*Films To While Away The Class Struggle By- "The Baader-Meinhof Complex"

Click on the headline to link to a "YouTube" film clip of the movie trailer for "The Baader-Meinhof Complex"

Recently I have begun to post entries under the headline- “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”-that will include progressive and labor-oriented songs that might be of general interest to the radical public. I have decided to do the same for some films that may perk that same interest under the title in this entry’s headline. In the future I expect to do the same for books under a similar heading.-Markin

DVD Review

The Baader-Meinhof Complex, Constantin Productions, 2008

This film, "The Baader-Meinhof Complex", is based on a novelistic treatment of the, sometimes, heroic exploits of the 1960s radical Germany group, the Baader-Meinhof Group (aka Red Army Faction, RAF), that, like a number of other such formations at that time, such as the the Weathermen in the United States, set out to form guerrilla organizations in order to fight imperialism. That of their own state, as with the Weathermen, or others, or to act as a "second front" in order to assist the Vietnamese in their struggle against American imperialism.

Just before I watched this film I watched and reviewed, "Salt Of The Earth". That latter film presented a very different view, one that involved getting working and other oppressed peoples to organize themselves in mass action in the struggle against the bosses, a view more in tune with my own understanding of political organizing for radical social change. A way that in the long haul would prove, I think, to be more effective in the fight against international capitalism that the actions of RAF-type guerrilla formations. Nothing in this film, other than a sneaking admiration for the willingness of these fighters to sacrifice their lives for the struggle, has moved me from that earlier conviction.

And that, my friends is the most graphic comparison that I can make about the fate of those, mainly, student radicals that went up against the German state in a more protracted struggle than here in the United States, and lost. Throughout the viewing of the film I kept getting the feeling that these fighters were talking to themselves in a vacuum. That the mere fact of being willing to fight, and to die, for the cause of the oppressed was enough to validate their positions and their strategies. And as the story unfolds I kept getting the feeling that I had been here before. And I had. In previous reviews of the actions of the Weathermen and of other armed struggle, substitutionist radical student-based formations that dotted the left-wing political landscape in the 1960s and the early 1970s. Off this viewing I would note though that the RAF seemed to be a much more serious and committed organization, at least before its original cadre were taken off the scene and out of day-to-day leadership, one way or another, by the West German security apparatus and their international allies.

An American communist revolutionary that I greatly admire, James P. Cannon, an old Wobblie, founder of the American Communist party and founder of the American Trotskyist movement, once noted that if you get a small group of radical political people in a room and keep them there long enough anything is bound to happen. And that is exactly what happened here. The script could have almost been something out of Dostoevsky's "The Possessed", with a few modern technological updates. And this in a country, Germany, that had a long traditional of radical action, including a not unheroic communist past, had a vibrant and wide-spread student movement in the 1960s and, most importantly, an organized working class chafing under a bureaucratic Social Democratic Party leadership that needed to be replaced.

So what does the Red Army faction do- starts an urban guerrilla campaign based on expropriations and acts of selected terror. Now, let us be clear most of the actions of the RAF, especially those aimed directly at the American military presence in Germany were defensible, as was the organization itself when confronted by the German state. The political differences over strategy, here the effectiveness of an intellectual elite-led urban guerrilla warfare not based on mass support against a modern industrial state, are what separate us, at it did with the Weathermen. However, the weakness of such a strategy got confirmed, intentionally or not, as the leaders and rank and file members got rather easily picked up, picked off, placed in jail, and placed on trial. In the end, with not way out, the isolated original leadership is forced to acts of suicide. In a sense, what we are witnessing unfold is the turn from a heroic guerrilla formation to a class war political defense organization. That scenario too is familiar from the old Black Panther days here in America.

This is a film to watch, however, whatever the intentions of the director and producers as to the lessons to be drawn. If the strategy of urban guerrilla warfare ever seriously resurfaces in the West just drag out this film to clear the air. And then have your contacts watch that "Salt Of The Earth" that I mentioned before.