Looking at 3rd world countries and the people's revolutions over there, the RAF (anarchists that they were) believed that the only reason people anywhere do not start a revolution is that they are afraid and think nothing can be done. Therefore, what you have to do is show them that resistance against the state is possible by killing state officials and getting away with it.
They were wrong in this respect. Not because they did not get away with it. They were wrong because people in capitalist centers such as the US, Germany, France and so on do not see themselves as oppressed by their state. To them, their state is necessary to enable them to pursue their happiness, aka go and get a job. This is true, in a perverse way: Capitalist society is based on competition for property in the form of money and therefore the urge to use violence to get ahead is always present, in every transaction you do. People rely on the state and its monopoly of violence in order to get their boss to pay their agreed-upon loan , their landlord to repair some shit he is contractually obliged to repair and so on. Why did I call this true in a "perverse" sense? Because the state with it's guarantee of ownership of property is the one who forces people into that shitty situation.
Anyway, like I said: Contrary to what I just tried to explain (English's not my 1st language), the RAF believed the people to be simply oppressed, as if they were basically already left-wing revolutionaries who are hindered by their own fear. They are not: The attacks of the RAF brought the German people and their beloved state even closer together, made them cheer for the creation of a new, state wide police force.
edit: Lefties should learn from this mistake. If you want to abolish capitalism, you first have to acknowledge that those who get fucked by it on a daily basis, the proletariat, have no class consciousness whatsoever. So the first thing we have to to is some explaining.
edit 2: The political group I am affiliated with has some texts in English on a badly designed website. There is nothing on anarchism or the RAF, but there are some other tranlations of texts on different topics of the left. http://www.ruthlesscriticism.com/index.htm
I’m pretty sure the RAF considered themselves Marxist Leninist, they just mixed it with some new age beliefs. I also believe they did get some clandestine backing from the Eastern Bloc but never much. The Movement 2 June was an allied group that IDed as Anarchist though.
Yeah, you may be right there. I was only say the anarchist bit to make clear that the mistake I tried to point out was the same mistakes anarchists usually make.
That makes a perverse sort of sense, in their world where surplus is defined as the product of successful oppression. In that schema, the meting of that surplus back at a profit just looks like fair exchange. I like Graeber's observation that the paralogic of private property is a sort of taboo, a prohibition that proscribes its own interrogation. I see rich possibilities in détourning that taboo.
Looking at 3rd world countries and the people's revolutions over there, the RAF (anarchists that they were) believed that the only reason people anywhere do not start a revolution is that they are afraid and think nothing can be done. Therefore, what you have to do is show them that resistance against the state is possible by killing state officials and getting away with it. They were wrong in this respect. Not because they did not get away with it. They were wrong because people in capitalist centers such as the US, Germany, France and so on do not see themselves as oppressed by their state. To them, their state is necessary to enable them to pursue their happiness, aka go and get a job. This is true, in a perverse way: Capitalist society is based on competition for property in the form of money and therefore the urge to use violence to get ahead is always present, in every transaction you do. People rely on the state and its monopoly of violence in order to get their boss to pay their agreed-upon loan , their landlord to repair some shit he is contractually obliged to repair and so on. Why did I call this true in a "perverse" sense? Because the state with it's guarantee of ownership of property is the one who forces people into that shitty situation. Anyway, like I said: Contrary to what I just tried to explain (English's not my 1st language), the RAF believed the people to be simply oppressed, as if they were basically already left-wing revolutionaries who are hindered by their own fear. They are not: The attacks of the RAF brought the German people and their beloved state even closer together, made them cheer for the creation of a new, state wide police force.
edit: Lefties should learn from this mistake. If you want to abolish capitalism, you first have to acknowledge that those who get fucked by it on a daily basis, the proletariat, have no class consciousness whatsoever. So the first thing we have to to is some explaining.
edit 2: The political group I am affiliated with has some texts in English on a badly designed website. There is nothing on anarchism or the RAF, but there are some other tranlations of texts on different topics of the left. http://www.ruthlesscriticism.com/index.htm
I’m pretty sure the RAF considered themselves Marxist Leninist, they just mixed it with some new age beliefs. I also believe they did get some clandestine backing from the Eastern Bloc but never much. The Movement 2 June was an allied group that IDed as Anarchist though.
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Yeah, you may be right there. I was only say the anarchist bit to make clear that the mistake I tried to point out was the same mistakes anarchists usually make.
That makes a perverse sort of sense, in their world where surplus is defined as the product of successful oppression. In that schema, the meting of that surplus back at a profit just looks like fair exchange. I like Graeber's observation that the paralogic of private property is a sort of taboo, a prohibition that proscribes its own interrogation. I see rich possibilities in détourning that taboo.