Introduction to Bland on Terrorism by Hari Kumar
Written 14 November 2023.
In 1975 the British Marxist-Leninist W.B. Bland reminded the movement of the dead-end and dangers of petty-bourgeois terrorist tactics. Bland argued that it was necessary to “be clear on the Marxist-Leninist attitude towards terrorism.” Moreover, he located the key motive force of terror as a “punishment of opportunism “ – echoing Lenin.
Let us briefly recall the period in which Bland was writing this article in the 1970s. What was happening?
The stage-set was one of a disintegrated Marxist-Leninist movement precipitated by the take-over of the USSR by the Khrushchev racketeer mobs. They began to turn socialism into capitalism. World over, communist parties were shattered and only a few Marxist-Leninists held to the position that the USSR during Stalin’s life was a genuine workers state. Their small groupings became quickly riven by the pseudo-left narratives of Maoism. Other groups adhering to the PSRA were miniscule and held no mass audience.
But working class and student militants who no longer found a convincing home sought alternatives. These were not promising. The more academically inclined were seduced by the ‘New Left’. Those more aware of the need to be close to the class itself found the alternatives of the slavishly pro-Khruschevite then pro-Brezhnevite official ‘Communist Parties’ rigidly stifling and unconvincing, especially after the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Trotskyist alternatives were growing but retained an off-putting sectarianism.
It was in this period that the false promises of individual terrorism bloomed. Bland notes this was a worldwide phenomenon, and that in the United Kingdom, it took the shape of the Angry Brigade; and in Jordan, it enabled King Hussein’s repression of the Palestine liberation forces. Bland prominently dissects how the individual terror of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) divorced it from the working class.
Such individual terror took the shape of a solitary rage against targeted individuals who substituted for the whole ruling class. As if the hostage-taking or killing of an individual manufacturer – or policeman or state politician, etc. – could bring down the edifice of capitalism. This was a worldwide phenomenon.
This is not the place to reprise this country by country. However, one example vividly illustrates the notion that terrorism of this type is a “punishment of opportunism”. The example chosen here is of Italy.
The Red Brigades in Italy “wounded 27 Fiat managers (ed- between 1975-1980) … four Fiat executives had been shot dead … Carlo Ghiglieno a top executive in Fiat was shot dead … climaxing with the kidnapping and murder of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro (in 1978).” (Alan Friedman, 1989, “Agnelli and the network of Italian Power,” pp.80-81)
“Enrico Berlinguer’s rise to the PCI leadership .. in 1970, heralded an institutional breakthrough. He radicalized former leader Palmiro Togalitti’s call for a rapprochement with Catholic Italy, the DC’s base… Berlinguer (sought a) historic compromise… to integrate the PCI into a coalition led by the DC party. This would prove his party’s commitment to republican institutions.” (David Broder, “Historically Compromised”; Jacobin, 05.09.2018.)
Aldo Moro approved: “talking of “parallel convergences” — a transaction in which neither party would lose its identity.” His successor Andreotti took this path with Berlinguer. (Broder Ibid.)
The individual terror turned to kill the trade unionist Guido Rossa, mourned by 250,000 workers at his funeral. By 1983 the Red Brigades had no influence on the movement and the social-reformist Bettino Craxi and his Socialist party came to power.
It seems the death of Aldo Moro was no doubt convenient for the ruling classes, who refused to negotiate for his release with the Red Brigades. This was hinted at in a letter he wrote before his death:
“Is there maybe, behind [the hardline stance towards negotiation] against me, an American or German instruction?” (Wikipedia citing Francesco Virga; “Rileggere ‘L’Affaire Moro’ di Leonardo Sciascia”; Dialoghi Mediterranei; No. 61. Istituto Euroarabo di Mazara del Vallo.)
The tactic of individual terror – keeps re-arising. The Communist League, Alliance-ML and Garbis Altinoglu have argued against each new manifestation of this, as in:
- The Lockerbie air disaster of 1988;
- The 2001 9/11 Attacks;
- The Istanbul bombings of 2003
- The 2005 murder of Rafiq Hariri in Lebanon;
- The London bombings of 2005 (See Madrid Statement of 7 July 2005 “October Communist Organization”).
Today the debacle happening to the people of Palestine and especially in Gaza shows again the hopelessness of individual terror. (See “On Palestine, the Palestine Liberation Movement, and USA Imperialism: A Marxist-Leninist View” by Hari Kumar, 2023; published by The Red Phoenix).
The repetitive re-emergence of these useless individual terror tactics vividly shows that we have still not built the antidote that Lenin worked to establish, namely, constructing a Party so linked to the movement of workers that it replaces the illusions of individual terror. That is why we choose to re-present this article of Bland today.
Read “On Terrorism,” as published via Alliance-ML via this link.