THE STRUGGLE FOR POLITICAL LINE
The emergence of the BR coincided with, inspired, and encouraged the formation of more armed groups. During the first half of 1971, actions by independent armed collectives dotted the Italian map. Many groups took the BR as a direct model, some even referencing BR in their leaflets. Simultaneously, fascist groups carried out their own series of bombings, some leaving leaflets praising the BR, as part of the strategy of tension.
The BR saw through the provocation early, and issued a leaflet repudiating the latter bombings. They warned the fascists, and the police behind them, that 'nothing would go unpunished'.
The text of the leaflet is reproduced below:
In these days we have witnessed a series of terrorist actions with a clear fascist imprint and also clearly inspired by the police.
In particular we want to mention those carried out against the Rossari and Varzi factory in Trecate in Novara province, the Norton International factory in Carsico (Milan) and the Necchi factory in Pavia, the actions against the army barracks of Riete, L'Aguila, Lamezia Terme and Vibo Valentia.
The bomb attacks were accompanied by leaflets in which, among other things, the "Red Brigades" are praised.
The fascists--the executors--and the Carabinieri, their superiors, by "signing" these leaflets with the symbol of our organization, are attempting to achieve the following goals:
1. To link anti-proletarian, fascist actions with a revolutionary communist organization.
2. To make those organizations that have chosen the path of direct action, partisan action and armed propaganda hated and unpopular, removing all political meaning from their work and portraying them as criminal organizations that pursue aims contrary to the interests of the popular masses.
3. To terrorize the left; supplying "facts" to feed the theory that has for some time has been slyly circulated that the Red Brigades are provocateur organizations led by fascist intriguers and pigs of the various police agencies.
4. To create a climate of tension by carrying out terroristic and gratuitous violent actions that, in the name of the theory of the "opposed extremes," will justify a government attack on the revolutionary left and more generally the working class.
5. To lay the groundwork for a much bigger provocation to be carried out in some factory, attributing it to the left and to, why not, the Red Brigades.
In reality the fascists and the police want to strike, from its birth, at the roots of the strategic hypothesis which will bury them, along with their bosses, forever.
People's guerrilla warfare
The workers of the factories and the neighborhoods where we operate, know that the Red Brigades are communist organizations. They know because these organizations have never carried out an action contrary to the interests of the workers.
In the factories we have hit the despots, the servants of the bosses, those most hated by the working class, when this was made necessary because some comrades had been hit;
we hit the fascists because they are the armed forces that capitalism uses today against working class struggles and the proletarian demand for power;
we have always hit the enemies of the people and we have always hit them from within vast movements of struggle.
For this reason, if on the one hand we are convinced that no comrade will fall into the trap laid by these fascist actions, falsely "signed" with our emblem, on the other hand we give the forces of reaction a warning:
Whoever plays with fire will burn their fingers...
We are investigating to find out who are the individuals directly responsible for these provocations. Perhaps we will know soon, perhaps it will take us a longer time, in any case, you can be sure that:
Nothing will go unpunished!
To the police and the fascists we say one thing clearly: There will be no mercy as far as you are concerned. The fist of proletarian justice will fall with tremendous force on whoever conspires, intrigues and works against the interests of the proletarians.
READ, CIRCULATE, TAKE ACTION
UNIFIED COMMAND OF THE RED BRIGADES (1)
Within the movement, the BR had opposed indiscriminate bombings because they felt it spread fear among the masses. As well, bombs were widely used by, and associated with, the fascists. BR felt that more difficult, but more precise, tactics were necessary.
In this period of 1971, while BR actions were centered in Milan, an additional BR column emerged in Rome to confront the fascist threat. Milan BR accepted responsibility for the Rome column and its actions. Rome BR communicated with the masses through a hard-to-read mimeo newspaper called Red Brigades, #2. This paper detailed actions by both the Milan and Rome BRs, but devoted itself primarily to the fight against the fascists. Nearly all Rome BR actions consisted of setting fire to fascist headquarters, or other fascist property, when no one was present. The Rome BR did not connect any of its actions to factory struggles with the exception of the fire-bombing of a Fascist union leader's auto.
In April of 1971, the first issue of New Resistance appeared. The old SP logo, the hammer and sickle and rifle, now a BR emblem, adorned the masthead. It published both BR and GAP (Armed Partisan Group) documents, plus those of smaller groups, and defined itself as a "communist newspaper of the New Resistance". The intended purpose of the magazine was to provide an ideological center for all emerging armed collectives. A second issue appeared the following month, and then it ceased publication. NR was to be the Brigades' last attempt at legal forms of organization.
New Resistance gave particular attention and analysis to the guerrilla experience in West Germany, Uruguay and Palestine. For instance, they reprinted a long German R.A.F. document, plus an old interview with a Tupamaro comrade that hadn't been widely circulated in Italy.
In a polemic with the Rome solidarity collective, Red Palestine, NR warns: "In all likelihood the time is coming for the end of solidarity committees; this work will be taken over by those who link the struggles of the peoples with the revolutionary struggle in their own country... While the solidarity committees serve revisionism or begin to decompose, the extra-parliamentary Marxist-Leninist forces should seek to find their moment of unity in a collective analysis of the concrete relations between the revolutionary struggle of our country and the people's wars and struggles."
The editorial in the first issue of NR explained "New Resistance" as meaning: "resistance to imperialism, resistance of oppressed peoples and nations, of the revolutionary China of Mao, of Vietnam and the revolutionary peoples of Indochina, of the peoples of Palestine and Latin America, resistance in the imperialist metropolis, in the Black ghettos and the white cities." It ended with a polemic against "conservative" and "often non-proletarian" tendencies in the movement "who not being able to recognize the first signs of partisan struggle" liquidate the question of armed struggle.
Intending to open debate among comrades who didn't object to violence in principle (this included both Continuous Struggle and Workers' Power, the two most important groups of the extra-parliamentary New Left), NR put forward the theory of the guerrilla-party. The guerrilla-party would be an evolution of the old European formula of the unarmed party and its "armed wing". The article went on to discuss the relationship between revolution and repression, quoting Marx and Lenin's observation that as the revolution progresses, it provokes a counter-revolution, and that "the progress of the revolution is... the capacity of the proletariat to acquire new instruments... in keeping with new tasks."
The article analyzed three main forces of violence: 1. individual spontaneous violence, "the worst way to express a just need", 2. mass spontaneous violence, such as demonstrations inside the factory, spontaneous factory struggle, and 3. partisan actions, the first moments of a proletarian will to armed political organization.
The debate within the class-conscious Left, they believed, was being held hostage by yesterday's successes and schemes. The classic European revolutionary theory of insurrection, the strategy of a long, legal preparation of the urban masses for a future insurrection was blinding many comrades to the important vanguard role that partisan actions were playing. It was necessary "to abolish opportunist distinctions between the party and guerrilla struggle, between political and military organization". "Partisan actions," NR concluded, "were correct in principle and necessary now."
The BR also engaged in debate with other armed organizations in New Resistance. In an article on the failed military coup led by Fascist leader Prince Valerio Borghese, some fundamental differences with the GAP (Partisan Action Group) emerged.(2) A Fascist military coup was not seen as a real and immediate danger by NR. Fascist leader Borghese was declared unimportant, called the "2 of Clubs". The GAP, on the other hand, considered a Fascist military coup the main danger, and called on the rank and file of the major Left parties to join them in a revolutionary anti-fascist united front. New Resistance disagreed: the real danger lied with revisionists and the State, who opportunistically used the threat of a fascist coup to consolidate mass support for bourgeois democracy.
Partisan Action Group (GAP)conducted a series of bomb attacks on centers of bourgeois power in Genoa: the u.s. consulate, the headquarters of one Social Democratic party, the Ignis warehouse, the Garrone oil refinery. GAP broadcast class propaganda through pirate radio - "Radio GAP" - escaping detection by moving their antenna around in a van. GAP attempted to follow the old '40's clandestine partisan strategy, where the mountains and isolated rural areas were the terrain of struggle. All factions (GAP, Continuous Struggle, Workers' Power) published communiques.
New Resistance's second issue, dated May 1971, featured an analysis of a new State strategy for repression of the revolutionary movement, which NR referred to as the "criminalization of the movement". They pointed out that the revisionists and the State were co-operating in a strategy to outlaw or "criminalize" the revolutionary Left. The article was prophetic. It showed how BR saw much earlier than the rest of the movement that the State had decided, in collusion with the revisionists to repress all militant activity and all the organizations of the extra-parliamentary New Left.
The second issue of New Resistance also included articles on the struggle in the prisons and the Army. The New Left had been organizing draftees inside the Italian Army, much as the u.s. anti-war movement did during the Vietnam War. Soldiers in uniform were coming to rallies and marching in Left demonstrations. The BR was unhappy that as fast as soldiers were being won over, they were being wasted--and exposed--in public movement activities. In a polemic with Continuous Struggle and PID (Proletarians in Uniform), NR argued that the aim of revolutionary vanguards in the Italian Army should no longer be to simply mold opinion and create a mass movement, but should be the creation of clandestine political-military cells that would be capable of counter-posing themselves to the power of the State at a constantly higher level.
In an article entitled "Burning down the prisons is just", NR takes a position on criminality and the revolutionary role of the lumpen-proletariat:
"The modern revolution is no longer a clean revolution... it gathers its elements fishing in muddy waters, it advances by side roads and finds allies among all those who have no power over their lives and know it... In waiting for the revolutionary festival in which all the expropriators will be expropriated, the isolated 'criminal' act, robbery, individual expropriation, the ransacking of a supermarket are nothing but a sample and a hint of the future assault on the social wealth, 'the criminal breaks the monotony and the banal daily security of bourgeois life' (K. Marx). By his very existence he throws the ideology of capitalist society into crisis: he appropriates concretely what the bourgeoisie shows him to be abstractly available."
In September 1971, after a year in existence, the BR published its first systematic theoretical statement. The document was in the form of an interview, in the style of the Tupamaros, the Uruguayan urban guerrilla movement much admired by the BR.
The document systematized many ideas already expressed during earlier phases of the BR's political evolution. According to the BR, the bourgeoisie had only one possible response to its crisis: militarization, with a goal of not traditional fascism, but a Gaullist fascism like France, i.e. fascism with a democratic facade. The non-reformist Left was not prepared to meet this armed attack by the State. The movement could respond in one of two ways: 1. with a "3rd Internationalist" (i.e. insurrectionist) strategy with an anarcho-syndicalist variation (that believed in spontaneity and opposed organization); 2. link up with the metropolitan revolutionary experience of the current historical period. The New Left 'groups' had chosen the first way, and BR the second.
The BR's discussion of the birth of "alternative" power in the factories and neighborhoods was similar to the theories on dual power of the Argentinian guerrilla organization ERP. Finally, as regards the PCI and the New Left 'groups', the BR opposed sectarian ideological polemics and offered unity with all comrades who supported armed struggle.
The full text of this document follows:
FIRST THEORETICAL REFLECTION
September 1971
1. How do you judge the current phase of class struggle?
It seems to us that there is a consensus of views within the Left on the current situation.
Neither the reformists nor the extra-parliamentary forces have failed to notice the bourgeoisie's plans for reorganizing society around a reactionary and violently anti-working class perspective. More generally everyone realizes that a decisive conflict has begun which on the one hand holds out the prospect of a new political and economic balance of power for the bourgeoisie, and on the other hand for the workers holds out the prospect of overthrowing existing relations of production. But leaving aside the reformists, whose strategy shows itself to be always more and more suicidal in the face of the attacks of reaction, we are interested in pointing out the state of unpreparedness in which the revolutionary forces find themselves in the face of the new level of maturity of the struggle. The revolutionary Left never understood that the cycle of struggles begun in 1968 could only lead to the present levels of violent conflict. Because of this the proper instruments were never developed to match the situation. Our political experience was born out of this need.
2. What are the causes of the present crisis?
Today we find ourselves before a bourgeoisie whose political plans have been overturned. This is due to the failure of capitalism's plans for development and the failure of political plans of the reformist parties. In fact, faced with the initiative of the working class, which has repudiated reformism as a plan for stabilizing society and put the end of exploitation on the order of the day, and faced with the objective contradictions of imperialism which impede a peaceful planning of capitalist development in individual countries, the bourgeoisie has had to reorganize the entire apparatus of power along "right-wing" lines.
3. In which direction do you think the political situation will develop in the near future?
The bourgeoisie is now on a forced path: regain control of the situation through an ever more despotic organization of power. The growing despotism of capital over labor, the progressive militarization of the state and of the class struggle, the intensification of repression as a strategic fact are two inexorable and objective consequences. In the Italian situation we are witnessing the formation of a reactionary bloc, a bloc of law and order as an alternative to the center-left. This bloc prospers under the banner of the nationalist Right. It tends to re-insure its control of the economic and social situation, and thus to repress every form of revolutionary and anti-capitalist struggle.
4. Do you think therefore there will be a new edition of fascism?
The problem should not be posed in these terms. It is an incontestable fact that this repressive strategy aims not so much at the institutional liquidation of the bourgeois "democratic state" as fascism did, as at the most savage repression of the revolutionary movement. In France, DeGaulle's "Coup d'etat" and today's "Gaullist fascism" live under democratic appearances. In the short-run, this is certainly the least uncomfortable model.
It would be naive however to hope for a moderate stabilization of the economic and social situation with the presence of a combative revolutionary movement.
5. What are your choices therefore?
We were faced with two roads besides the reformist path which we, along with the rest of the revolutionary Left, refused to take some years ago: to repeat the past historical experience of the workers movement, according to the anarcho-syndicalist or Third Internationalist versions, or to integrate ourselves into the metropolitan revolutionary experience of this epoch.
Generally speaking, the groups of the extra-parliamentary Left have not given up the first perspective because they have not known how to subject the defeats of the post-World War I revolutionary movement to a critical analysis. They have taken up once again, in its essence, the theory of the two phases of the revolutionary process (political preparation, agitation, and propaganda first, then armed insurrection) and today they are retracing the steps of the first phase while the bourgeoisie is already unfolding its armed initiative.
The ruling class attack against the most effective forms of mass struggle, the political trials and the prison sentences against the most combative militants, the rebirth of fascist Blackshirt terrorism and the fascist attacks on worker pickets, the police attacks on small factories, evicted tenants and students, the house to house searches in rebellious neighborhoods, the hiring of undercover cop provocateurs and fascists in the factories; all these things are testimony to this armed initiative. The armed confrontation has already begun and it aims at liquidating the working class capacity for resistance. Hour X of some future insurrection will not come. And that which many comrades hope to see as the future decisive encounter between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie would only be the last and victorious battle of the bourgeoisie. Just as it happened in 1922, when the fascists took power.
6. Specifically what is the ideological and historical tradition with which you identify?
Our reference points are Marxism-Leninism, the Chinese Proletarian Cultural Revolution, and the ongoing experience of the metropolitan guerrilla movements; in one word, the scientific tradition of the international revolutionary and workers movement. This also means that we do not completely accept the theories that have guided the European Communist parties in the revolutionary phases of their history, above all in regard to the question of the relation between political organization and military organization.
7. Can you spell out this point of view better?
The Brazilian comrades hold that the origin of the retreat of the communist parties into the social democratic degeneration is to be found in the inability of their organizations to cope with the levels of military conflict which the bourgeoisie progressively imposes on the working class movement. It is not the 'betrayal' of the leadership as much as the structural inadequacy of the weapon they use, that is, their organization, which is at the root of it all.
All the metropolitan armed organizations have taken this into account and from the beginning they have totally organized themselves to be able to confront all levels of struggle.
8. The problem as you see it therefore is to begin the armed struggle?
The armed struggle has already begun. Unfortunately, it is a one-sided struggle; that is, it is the bourgeoisie which strikes. The problem therefore is to create the class instrument capable of dealing with the conflict on the same level.
The Red Brigades are the first results in the process of transformation of the class political vanguards into armed political vanguards, the first armed steps in the direction of this building.
9. Are you for a "foco-ist" conception of the armed vanguard?
No. Our point of view is that the armed struggle in Italy must be conducted by an organization that is the direct expression of the class movement. Because of this we are working toward the organization of factory and neighborhood worker cells in the industrial and metropolitan centers, where revolt and exploitation are primarily concentrated.
10. Are you therefore in a preparatory phase?
From a general point of view we cannot help but be in this phase, in that the road we have chosen requires a long period of accumulation of experience and cadres. It is not however a phase separated from the class struggle but one carried out completely within this struggle.
11. Does this mean therefore that the Red Brigades even in this phase are engaged in the conflict?
There is a trend within the class movement which is not related to any of the existing extra-parliamentary organizations, which expresses the need for new organizational forms of revolutionary struggle: organizations of self-defense, first forms of clandestinity, direct actions... The Red Brigades have grasped this need and propose to pass from these first experiences, which constitute a necessary tactical phase, to the strategic phase of armed struggle.
12. What are the conditions needed for this passage to occur?
No armed revolutionary movement which struggles for power can measure up to the struggle without being able to realize two fundamental conditions: 1) measure itself against power at all levels (freeing political prisoners, executing death sentences against police assassins, expropriate the capitalists, etc.) and naturally demonstrate the ability to know how to survive these levels of conflict; 2) bring forth an alternative power in the factories and workers neighborhoods.
13. What do you mean by alternative proletarian power?
We mean that the revolution is not just a technical-military fact, and the armed vanguard is not the armed wing of an unarmed mass movement, but its highest point of unification, its demand for power.
14. What lines do you intend to move along in this phase?
In the past months our fundamental preoccupation has been to root a strategic discussion within the class movement. We hold today that it is decisive to work for its organization. It is a matter, in other words, of rooting the first forms of armed organization in the daily struggles in the factories, neighborhoods, and schools which aim at breaking the tactical offensive of the bourgeoisie. Thus, it is a matter of fighting the bosses' terrorism in its objective and subjective aspects without separating the struggle against the Capitalist organization of work and social life from the struggle against the Capitalist organization of power; to confront the fascist gang violence (squadrismo) and to strike with sufficient hardness at both the persons and the things of its political and military organizers; refusing to concede impunity to the cops, spies and judges who attack the interests and the militants of the class movement.
From an immediate point of view this action must allow us to maintain high levels of popular mobilization, blocking the spread of liquidationist and pessimist tendencies. More generally this clash will not end with the return to the preceding situation but will serve as the premise for the strategic conflict, for the armed struggle for power.
15. So the Red Brigades are transitional organizations?
No, because the armed struggle cannot be confronted with intermediary organs such as the rank-and-file factory committees, the worker-student circles or the extra-parliamentary Left political organizations themselves. It requires, from the very beginning, the strategic organization of the proletariat.
16. Are you talking about the Party?
Exactly. The BR are the first points of aggregation for the formation of the Armed Party of the Proletariat. Here is our profound connection with the revolutionary and communist tradition of the workers movement.
17. What position do you hold in relation to the extra-parliamentary groups?
We are not interested in developing a sterile ideological polemic. Our attitude toward them is above all determined by their position on armed struggle. In reality, despite the revolutionary definitions which these groups attribute to themselves, a strong neo-pacifist current flourishes within them. That is an attitude which we do not share in the slightest, and which we hold will constitute, at the opportune moment, a strong opposition to the armed organization of the proletariat. Yet surely some of their militants will instead accept this perspective of armed struggle. With them the discussion is open. Certainly this is not the only issue: fundamental questions remain relative to the timing and the tactics to follow, as well as the fundamental question of the proletarianization of the organization. We do not accept the mystification which tends to identify the existing vanguards as the vanguards of the class. The problem of the construction of the political and armed vanguards of the proletariat is still open. It cannot be resolved by following the path of facile group self-congratulation, nor with plans for the accumulation of forces that are not significant from a working class point of view.
18. How do you view the accusations which several groups of the extra-parliamentary left have made against you?
Here we have to distinguish two kinds of charges: one is, in substance, a criticism of our "adventurism" and about which we can only say that adventurism is confronting the conflict with the armed bourgeoisie without an adequate armed instrument. And even those who make this criticism of us in a militant spirit cannot escape this judgment.
The other accusation, which is a slander in which we are pictured as provocateurs or fascists, does not deserve a political response. That accusation constitutes an action which those who made it will have to account for at the opportune moment. More generally, going beyond these charges, we believe that with the progress of class struggle the Left will undergo a process of proletarianization in which the dividing criterion will inevitably be the position on the armed struggle. The PCI will be pulled into this process as well. For this reason we refuse every ideological sectarianism typical of the pseudo-revolutionary intellectuals, and reaffirm our strongly unitary position with all the comrades who choose the path of the armed struggle.(3)
Footnotes
(1) Red Aid, Red Brigades, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1976. pp. 85-87
(2) The Partisan Action Group (GAP) was an armed organization that was formed in the spring of 1970. Its main units were based in Turin, Milan, Genoa, and Trento. GAP posed its task as creating a broad partisan army, which in conjunction with a reinvigorated PCI (Italian Communist Party) would make the revolution. Their major political leader was Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, millionaire, publisher and one of the central figures of the Italian New Left. Feltrinelli was killed while planting a bomb in March 1972. Within the next year the GAP died, with many of the surviving militants joining the BR.
(3) White Panthers, April 1972.
