ATTACK, STRIKE AND SHATTER CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY THE PRIMARY AXIS OF THE RESTRUCTURING OF THE STATE AND THE IMPERIALIST COUNTER-REVOLUTION

[The following translation was produced from the copy included in p 139-85, Volume 129 of Commissione parlamentare d’inchiesta sulla strage di via Fani, sul sequestro e l’assassino di Aldo Moro e sul terrorismo in Italia, Rome 1996. Gaps in the translation indicated by square brackets correspond to illegible lines in the above copy unless otherwise noted. Endnotes and notes in square brackets have been added by the translator.]

RED BRIGADES NO.4 November 1977

 

[….]

This crisis is now accentuated and rendered incendiary by the fact that the development of the means of production in the capitalist states has resulted in the interdependency of these states as a whole: and crisis in one of these countries, whether economic or political, has decisive objective implications for the other states.

It is currently obvious to everyone that the old instruments of political, economic and military power with which imperialism has ruled its sphere of influence until now are inoperative. They no longer respond to the new necessities of exploitation and rule over the peoples and most of all they are unable to adequately confront the various politico-military organizations born in its heart, which illustrate its contradictions through their armed initiative and increasingly impel the working class and all strata of the proletariat towards the communist revolution.

The major imperialist countries, in order to escape the crisis which grips them and which forecasts the end of their system of exploitation, now seek to modify and adjust their instruments of rule.

To this end, there is already occurring a total restructuring which leads to a homogenization of the entire imperialist front in an attempt to eliminate the contradictions and imbalances between states originating from the various particular interests and the different levels reached by the total crisis in individual countries. Each state is no longer allowed to resolve its own crisis by itself, it is now the entire imperialist system which is committed to resolve the crisis of each individual state.

Under the direction of the world shadow government, the Trilateral (USA, Japan, Europe), they are restructuring the different international organizations like NATO, the IMF and the EEC, to transform them into real components of international rule over individual countries; they are building new organizations against “terrorism” in order to plan the attack on the class vanguards and the combatant organizations on a continental scale; but above all they are transforming the different nation states into Imperialist States of the Multinationals.

The Imperialist State of the Multinationals is for them the best instrument for the restoration in the different countries of the imperialist chain of political, economic and military control over the social and productive forces.

It is the best instrument to restore new levels of exploitation of the working class and more generally to better play the role of oppressor of the peoples of the entire world.

The ISM takes on the characteristics of a mere “region” within the continental area of a building block inserted organically within the framework of imperialist rule in Europe.

In the constitution of the new State it is crucial to accomplish a rigid centralization of state structures in the hands of the executive which is a direct expression of the organs of international governance, which ensures and implements the role assigned to each country in the general program established by the imperialist centers.

The national governments therefore must be local protectorates which apply the directives of the world super government (the Trilateral) in the particular conditions of each country.

It is clear that it becomes essential for the imperialist bourgeoisie to create a political personnel within each state which is able to manage the economic, political, military and cultural plans required by the new stage of capital accumulation.

In our country the political force which the big multinational groups have assigned the task of implementing this complex and ambitious counter-revolutionary project is CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY. They call on the DC to function as the national political center. The DC is already working energetically along these lines.

THE DC IS THE PRIMARY AXIS OF THE PROJECT OF CONSTRUCTION OF THE IMPERIALIST STATE OF THE MULTINATIONALS

and must be identified as such by the working class and the entire revolutionary movement.

2-from the end of the Second World War the DC is the party which has represented the strategic and tactical interests of American imperialism in our country; they have mediated imperialist interests between the different bourgeois parties building majorities capable of defending and advancing bourgeois interests, and at the same time been capable of attacking the organizations and needs of the working class.

Over the years they have had a consistent ability to manage the interests of the bourgeoisie.

In the immediate post-war period under De Gaspari when it was a matter of driving the communists from the power centers seized during the resistance, from the state institutions and the factories; with the center-left when it was a question of developing the means of production in order to accomplish a new level of exploitation of the working class.

In the defense of the bourgeois-democratic state the DC has mainly represented the interests of the big monopolies and first of all the state monopolies; the interests of the social strata of the bureaucratic apparatus of the state organizations and of the middle classes; the interests of the church in all its aspects both economic and cultural.

Through the insertion of its men in the state organizations and in the economic (above all in the enterprises with State participation) and financial apparatus and with the construction of a tight network of clientistic relations in the different social strata the DC has always been able to cultivate an enormous amount of flexibility which it has known how to exploit brilliantly on the electoral terrain and which has enabled it to govern the country till now.

The state machine which has its most substantial basis in these clientistic relations, served the bourgeoisie perfectly well when its interests primarily developed within a national framework, but immediately entered into crisis with the emergence and development of the multinational imperialist bourgeoisie. The latter has posed the problem of the development of the state into the ISM, of a state no longer based on clientistic relations, but on the maximum efficiency of all its components: efficient in repressing class antagonism and therefore respected in confrontation with the other imperialist states.

3-The Andreotti government represents the high point of the will of the DC to make a “political leap”, in the transformation of its primary focus, putting itself completely at the service of the imperialist bourgeoisie.

Following the course already laid out by Germany, the stronghold and trendsetter of imperialist restructuring in Europe, the Andreotti government has began to implement the first stage of a comprehensive restructuring of the state according to the blueprint of an authentic police state with a grotesque democratic mask. In little more then a year they have produced and applied a myriad of special laws which have significantly and abruptly changed the institutional face of the country. They have restructured all the bodies of the coercive apparatus to heighten its efficiency in coming to grips with the class confrontation; simultaneously they have implemented a rigid centralization to reduce the internal contradictions between different bodies which have reduced its capacity to repress revolutionary forces.

The judiciary has lost all its independent powers and is placed totally at the disposal of the police state with the creation of Special Tribunals and the imposition of centuries of prison against the communist vanguard.

The various police bodies are reorganized on the basis of efficiency and given exceptional powers like license to kill in the street, police stops etc. The anti-guerrilla bodies are significantly empowered.

Finally they are constructing concentration camps in which the combatant communist vanguards will be held with the objective of physically and politically destroying them in an attempt to terrorize the entire proletarian movement.

If that is what this government in the service of imperialism has carried out on the terrain of the repressive apparatus, its counter-revolutionary initiative is no less ferocious on the economic terrain. The logic followed here is that of restructuring the economic apparatus and national finance in accord with the guidelines of productive efficiency, cutting the deadwood and intensifying control over the working class, in order to adjust to the program for division of production and market areas already established at the international level.

Its easy to say what this means for the working class: increase of militarization and exploitation within the factory; continued attack on the wage with the shutdown of the scala mobile¹ and the dizzying inflation; shutdown of investments and vertical growth of unemployment, with the resulting increase in strata marginalized from the production process.

4-But if a program this openly anti-proletarian and counter-revolutionary on the one hand tends to repress class antagonism on the other it ensures an escalated adhesion of increasingly broad layers of workers, proletarians and the marginalized to an awareness of the anti-proletarian and repressive character of the state.

It could not endure for long if the DC did not carry out a vast initiative of political mystification for the instrumentalization of broad social strata in support of the imperialist project in tandem with its repression of the class confrontation.

The best means for moving in this direction is now embodied in the “six point agreement”² among the political parties. This agreement now forms the best guarantee for the construction of the police state: it represents the highest point in the manufacture of a consensus around the project of imperialist restructuring of the state.

The six point agreement formalizes a further involvement of the Berlinguerians in the political management of the country, and thus in the implementation of the counter-revolutionary project guided by the DC.

After the blatant failure of the “historic compromise”, of the “new model of development”, of the “national road to socialism”, which have turned out to be nonsensical expressions, and as their political alternative passed into a utopia, the revisionists find themselves without a real political strategy, in fact they are definitively aligned on the side of the imperialist forces and their counter-revolutionary policy.

They will be assigned an extremely important albeit subordinate task: to make the working class and all proletarians accept the imperialist restructuring of the state.

That’s why within the factory they now have no other role then that of police, of snitches and provocateurs against the autonomous vanguards, of control and repression of the workers struggles.

They are always the promoters and most active supporters of the “hunt” for terrorists and of the attempts at a reactionary mobilization of the working class with protests by the “silent majority”, which otherwise could not be sure of worker participation in the defense of the bosses, the Christian Democrats and assorted agents of counter-revolution.

But this shameful work of the Berlinguerians is exposed more and more before the eyes of the working class as contrary to their own needs and interests and it is ever more difficult for it to find acceptance. At the same time growing layers of the working class and the proletariat recognize themselves in the practice of the armed struggle for communism.

The Berlinguerians are increasingly unmasked as counter-revolutionary agents despite their blackmail and mystification in relation to the combatant organizations.

This is demonstrated by the fact that the strikes which we have just discussed, are almost never declared as such in the workplaces but through a skillful manipulatory maneuver, the Berlinguerians call strikes and assemblies over contract disputes and within these force a shift in the agenda to the struggle against “terrorism”.

These petty maneuvers do nothing but make the Berlinguierians looks ridiculous and the working class is increasingly less inclined to participate in these circuses. And then they fall back on their last weapon to force through these miserable mobilizations, the shady blackmail of accosting the workers with Cossiga’s well known expression: “Those who do not attack terrorism (ie the armed struggle for communism) collaborate with it.”

This maneuver even if it demands attention, won’t preoccupy us all that much: the radicalization of the class confrontation and more specifically the emergence of the armed struggle makes the false and contradictory content of the propositions of Berlinguer’s party ever more obvious. Propositions which are not only alien to the interests of the proletariat but directly identified with the interests of multinational capitalism. Here we have no doubt that as always the proletariat will know how to distinguish its friends from its enemies.

But the six point agreement demands further attention insofar as it represents not only a further incorporation of the Berlinguerians in the imperialist project, but marks a fundamental advance in the project itself and brings to completion the definitive transition from Parliamentary power (understood as the institution mediating between parties and the social groups they represent) to State power.

We move from the State as an expression of the parties to the parties as an expression of the State.

This is a decisive step in the formation of the Imperialist State of the Multinationals. It means that the executive directly controlled by the imperialist political personnel, uses the bourgeois and revisionist parties to implement its own policies, and the collaborationist unions as instruments of mobilization and support for its project.

If the neo-revisionist micro parties which have put immense effort into sending their representatives into Parliament and local councils were hoping to find some space in these institutions for their barely revolutionary games, they were grossly mistaken. The only result accomplished was that of putting a damper on the revolutionary movement and following in the footsteps of the Berlinguerians.

The most significant example is that of the local councils where the formal power of the “red councils” certainly doesn’t correspond to real power, which remains firmly in the hands of the DC and the bourgeoisie, who now have a way of pinning responsibility for the disaster produced by the crisis on the revisionist idiots. The DC opposition to the “red councils” is therefore useful to the Christian Democratic project: through a harsh critique of the incapacity of the “left” to resolve local problems, the DC ends up appearing like the only force able to handle state power. In these situations the DC reaches the point of utilizing the just discontent of proletarian strata, diverting the potential of struggle against the powerless councils.

This obviously demagogic ploy still obtains an effect, making the masses forget the real enemy: the DC and the State.

5- If on the one hand the Andreotti government represents a tactical and therefore mediated implementation of the imperialist strategy (the six point agreement), the restructuring of the DC is anything but a contingent program. The DC certainly needs to deliver a government which time after time marches in lockstep with the international organizations, but it must first of all establish a strategically stable political framework.

The disconnect which frequently appears between the DC and the Andreotti government is entirely due to the fact that the tactical needs of the executive often come into conflict with the backwardness of an obsolete and superseded party apparatus; or alternatively for the opposite reason, when the mediations and compromises which Andreotti must adapt in order to resolve class contradictions in immediate terms are out of joint with the restructuring of the state and the party.

It is clear however that these are secondary contradictions which are easily recomposed within the responsibility of the entire DC for the imperialist project.

In particular the DC must carry out a broad and articulated “renewal” capable of adjusting its apparatus and all of its structures to the new requirements imposed by the development of multinational capital and the class confrontation in this country.

The overcoming of the old clientistic logic and the apparatus of the currents³ the latter of which are exclusively orientated to the fanatical defense of the particular and corporatist interest of different national economic groups is the first stage of the transition (even though it is obvious that the clientism of the DC will not disappear but only change its form as corruption is an inherent and immutable element of capitalism).

Everything must be modified and adjusted to the new requirements which demand a “cadre” structure firmly centralized and homogeneously polarized around the program established by the imperialist centers.

It will be this party organization comprised of a cadre apparatus appropriately prepared by special schools comparable to those for the managers of big industry, which will be capable of leading and managing the imperialist restructuring of the state.

This “cadre” will be the highest political expression of the new imperialist political personnel to be inserted within the structures of the State and economic apparatus to manage the reorganization of the mechanisms of capital accumulation.

The party secretaries will no longer be elements in the mediation of different currents or representatives of some of them, instead they will become points of centralization for the implementation of the single political line established by the centers of the imperialist counter-revolution.

Even enrollment can no longer be a farcical list of dead guys randomly pulled from the telephone book, but always dedicated to efficiency, the membership must be men who really and consciously contribute to the management of the imperialist counter-revolution.

All this renewal leads to a rupture with the old balance of power within the party, trampling powers and interests consolidated by years of patronage, clientism and speculation, personal ambitions and the old christian democrat sharks etc. It is the obvious price which a putrid and corrupt party like the DC must pay to adjust to the new requirements of imperialism.

…

An armed unit of the Red Brigades has struck PUBLIO FIORI leading edge of the Roman DC on 2/11.

This individual a former Petruccian⁴ and ex president of ONMI⁵ is first elected to the regional council and then nominated as a leader, immediately beginning the “renewal” and is among the first to sense the changing winds abandoning his old current and founding a new “Independent position for overcoming the currents” which is aligned with the positions of Senator Agnelli.⁶ He leads a battle within the DC on the basis of Hiltonian⁷ positions and against his old friends for a new internal axis,starting from an enrollment which will allow industrialists and bourgeois intellectuals to enter the party.

It is no accident that he heads the DC Permanent Commission “Culture, Information and Executive Training” on the regional level.

As a means of organizing consensus around DC policy he founded the newspaper L’IDEA POPOLARE.

With the goal of a demagogic and corporative mobilization of abusive small contractors he promotes the ROME AND LAZIO LEAGUE OF SMALL CONTRACTORS.

…

6-As we have noted above, the other necessity for the imperialist restructuring of the different national states is the organization of a social consensus around this project; what is especially important (this is stated in blunt terms by the Trilateral) is to bring about the isolation of the revolutionary forces and facilitate their annihilation.

As regards the DC beyond the general level of interparty agreements and direct intervention in the media, it acts expertly as a party with the construction and reinforcement of auxiliary organizations like

Communion and Liberation⁸, the Political Engagement Groups⁹, the MILLE, ARCES, the different Study Centers¹⁰ and so on. Through these instruments of mystification the DC aims to penetrate and organize those social strata and forces which cannot be integrated within a rigid party structure.

If until recently the key points of opinion in the DC were located in the electoral fiefdoms of the various party bosses, now this logic has changed; these organizations must intervene within and mobilize all the social strata which can be utilized for this purpose, and their key points of intervention are the metropolitan centers ( of both the North and the Center-South) where class contradictions and confrontation are most intense.

With organizations like the CL and the GIP, the DC aims to infiltrate schools, neighborhoods, factories and everywhere popular discontent creates the conditions for struggle, in order to divert it onto a corporative terrain, mystifying its class content.

The method used by these counter-revolutionary agents is that of taking advantage of the real needs of the masses adapting a populist and superficially progressive discourse to split and confuse the movement of struggle, in each case creating false corporative, demagogic and anti-unitary objectives in opposition to the political needs which are expressed by the class movement.

A clear example of the role played by the Seveso CL in making the proletarians of the district eat dioxin¹¹, in the slum organizations in Rome and in the struggle of the unemployed against the revisionist council in Naples.

These agents of counter-revolution seek to infiltrate the proletarian movement, not only to divert the initiative of the class but also to play an active role of espionage and provocation against the revolutionary vanguards.

Rome. On 26/9 armed units of the Red Brigades have struck the property¹² of the following Christian Democratic leaders:

-RICCOTTI BENITO. Municipal councilor in the latest elections: part of the transport commission; former vice president of STEFER.

-AVOLIVOLO GENNARO. Head of the 9^th Ward, member of the zoning commission, activist in the Fiori group, activist of the ACLI which in Rome acts in concert with CL.

-SBALCHIERO ALFONSO. 7^th Ward councilor, responsible for the Southern district on the Rome Committee, commissioner for the Centocelle office of the DC.

In the universities CL has supported the fascist groups, many of which are involved in its security services. The provocations it organizes in the schools where the student struggle is most active are known to all: an example is what occurred prior to the murder of comrade Lorusso¹³ in Bologna. collaboration with the police in the identification and surveillance of comrades is its constant practice.

CL is one of the most organized groups at the disposal of the DC for organizing the most sinister apathy and consensus for the project of imperialist restructuring of the state. Therefore:

THE MEN AND HIDEOUTS OF COMMUNION AND LIBERATION MUST BE IDENTIFIED, STRUCK AND DISPERSED, IN THE SCHOOLS, IN THE NEIGHBORHOODS AND EVERYWHERE THEY NEST CL MUST NOT FIND A SINGLE POLITICALLY OR PHYSICALLY ACCESSIBLE SPACE

After the attack carried out by our organization this past July against one of the leaders of CL activity in Rome, Mario Perlini¹⁴, CL attempted to claim its organizational and political independence from the DC. This duplicitous maneuver has now been unmasked (as if that was necessary) by our attack on CARLO ARIENTI¹⁵, who aside from being active in the party is a notable element of CL in Milan.

He was in fact elected by the votes of this gang of delinquents in the DC lists for the 1975 administrative elections, appearing under the cover signature of EDU (Esperienza di Unita).

EDU and MP (Movimento Popolare) in which Arienti is on the executive committee, represents the connecting framework between CL and the Christian Democratic Party. In these organizations the elements of CL selected for direct integration into the party converge.

The GIP on the other hand is the DC’s instrument for intervention in the factories and is an important initiative for the organization of consensus around the DC. Their intervention is still in an embryonic phase and is directed particularly towards employees in the service sector (public transport, telecommunications, air travel etc), factory employees and various hospitals.

Their role among the working class in the big factories is very limited, because Christian Democratic ideology does not find fertile soil to root itself and grow among the workers.

Even if now the GIP is not an important crisis factor for the worker’s movement in the big factories (the PCI and the unions are a much bigger issue), they are nevertheless structures through which the renewal of the DC advances; especially because their penetration and development within the world of labor is favored by the revisionists as it provides space for their false discourse of “ideological pluralism” and “democratic debate”. Where they are not able to find sufficient participation to have an official presence they are diluted within the unions (particularly in the CISL), and in the factory councils in order to advance an anti-worker and counter-revolutionary policy.

As consistent agents of counter-revolution, they don’t disdain playing a role of espionage and provocation against the workers movement.

The attack carried out by the BR in Turin against ANTONIO COCOZZELO on 11/25 who besides being an activist in the DC structure is also one of the leaders of GIP activity in Turin is a statement to the revolutionary movement for the development of the attack on these counter-revolutionary organizations.

The project to which the DC is committed aims to activate all forces within the institutions and the centers of power in order to organize consensus and active participation in relation to the restructuring of the state, its operation to progressively reduce the contradictions within the various components of the state which constitute a factor of instability. This applies to the organizations of economic power, the media organizations, the judiciary etc. This project is implemented through the formation and activation of study centers and similar organizations which carry out interventions directed towards different institutions; included in these organizations are intellectuals, “cultural” figures, economists, jurists, sociologists, who provide their own “expert” contributions on how to save the system and how to best destroy the ability of the working class to resist.

With this immense and articulated operation the DC aims to establish itself as a structure of aggregation and real leadership over all social strata to organize consensus and active participation in the project of construction of the ISM [Imperialist State of the Multinationals-tn].

This is clearly expressed by the Senator-boss Umberto Agnelli: “The DC has an immense political and human potential, but the entry of fresh forces, of citizens who bring the weight of their own work and professional experience is not only a means to enable the expression of that potential. Most of all it is the only way to make the DC a European, secular, popular and interclass party capable of playing the role it played under De Gasperi, in the years of reconstruction in the Italy of the 1980s.”

GENOA: On 27/10 armed units of the BR attacked the property of the following four minions of Christian Democracy:

-TRAVERSO GIAN MARIO: Head of the Sampierdarena delegate council.

-SEMINO SALVATORE: employed at the Campi Ansaldo facility, where he promotes the GIP, candidate in the 1975 municipal elections.

-MINOLA GIANCARLO: a member of the provincial secretariat, has organized the neighborhood health campaign on behalf of the party.

-SIBBILA ANGELO: regional secretary and member of the national council.

MASSA: On 26/10 an armed unit of the BR attacked the property of VENE ORLANDO, a member of the provincial leadership and municipal council candidate in the most recent provincial elections on the list of neo-secretary Alcide Angeloni.

7-if these are the main lines of renewal in relation to which the DC has obtained a substantial internal unity, it is necessary now to observe what contradictions are developing within this process of renewal.

A restructuring project of this extent, leads to an unavoidable clash among the men who have historically defended to the limit the interests of the different economic groups; these people even though they are favorable to the project of restructuring the state and therefore the party, seek to ensure that it impacts their own interests and their own power founded on years of clientism to the most minimal extent possible.

If the clashes between the currents seemed to have been resolved, the recent explosion of contradictions between the doretei led by Forlani¹⁶ and Zaccagini’s office shows that overcoming the currents meets with great difficulties in practice.

The DC is currently experiencing an intense internal conflict between those elements who now fully represent the interests of multinational capital and those who still express the interests of national capital (small and medium industry, small Montedison shareholders, the middle classes etc) in relation to the problem of the integration of the working class into the imperialist restructuring of the state.

Essentially if the entire bourgeoisie is united strategically around the defeat of the working class, the point of contention is whether to accomplish this through a direct confrontation, or by integrating it into the process of restructuring of the mechanism of accumulation through tightening corporative bonds with the PCI and the unions.

It is in the relation to the PCI on the question of holding power that this conflict expresses itself, on both a peripheral level (see the explosive contradictions around Law 382) and on a central level albeit with less intensity (see the attacks on the PCI launched by vice secretary Galloni and the clamoring of the dorotei and fanfaniani).

It is important to bear in mind that such contradictions don’t lead towards the disaggregation of the party but rather towards its restructuring which can be nothing other then the most opportune integration of the different lines and therefore of the interests of the different elements of the bourgeoisie they express into the strategic project of imperialism.

Therefore it is not necessary to draw false conclusions on winning and losing lines from the presence of such contradictions within the DC.

On the contrary the truth is that these contradictions will never become antagonistic but increasingly coexist within the single project advanced by the entire DC, the imperialist restructuring of the state.

Consequently the men, structures and auxiliary organizations of the DC must be evaluated in terms of the significance and the effective function they hold within the project of restructuring.

8-This being the case, the clear conclusion is that it is not possible to make a simplistic identification of the imperialist project with a single organization, much less an individual. Its plan for the total management of society, for the general restructuring of all the mechanisms of oppression and exploitation is actualized in the synthesis constituted by the ISM, but is also articulated throughout the social body through the totality of political structures which comprise it.

Returning to the DC, if on the one hand you can see the top ranks aiming to restore their rule, on the other we can see the broadness and depth of the “renewal” of the party that this entails.

Precisely because the restructured DC must become the overseer and effective manager of the ISM, it would be a mistake to see the DC as only a symbol of the project, while it is actually its beacon and reference point.

For the revolutionary forces it is a matter of identifying and striking the men and structures which articulate Christian Democratic power at all levels. Certainly starting from the central organizations and fundamental structures, but extending the attack to every cog and gear of the demochristian machine, to the whole of Christian Democracy.

Some have asked: why strike the mid ranking cadre of the DC and not the government?

This question, even if tinged with opportunism (are not those who pose it the same who speak of “useless exemplary actions” when the attack is directed against the most prominent representatives of bourgeois power?), deserves a response because it seems to us to pose the problem in a mistaken way.

In the restructured DC there will always be less space for a diversity of political approaches and increasing homogeneity in the implementation of the imperialist directives of the multinationals.

Therefore it is now necessary to also attack the peripheral appendages of the DC, which are no less strategically important [then the center-tn] with a program of combat, and the single discriminating tactic of concentrating the offensive on those persons and structures already perfectly aligned with and organic to the plans of the ISM.

We have said “also” the peripheral individuals and structures of the DC, but certainly not “only” these. It is the totality of the DC which must be destroyed.

The directive to put into practice is clear:

ATTACK, STRIKE, LIQUADATE AND DEFINITIVELY BREAKUP CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY, PRIMARY AXIS OF THE RESTRUCTURING OF THE STATE AND THE IMPERIALIST COUNTER-REVOLUTION

This must occur in the factories, in the neighborhoods, in the schools, in short wherever christian democratic agents of counter revolution can be found.

They must be given no quarter, forced from their dens however they are hidden, and made to pay the price of their infamous work on behalf of the imperialist multinationals. Everyone of them is culpable and they will be judged for this according to the criteria of the only justice we recognize, that of the proletariat.

The attack on the DC is a line of combat which is also a fundamental element of the revolutionary strategic program of attack on the state.

And it is this political line which builds the communist alternative, which constructs an effective proletarian power. There is no real proletarian power, if the machine, the general instrument of the bourgeois for the exercise of its power,its oppression and its exploitation is not destroyed: THE IMPERIALIST STATE OF THE MULTINATIONALS.

This brings us to one of the essential points for the communist vanguards: the organization of proletarian power.

What does it mean to build proletarian power in the current stage of the class war?

[…..]¹⁷

 

THE STRUGGLE HAS JUST BEGUN

a-the comrades of the Red Army Fraction, ANDREAS BAADER, GUDRUN ENSSLIN, and JAN CARL RASPE are dead. Slaughtered.

Before them ULRIKE MEINHOF and HOLGER MEINS¹⁸ were murdered, assassinated.

Hostages in the hands of the imperialist state, because they refused to give up the struggle, they could not be subjugated, so they were exterminated. “We can be subjugated only if we stop thinking and we stop fighting. Someone who refuses to stop fighting cannot be subjugated: they live or they die, instead of losing and dying” said Ulrike.

Those responsible for this planned massacre are the German imperialist bourgeoisie and its political functionaries: the Social Democrats and the Christian Democratic Union. Schmidt, Kohl and Strauss are the assassins.

We refuse to differentiate between two barbarisms, both remain our mortal enemies. Determining the identity of the pigs who drugged the comrades and then pulled the triggers, tightened the nooses and gripped the knives is secondary. The entire German fraction of the imperialist bourgeoisie has its hands and thoughts stained with blood.

b-the social democratic gang led by Schmidt is not satisfied with this sinister massacre; they aspire to much more; they want to destroy the political identity of the comrades. The official story hastily disseminated by the government alleges suicide. It is the same story Buback offered after he had Ulrike assassinated. It is also another proof that the [illegible in original-tn].

The comrades of the RAF have said: “The case of Ulrike is a clear example: she personified the continuity of the resistance in the eyes of the entire movement. It is this continuity they want to strike with the fake suicide. Her death will be passed off by Buback as a “recognition” of the “failure” of the armed resistance and fully exploited in his propagandistic plans intended to deal a death blow to her struggle and her influence on the movement.”

The deaths of Gudrun, Andreas and Jan are clear examples after the same pattern.

A delicate psychological management implemented by means of a mass communications offensive has prepared public opinion for their liquidation over a long period. After the attack which they experienced in Stamheim prison on August 8^th this was all denounced by Ingrid Schubert:

“…the security services, the Justice Minister of Baden-Wuttemburg and Bender aim to proceed to the “final solution” in the near future.”

Comrade INGRID SCHUBERT was assassinated in Monaco prison on November 12^th!

The European revolutionary left, closed in its provincial narrowness, has had neither the understanding or the capacity to mobilize and fight to prevent the German imperialist bourgeoisie from unleashing its counter-revolutionary violence against the hostages from the RAF. Nonetheless when the hostages were attacked it was the entire European left from its combative to its most moderate sectors which was the target.

c- from the first years of the 1970s the RAF has been a politico-military vanguard of the metropolitan proletariat in Europe. A fundamental reference point for revolutionary initiative on the entire continent. It fights in the heart of imperialism and confronts the enemy where he is most strong and organized. But it is not an impossible and desperate revolt. Nor is it mainly a “German question”. The enemy, the German section of the imperialist bourgeoisie is also our enemy: because its counter-revolutionary project […illegible], because it is at the head of the European imperialist bourgeoisie in the process of redefinition of the nation states within a centralized transnational structure of rule.

The contribution which the RAF has given to the development of revolutionary struggle in Europe is as great as the hatred reserved for it by the imperialist bourgeois. The essence of this contribution is to be found in having posed the problem of the class war in the FRG in its real, continental terms.

Now it is clear to all that this is the way forward to confront and overcome the subjective backwardness which now characterizes a large part of the German proletariat.

We want to summarize the RAF’s basic line of revolutionary action, because even on the left, far too many misrepresent it or pass it over in silence out of opportunism.

The point of departure is the internationalization of capitalist production which materially determines the need of the imperialist bourgeoisie with the US at its head to internationalize its rule, organizing regionally centralized systems of political control and repression (sub-imperialisms).

This process which is not without contradictions, traverses and compels the restructuring of the national states whose role is gradually transformed into that of transmission belts and mediations for the interests of the dominant imperialism.

For the RAF, imperialism means counter-revolutionary class war and they assert: “the strategic project which US imperialism imposes through the mediation of German Social Democracy as government policy and a guideline within the Socialist International is a fascization, preventative and without opposition of the bourgeois states in Western Europe”.

Therefore within the (trilateral) world system of the imperialist states, the “domestic policy” of each country is no longer formulated in terms of “national politics” but on the contrary “…it is planned on the basis of the strategic role played by different regions on the economic and military levels for the system in its totality.”

In general: the FRG insofar as it is a strong link in the imperialist chain of the European subsystem, manages the economic instruments (economic blackmail, loans), and the technology of control-manipulation-repression within the framework of American capital and in terms of its strategic operations it has arrogantly assumed the role of enforcer of this movement of preventative counter-revolution throughout the region, and immediately within each of the states.

Specifically: social-democracy is the vehicle of this new fascism, fascism-reformism.. [illegible]. In Europe the social democratic party structures the national states in their domestic and foreign policy in such a way that the conditions of utilization of American capital are ensured on a world level in accordance with the new forms of accumulation.

The first and fundamental strategic thesis which they draw from this premise is the following: the task of revolutionary initiative in Europe today is that of bringing forth “on the basis of the internationalization of the movement of capital, the dialectic according to which the governments located under the domination of American imperialism are transformed into a new fascism, organized on a transnational scale; to highlight preventative counter-revolution as the necessary policy of the dominant imperialism” and as a “organized process and project on the international level.”

The second fundamental thesis is derived from the first: revolutionary strategy must also, necessarily be internationalist, and the organizational form of proletarian internationalism, the vanguard of the international reconstruction of proletarian politics in the centers of capital, must be the guerrilla.

In the Germany of the 1970s, the RAF takes shape as simultaneously a product and a dialectical negation of this counter-revolutionary process; as the comrades put it: “the RAF developed on the basis of it and against it”. This is why it could not but encompass the whole extent of this process in its action. That was immediately clear from the beginning and if many of us have not seen it, it was on account of the lenses of the past through which we observe and filter the tumultuous events of the present. In other words the RAF emerges and develops as the politico-military vanguard of the entire metropolitan proletariat of Europe as an “offensive function of the liberation war against imperialism on all continents”. But it took the massacre of October 18^th for this to finally become apparent in all its splendor.

Even on the local-national level they have played and continue to play a decisive role. A strategic nucleus of proletarian opposition they demonstrate the guerrilla as a tactic of resistance to the “new fascism” and keep the hope of liberation and socialism alive in […].

This is why they have constituted and continue to constitute an irrenounceable point of reference and aggregation for the real vanguards of the German proletariat. We would add that the RAF has restored a soul and an identity to the German people. The soul and identity which existed before Nazism and then the full subordination of its bourgeoisie to the USA horrifically disfigured it.

The German people we have feelings of fraternity for are named, ULRIKE, GUDRUN, ANDREAS, HOLGER, JAN-CARL, SIEGFRIED, PETRA, INGRID…and all other comrades who refuse to give up the fight under the most difficult conditions; preparing for victory.

d- during the Schlayer operation and the hijacking carried out by the Martyr Halimeh Commando (which we will not analyze here) and then following the October 18^th massacre the political personnel of the European imperialist states are tightly aligned around their German “superiors” providing a crude and demystified image of the lines along which the integration process develops and the operational level it has currently reached.

To the extent that the guerrilla is recognized as a common and primary enemy, the “struggle against terrorism, for the defense of western society” increasingly becomes the strategic terrain for the advance of the imperialist restructuring of the states which is the foundation of so called “European unity”.

In Schmidt’s words: “the liberation of the hostages is a success for international solidarity against terrorism”. And Carter for his part says: “the death of Schlayer is a tragedy for the Western world”.

The USA and Great Britain deployed all the force of their political pressure in support of the decision to intervene made by the German government. This “political solidarity” is accompanied by no less substantial “active aid” on military-police level and the manipulation and control of public opinion

On the military level just as before in June when the Dutch marines attacked the train barricaded by the South Moluccan guerrillas¹⁹, it is known that the British super experts of the SAS (Special Air Service) provided stun grenades and other technical support in different stages of the Mogadishu operation which culminated in the spectacular massacre of the members of the Commando Martyr Halimah by the GSG-9 of the FRG.

Another fundamental aspect of collaboration on this level is the logistical aid provided in each country affected by the hijacking, including ours by the “special services” concerned. According to the Corriere della Sera (19-10-1977): “This security service group, and particularly the counterparts of the German GSG-9, have now worked for some months in collaboration with the special units of other European countries: on two occasions they have carried out cross border actions and it is a question of the first “dry run” of what could in future be the counter-terrorist center of the EEC countries, on which international police experts meeting periodically in Brussels have worked for some time”.

It is this group which went into action at the Fiumicino Airport, albeit with results which were hardly exceptional, as the German “authorities” were far from pleased, and the clueless lackey Cossiga rushed to make a public apology and declare his good faith with his tail between his legs!

Clearly it is a question of an operation coordinated by the NATO Security Committee in which agents and special units of the security services of all the “allied forces” have actively participated. Under NATO supervision “special operational units” for “rapid long distance operations” are formed and trained in different countries.

Mogadishu like Entebbe before it, leaves no doubt that the “strategy of rapid deployment” is increasingly established as the basic concept of modern counter-revolutionary war.

On the police level, after some years of development, the machinery of joint police organization was activated for the occasion in all its “components and potentialities” and sought to prove its efficiency in action. We will review this “joint police organization” for a moment, which is brought into by the nine ministers of the EEC following a series of discussions which had an organized systematization in three crucial meetings:

-June 1976: in Brussels the interior ministers of the EEC decide on the creation of a “joint police organization”:

-January 1977: the European Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism is approved in Strasbourg.

-June 1977: The EEC interior ministers give the go ahead for the operational stage of the common organization of police.

The infamous Maihoffer, interior minister of the FRG has shown his clear satisfaction on many occasions with the “excellent collaboration between French, Dutch, Belgian, Italian and German police”. And he has good reason. The French and Dutch sections in particular are distinguished by the vast repressive operations carried out within and around their borders; the arrest and extradition of the attorney Croissant; the capture of an RAF comrade after a gun battle. After October 18^th the French counter-guerrilla police are yet more noteworthy for their decision to “guard and monitor all the vehicles and commercial-cultural-industrial centers of the FRG in France nonstop.”

Cossiga as usual, permitted himself to make some frantic statements in this vein, but the revolutionary forces were able to frustrate his delusions, attacking an unprecedented number of targets.

Moreover, the search for the “six super terrorists”, who disturbed the dreams of Schmidt and his generals, continues without pause throughout the entire continental territory. The reward bulletin is distributed in three million copies by the BKA in the FRG alone and is translated into six languages. And Cossiga happily observes that “every unit in service, every police station has a copy of this bulletin.”

In the context of “counter-terrorist” collaboration among European police forces it is worth recalling a recent episode. On October 31^st the Suddeutsche Zeitung the most important liberal (FDP) newspaper dedicates all of page three to comrade Faina²¹ in Genoa. This article after reviewing the book “The Urban Guerrilla in the FRG”²² published by the Genose Editorial Collective ominously emphasized that “…Genoa is one of the capitals of the BR…”. The Italian police are not deaf to the call. On November 5^th police in collaboration with BKA agents raid a house in Andora with the unfounded hope of capturing some RAF comrades. On November 10^th the Milan prosecutor De Ligouri issues an arrest warrant for comrade Faina and others for “formation of an armed gang”. The imperialist counter-revolution marches on!

Last but not least according to La Stampa (24-10-77) “Twelve countries bowed to an ultimatum from Bonn which threatened to suspend Lufthansa flights if they did not immediately adapt exceptional measures in the struggle against terrorism.” These measures consist of the introduction of German military checkpoints at airport stopovers! Only Algeria refuses.

On the level of the manipulation and control of public opinion, which is to say of “psychological management”, as Cossiga calls it, the integration of the apparatuses and their dependence upon German directives stands in a brutal contrast with the “independence” and “freedom” of information which some still wearily try to defend.

The German minister and government mouthpiece Boeling observed: “if there were no newspapers, there would be no terrorists.” Goebels would not have dared to say more! And it is precisely this line of thought which motivates Schmidt himself to send a letter to the editors of all the European newspapers in which he encourages them to be circumspect and moderate. Directives which are accepted almost without complaint. Just as the other demand of the German government to the international press, to repress any information on the presence of GSG-9 at the Mogadishu airport ready to go into action.

As you can see the Bonn government implemented the policy of “withholding information sources”, a policy advised by the Trilateral Commission “think tank”, genuine theorists of the need to regulate the balance between the executive and the press in the imperialist states, in order to prevent any ABUSE…of press freedom!

The effect of this policy of withholding information is a diffuse blackout of the the message of the “Commando S Hausner” followed by the monotonous diffusion of the official line which unites all media in Europe within a single relentless campaign.

The blackout and orientation of information by the executive are implemented entirely within a “model of psychological warfare, that is of a tactic which makes use of military, ideological and economic means to liquidate an opposition movement.” (Ingrid Schubert).

And it has as its objective “making every citizen an assistant to the police in the witch hunt against the “enemies of the people”-as a communique of the “2^nd of June” group²³ notes, adding “and everything once again approaches the mentality of the Third Reich.”

On 16-11-77 an armed unit of the BR attacked CARLO CASELEGONO vice editor of La Stampa. The objective of this operational unit was to carry out a death sentence against him. Until that day Casalegno managed the La Stampa section “Our State”. It is obvious reading his works that the state which he feels to be “his” is the imperialist one, desired by Agnelli, by Schlayer…by the multinational companies.

His reputation as a free thinker (even if reactionary and right wing) to which many foolishly gave credit could not be more false. Every one of his words and every one of his pieces was always inspired by the international centers of counter-revolution. The Trilateral in which his manager Carlo Levi participates as an “observer” is the source of the orders he always faithfully executed. What belonged to him was only the anti-proletarian venom with which he dyed his pen.

“…there has long been tolerance for violence in the schools, factories, offices and streets. In some cases the unions have themselves offered an improper and dangerous solidarity to workers who have pushed the use of legitimate forms of struggle to a criminal level…” opines Caselegono with regards to the proletarian struggle in Italy, and evidently inspired by the model of Schmidt’s Germany “…more then the legislative arsenal it is necessary to strengthen the police and promptly revitalize controlled but efficient intelligence services; they are a defensive instrument that no state can dispense with and that in Italy have not yet been reconstructed following the crisis of the SID…”

We could endlessly continue these citations but we will limit ourselves to recalling that his last gem is the orchestration a week in advance of a press campaign in support of closing the “dens” of autonomy, which is then put in practice by Cossiga’s gangs.

Caselegono was in no way a mere journalist, but an agent of the ACTIVE COUNTER-GUERRILLA conscious of his own role on the terrain of PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE.

Many bought and paid for agents like him are to found among newspaper editors. But there is no doubt that the revolutionary forces will know how to smoke them out and strike them.

E-let’s begin a digression. The process of concentration and centralization of imperialist power in supranational-transnational-national institutions far from resolving the problem of a resumption of accumulation on the level of the system aggravates all of its internal contradictions and thus favors the development of the class war. What is important to clarify is that in the new situation formed by the class enemy revolutionary action and counter-revolutionary response appears within a relation which is asymmetric and not immediately deducible from the simple power relations (balance of force) within individual nation states. For the metropolitan proletariat the contradiction class-state immediately takes on the character of an anti-imperialist contradiction; which is not necessarily to say between the class and the supernational apparatuses but between the class and the national aspects of imperialist power which is to say between the class and the imperialist state. In short, even against localized revolutionary tensions (and this is possible due to the new organization of power) there is always an intervention of the total strength, technology and intelligence of the imperialist apparatuses.

i- the “EEC plan for the suppression of terrorism”, the joint organization of police etc, are not simply the bureaucratic actions of various governments and ministries, but new facts which must not be underestimated because they transform the terrain of the war. It is necessary to combat a reductive interpretation of the strategic slogan “carry the attack to the heart of the state” (a reduction which modifies the concept); an interpretation of this slogan in purely “national” terms is nonsense. Because the state is the imperialist state of the multinationals, an organic element of the European segment of the imperialist chain; because the internationalization of capital, the market and the mechanisms of crisis regulation is the reality of the current situation; because the internationalization of repressive models and institutions is a reality which is developing before our eyes, the preservation of national limits, out of choice or political myopia, transforms inexorably first into a strategic error and then into a tomb for the revolution.

This is an essential point which the revolutionary forces must thoroughly discuss and reach agreement on in the context of the construction of the Fighting Party in the era of the third world war.

F-the double massacres of Stammheim and Mogadishu have aroused a violent response throughout Europe. The imperialist bourgeoisie huddled around its German representative intended an “endgame for terrorism” with an ultra terrorist, spectacular and terrifying intervention. Instead it must accept that what it hoped would be the end is in reality the beginning of a new and more advanced stage of struggle. As was stated by the comrades of the “S Hausner” Commando: “Andreas, Gudrun, Jan, Irmgard, and ourselves, we are not surprised by the dramatic and fascist methods the imperialists use to exterminate the liberation movements. We will never forget Schmidt and the alliance that participated in this bloodbath. THE STRUGGLE HAS JUST BEGUN.”

What was supposed to serve as a “deterrent” has instead created a formidable motivation for the intensification and unification on a continental scale of the revolutionary class war. There are days which are worth years in the internalization of revolutionary consciousness by the masses. October 18^th was one of those days.

In order for these assertions to not appear unfounded or perhaps just exaggerated we provide below a synthetic (and incomplete!) overview of the offensive response unleashed by the revolutionary movement in Italy and the continent in the hours and days following the double massacre (see the NOTE)²⁴.

In Europe: from France to Greece, from Turkey to the Netherlands, in Belgium, Austria and Spain, the offensive response of the revolutionary movement is the broadest and most unified in recent years: the basic information provided by the daily press despite its intention of minimizing the real weight of the situation gives important context on its strength and quality.

G-What we have discussed above is the most significant revolutionary mobilization on the continent in recent years. It is also the first united offensive on the terrain of CLASS WAR. It is an event of extraordinary political importance which marks a watershed in history. After October 18^th, the continental dimensions within which the strategy of the revolutionary class war for communism is calibrated has been made clear to all the fighting vanguards engaged in struggle. It was no mere surge of solidarity, or even an expression of “horror and outrage,” that confronted the “final solution” carried out by the German government. On the contrary, the essential character of the offensive response is that of a shared recognition of the imperialist bourgeoisie and of its German section as the PRINCIPLE ENEMY of the entire metropolitan proletariat and of its liberation struggle for a communist society by all the class forces active in different countries.

The anti-imperialist and unitary character of the class war became immediately clear to everyone, everywhere, even though it occurs in specific forms and with its own rhythm in each country.

Finally, October 18th revealed that a new offensive proletarian internationalism has matured in the consciousness of the fighting vanguards, outside and against the suffocating and duplicitous rhetoric of the reformist and revisionist left.

But there is another certainty within the practice of these initiatives of struggle, the certainty that if imperialism means COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY CLASS WAR, the fight against imperialism is possible only on the terrain of revolutionary class war.

The unequal development of the different links in the imperialist chain, the inter-capitalist contradictions which become more severe in the CRISIS striking the weak links more heavily, the different history of the proletariat in individual countries, the unequal development of revolutionary consciousness within the national sections of the metropolitan proletariat must deter us from confusing the necessity of a continental strategy of class war with flattening the different regional fractions of the guerrilla into a common tactical approach.

What also becomes clear is the heightened general political responsibility for the combatant forces operating in links like the Italian one, where the revolutionary momentum of the masses is stronger and the economic, political and social tensions explode more intensely into crisis. A theoretical, political and military responsibility, which demands that their subjective perception be tested against the objective conditions within which the confrontation really unfolds now; and if necessary the recalibration of their own armed anti-imperialist initiative for communism.

H-according to RAF militant Ronald Augustin: “the dilemma posed for the imperialist state by its lack of political perspective becomes acute in the crisis. The SPD constrained by it to wage a brutal offensive, has already lost the power which still prolonged it, because it has exhausted the strategy of reformism: the improvement of the conditions of exploitation through their stabilization, the legitimization of the political program of the monopolies…that’s why the bourgeoisie in this stage of its progressive decadence, attempts to annihilate the revolution, the liberation struggle in order to defend private property. That is why we will win.”

Essentially what can also be deduced from the most recent events is the conviction that imperialism has embarked without illusions into the historical stage of its decline and putrefaction. The reactionary mass mobilization in its own defense, which stands behind its frantic search for consensus, finds no support in any economic base. The counter-revolution as a solution for the reestablishment of, to put it briefly “the governability of western democracy” , is exposed as an end in itself. Force becomes its own reason!

We are confronted not only be the explicit declaration of the historic defeat of imperialism as a mode of production capable of infinite expansion but also the consequent substitution of the argument of force for the weaknesses of the “argument”.

The exhaustion of its capacity to further develop the productive forces is an irreversible process. Unfortunately for it no counter-revolutionary effort, however ferocious and violent is able to block this. Which means that no counter-revolution however ferocious and violent can win in these historical conditions.

The bourgeoisie was affirmed because it was an expression of a real process of growth of the productive forces; the imperialist bourgeoisie will be defeated because in order to affirm itself it is obligated to suffocate these forces. An irresistible necessity makes the process of social revolution we are living irresistible. And among all the productive forces, we the revolutionary forces are primary!

PROLETARIANS OF ALL COUNTRIES UNITE!