The Fourth International denounces the intensification of the atmosphere of repression and attacks on elementary democratic rights now taking place in Germany after the terrorist actions that resulted in the assassination of Schleyer, chief of the West German employers, the seizure of a Lufthansa aircraft, and the assassination of its pilot.
The Fourth International, standing in the tradition of revolutionary Marxism, has always opposed individual terrorism. It forcefully reiterates this position in regard to the latest terrorist actions in West Germany. These acts contribute nothing to the cause of the emancipation of the workers, which can only be the result of the collective action of the workers themselves. In no way do they facilitate the overthrow of the capitalist system, source of limitless oppression, exploitation, injustice, and inhuman violence. This overthrow can be brought about only through the organization, majority mobilization, and development of anticapitalist consciousness of the toiling masses as a whole. Far from contributing to this organization, mobilization, and development of consciousness, these terrorist acts impede them and erect additional obstacles to their realization.
This is especially true in West Germany, where after several years of ebb the mass movement and class activity had evidenced the beginning of an upturn in September, illustrated by the spectacular success of the united antinuclear mobilization in Kalkar, which drew 50,000 demonstrators, and by the first, no less spectacular antibureaucratic success in the metalworkers union: during the Dusseldorf congress, rank-and-file delegates passed a motion demanding an immediate struggle for the thirty-five-hour week, against the fierce resistance of the union bureaucracy. The immediate objective result of the terrorist actions was to bring this upturn to a sharp halt.
But our irreconcilable opposition to terrorism cannot prevent us from denouncing the intensification of the atmosphere of repression, witch-hunt, and increasingly severe attacks on the most elementary democratic rights now occurring in West Germany. Indeed, no one should be fooled by the democratic proclamations of the German and international bourgeoisie. Their hypocritical character has rarely been exposed so crudely as on this occasion. The very people who claim to be defending the democratic rights of all were silent about the massacre, committed under conditions of indescribable cruelty, of 127 strikers, women, and children by the Ecuadorian army; this massacre occurred just as the death of Schleyer was learned. They were also silent about the report of Amnesty International describing the tragic fate of the 100,000 Indonesian political prisoners. The list of crimes covered up by these "defenders of democracy" could be extended at will: mass murders by the Argentine dictatorship, denounced even by liberals in that country; the use of torture by the British army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary in Ireland, on which many reports have been published; Carter's modernization of the equipment of the Iranian repressive forces, in spite of all that is known about their extreme cruelty; the arming by French, British, and West German imperialism of the South African state, now responsible for the massacre of many black children. But for these innumerable victims of state terrorism, murdered in the name of "the established order," our governments do not shed the tears they do for the death of Schleyer and the few victims of terrorism in the German Federal Republic.
The hypocritical appeal to the "defense of democracy" also serves to camouflage the obvious inconsistencies of the inquiry that has been opened in West Germany into the deaths of Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe, deaths which are more than suspicious. There is too much evidence against the thesis of suicide to be ignored. We may note, among other things:
• The fact that the fourth victim, Irmgard Moeller, a victim of a suicide attempt according to the authorities, has denied the existence of a "suicide pact" among the four prisoners in Stammheim prison and has likewise denied that she tried to take her own life;
• The fact that immediately after this statement, Irmgard Moeller was placed in complete isolation, cut off from all contact with the outside world, including her lawyers;
• The fact that Andreas Baader was left-handed, but the powder traces were "discovered" on his right hand;
• The fact that if the suicide thesis is true Baader would have had to shoot himself in the neck with a 7-inch-long pistol in such a way that the bullet exit^ in the middle of his forehead, which is extremely difficult technically;
• The fact that in spite of meticulous daily searches of the cells of the prisoners and of all their visitors, including their lawyers, an entire arsenal would have had to have been smuggled into the Stammheim prison, which is considered one of the best guarded in the world;
• The fact that the mentality of the members of the RAF (Red Army Faction) held in prison was not at all suicidal, far from it, and that if they really had an arsenal they would have been able to use it to seize high prison officials as hostages in order to try to win their release;
• The fact that the pistol shots were not heard in a prison in which there was rigid twenty-four-hour surveillance and that the bodies were discovered only hours after the "suicides";
• The fact that the police refuse to release the exact time of the death of the prisoners.
No official declaration will suffice to assuage the suspicions against the authorities of Stammheim prison and the state of Baden-Wurttemberg, nor to lift the accusation of complicity on the part of the Bonn government. We must demand the formation of an impartial commission of inquiry formed by the international workers movement and composed of jurists and physicians known for their total independence of the state power, which can freely investigate all aspects of this affair and freely publish the results of its inquiry.
The fact that the Stammheim prisoners had been completely isolated from the outside world long before their deaths, in flagrant violation of the most elementary human rights, can only intensify the climate of suspicion surrounding their deaths, and can only sharpen the presumption that the bourgeois state was preparing a bad blow against them.
More generally, there have been many attacks on democratic rights in West Germany. The rights of the defense in political trials have been seriously limited. Lawyers have been prosecuted simply for having defended the rights of their clients energetically. A law has been passed permitting seizure of writings and books expressing "apologies for violence." This law is not used to confiscate military manuals or publications which complacently and in an openly apologetic manner describe the violence of imperialist war, including the violence of the SS, which represented the acme of inhuman barbarism. It is used only to confiscate publications on anarchism, including historical works. Tomorrow it will be used against Marxist works if the present trend continues. The bourgeoisie already wants to extend censorship and sanctions against all those who "slander" the bourgeois state and expose its function in defending capitalist property and exploitation, including through repression and violence.
The ossified law prohibiting all those whose "loyalty to the constitution" is in doubt from getting jobs in the public sector has created a heavy climate of intimidation, hyperconformism, and witch-hunt among young graduates who are threatened by unemployment. This law undermines the formal equality of citizens—that sacrosanct principle of bourgeois democracy—as well as freedom of speech and research in education. The entire German right is now trying to broaden this to a generalized witch-hunt against all opponents of the capitalist system, against all Marxists and socialists, and even against critical spirits whose "agitation" allegedly provokes the emergence of terrorism.
Specific threats of illegalization have been made against far-left organizations, and even against the DKP, the ultramoderate, pro-Moscow Communist Party. A whole wing of the Social Democratic Party itself, as well as a wing of the trade-union movement, may also be affected by these measures, judging by the statements of reactionary capitalist circles.
It is clear that the repression of terrorism is only a pretext for fueling this anti-worker offensive. What it aims at is a vast preventive action against the workers movement and the toiling masses and the establishment of a strong police state, which would prevent the wave of rising workers struggles in Southwest Europe and Britain from also making its appearance in West Germany, although with several years delay. Thus, the target is not merely some "extremist" minorities, but the entire forward-moving wing of the workers movement. By cleverly applying a salami tactic, aided by the criminal complicity of the leadership of the Social Democratic Party, the bourgeoisie is seeking to strike successively at broader and broader sectors of the workers movement, while avoiding any reaction by the workers movement as a whole. The West German bourgeoisie hopes to defeat without great cost an adversary that is still far from vanquished and which still commands formidable potential strength.
All the claims that a "fascist regime" or a "process of fascicization" already exists in West Germany are completely false and irresponsible. There are still powerful workers organizations in West Germany, especially the unions. There is still freedom of organization and of the press for the workers movement, even its revolutionary wing. It is precisely because these freedoms are threatened that they must be defended energetically and effectively, and must not be declared lost without a struggle.
The responsibility of the German Social Democracy is particularly serious. For the second time in history it is opening the way to a strong, repressive police state, under the pretext of lesser evilism and under the cover of blind anticommunism. For the second time, this threatens to result in its own liquidation, unless there is time for a vigorous and united reaction by the workers movement and the West German and international working class.
McCarthyism, the witch-hunt, and the erosion of democratic rights can be halted only through unfailing unity in action for the collective defense, by all, of all the victims of bourgeois repression, and only if there is action against every attack on democratic rights.
The Fourth International calls upon all organizations and tendencies of the German and international workers movement, without any exclusion, to engage in this collective, united solidarity activity with the victims of repression in West Germany.
Democratic rights must be defended as a whole or they will be eliminated one at a time.
Class solidarity must be applied collectively, or it gives way to individualistic feelings of "every man for himself."
This class solidarity must also be manifested on the international level. Under the cover of a hysterical campaign, the bourgeoisie has in fact been able to take a step forward toward coordination of an international apparatus of repression. For the first time since the second world war, German imperialism has been able to strike outside the borders of West Germany, with the collaboration of the British Special Air Services, trained in "anti-terrorist" repression in Ireland. The right of asylum for political refugees is beginning to be denied throughout western Eu rope.
The German working class has a glorious tradition of struggle and a capacity for organization. It still commands considerable strength and combat reserves. It is high time to mobilize these forces, if a dangerous strengthening of the bourgeois state and military apparatus that could threaten the democratic rights of the workers movement throughout Europe is to be prevented. It is high time for the European workers movement, discarding any anti-German chauvinism, to speak to its German brothers and sisters in class language, for a common defense of common interests.