope that his supporters will see what a crock of shit they’re being fed.

Negt on Solidarity
Negt: “Mechanical solidarity will destroy socialist politics. It is the worst aspect of the legacy of the protest movement.”

People like to “mechanically” paw for their wallets if they come across someone playing harmonica on the Hauptwache,
³
and Bertold Beitz
⁴
feels good about writing a cheque for the
Bodelschwinghschen Anstalten in Bethel
.
⁵
Solidarity is not a reflex action, as anyone who has ever acted in solidarity knows. Or does Negt, with his concept of “mechanics,” also intend to address in a backhanded way the concept of spontaneity?—“spontaneous solidarity”…?

One cannot surpass Negt when it comes to dragging the concept of solidarity through the mud, while at the same time expressing solidarity for all of those who, lacking the necessary courage and psychological stamina, out of fear for themselves, fail to act in solidarity.