[WS:] No disagreement here. I think that most efforts of this kind have the predictable result of making things worse for the left.
My point was slightly different, though. I think that despite its political failures, RAF signaled and perhaps popularized a new attitude toward the place and role of women in German society, which radically departs from the conservative concept of "lebensraum" (i.e. living room as the "proper" space of women, according to Claudia Koonz, _Mothers in the Fatherland_). Unlike many US-based left movements of the era in which "men were making a revolution while women were making coffee", the RAF spectacularly staged a very new role for women - as warriors operating the very heart of the public sphere. While that took some of the dominatrix quality only aided the popular impact of this new role. The media attempt to delegitimize RAF by calling it the Baader Meinhof group probably contributed to popularizing this unconventional gender role espoused by RAF.
So from the point of view of a "conventional" red revolutionary project - in which the reds defeat bourgeoisie and capture the state- RAF was an utter fiasco that in a long run probably did more harm than good. But from the point of view of the "new left" revolutionary project - in which the reds subvert the dominant paradigm of bourgeois social norms and gender roles - RAF was a success, I think.
Wojtek
On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 9:32 AM, Angelus Novus
<fuerdenkommunismus at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Wojtek wrote:
>
>> The fact that they were not "chump change"
>
> Actually, the RAF accomplished comparatively little. Well even that's too
> charitable; it really didn't accomplish anything.
>
> The so-called "second" and "third" generations of the RAF (i.e. the ones who
> sprung up after the "first" generation ended up in prison or killed) were
> preoccupied *solely* with attempting the release of the first generation from
> prison. They had no other Raison d'être.
>
> The first generation made good media copy, the cinematic quality is also
> apparent to me. Anyone who has seen the Gerhard Richter paintings (part of the
> MOMA collection in New York and exhibited in Berlin when the MOMA lent its
> collection) succumbs to this fascination, I think.
>
> But really, politically the RAF didn't accomplish much, other than unleashing a
> wave of state repression that ended up hitting the rest of the left as well.
>
> Also, there were other significant urban guerilla groups beside the RAF, but
> comparatively little about them in English. The most notable were the
> "Revolutionary Cells" and their feminist counterparts the "Red Zoras". These
> were notable for being comprised of activists who weren't in the underground but
> who rather led "normal" lives and were involved in the "above ground" left as
> well. There is a lot of info in German, but in English the only source I know
> dealing with them is in Katsiafica's book on European autonomism.
>
>
>
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