[Marxism] Guerrillas

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Recently on the Maxism list I moderate, where all my film reviews are 
initially posted, there was a discussion about the Symbionese Liberation 
Army. There was a consensus that this terrorist group of the mid-1970s was 
completely disconnected with the broader radical movement, even more so 
than the Weather Underground. There was even a suggestion that the SLA was 
a wholly-owned subsidiary of the FBI created to wreak havoc on the left.

After viewing Robert Stone?s very fine 2004 documentary ?Guerrilla: the 
Taking of Patty Hearst? (originally titled ?Neverland: The Rise and Fall of 
the Symbionese Liberation Army?), I am quite sure that the SLA was simply 
the product of a deadly logic that was rooted in the experience of 
middle-class radicals and not a government conspiracy. As is made clear in 
extensive interviews with Russ Little and Michael Bortin, two SLA members 
serving life imprisonment, the decision to launch the SLA was motivated by 
a sense of outrage over the continuing sins of American imperialism after 
the end of Vietnam war--and concomitantly a sense that mass action to 
oppose it was futile.

Russ Little was a college student from Florida who was radicalized by the 
war in Vietnam. In the documentary he explains that his radicalization was 
partially inspired by the example of anti-imperialist fighters but also by 
the popular culture he grew up immersed in. He remembered the television 
show ?Zorro? fondly, which depicted a swordsman in a kind of one-man 
rebellion against Spanish tyranny in 19th century Southern California. He 
also was influenced by the example of ?Robin Hood,? especially in the movie 
that starred Errol Flynn. (Russ Little was probably unaware of Flynn?s Nazi 
ties. In a letter to a German intelligence agent Hermann Erben written in 
1933, Flynn complained, ?[A] slimy Jew is trying to cheat me ... I do wish 
we could bring Hitler over here to teach these Isaacs a thing or two. The 
bastards have absolutely no business probity or honour whatsoever.?

But above all, these radicals were captivated by Costa-Gravas?s ?State of 
Siege,? a 1973 film that dramatized the kidnapping and murder of CIA agent 
Dan Mitrione in Uruguay by the Tupamaros, an urban guerrilla group. 
Essentially, the SLA was an attempt to adapt the model of such groups to 
the USA just as groups like the October League and the Revolutionary Union 
were attempting to adapt the Maoist example at this very time.

After the SLA kidnapped Patty Hearst, they demanded that her father 
Randolph Apperson Hearst, a fabulously wealthy press baron and the son of 
William Randolph Hearst whose life was dramatized by Orson Wells in 
?Citizen Kane?, dispense millions of dollars in groceries in poor 
neighborhoods as a partial ransom payment.

Their inspiration for this ?Robin Hood? tactic came from guerrilla groups 
in Argentina, including the quasi-Trotskyist People?s Revolutionary Army 
(ERP). The ERP was backed by Europeans, while the American Socialist 
Workers Party and its allies backed a rival Trotskyist group that favored 
mass action in what they considered the orthodox Bolshevik mode.

The story of Patty Hearst?s involvement with the SLA is extremely dramatic. 
Not long after her capture, she gave all the appearances of being recruited 
to the guerrilla cause. She adopted the name Tanya, in honor of Che 
Guevara?s compañera in Bolivia. Initially, commentators explained this in 
terms of the ?Stockholm Syndrome? in which kidnapping victims begin to 
identify with their captors, mostly out of a sense of fear. Unfortunately 
for Patty Hearst, she remained attached to the SLA even when she was off on 
her own. As one interviewee from the police force noted, there were 
numerous times in which she could have gotten into a cab and driven off to 
safety but she never did. After being convicted of bank robbery, Hearst was 
sentenced to seven years in prison. Jimmy Carter commuted her sentence 
after 3 years.

Stone?s documentary allows Hearst and her father to largely speak on their 
own behalf but their words cannot do justice to the complexity of their 
relationship. This is a human drama that gets to the very heart of how 
class society operates and how it will begin to unravel as the 
contradictions of capitalism deepen. It was clear that Patty Hearst was not 
just a victim of the Stockholm Syndrome, but was in many ways a typical 19 
year old Berkeley student who sensed that there was something deeply wrong 
with American society. It is doubtful that she would have joined anything 
like the SLA on her own accord but her conversion was not that much 
different than the one other ?Robin Hoods? of her generation underwent.

In 1909 Leon Trotsky wrote:

?A strike, even of modest size, has social consequences: strengthening of 
the workers' self-confidence, growth of the trade union, and not 
infrequently even an improvement in productive technology. The murder of a 
factory owner produces effects of a police nature only, or a change of 
proprietors devoid of any social significance. Whether a terrorist attempt, 
even a ?successful? one throws the ruling class into confusion depends on 
the concrete political circumstances. In any case the confusion can only be 
shortlived; the capitalist state does not base itself on government 
ministers and cannot be eliminated with them. The classes it serves will 
always find new people; the mechanism remains intact and continues to 
function.

?But the disarray introduced into the ranks of the working masses 
themselves by a terrorist attempt is much deeper. If it is enough to arm 
oneself with a pistol in order to achieve one's goal, why the efforts of 
the class struggle? If a thimbleful of gunpowder and a little chunk of lead 
is enough to shoot the enemy through the neck, what need is there for a 
class organisation? If it makes sense to terrify highly placed personages 
with the roar of explosions, where is the need for the party? Why meetings, 
mass agitation and elections if one can so easily take aim at the 
ministerial bench from the gallery of parliament??

The same social factors that drove middle-class radicals to pick up the gun 
against Czarist officials drove the SLA?ers to kidnap Patty Hearst and to 
kill the African-American Superintendent of Schools in Oakland, a 
singularly counter-productive act. While there are few signs of terrorism 
in the USA today, except for the occasional outburst by deep ecologists who 
have the good sense to only attack property, it is not ruled out that such 
acts will become commonplace once again. In a society that is marked by a 
large degree of apathy and despair in the working class, young radicals 
will always feel tempted to substitute themselves for the masses. As part 
of the necessary education for a new generation of radicals, it will be 
necessary to read what Lenin and Trotsky had to say on the topic. Robert 
Stone?s very effective documentary, which is available on line and at your 
better video stores, will also play a part in this education. 


________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism