"Bombs Bursting in Air" Urban Terrorism

EARLY last Thursday morning, explosives planted in three buildings in midtown New York City seriously damaged the offices of General Telephone and Electronics, IBM, and Mobil Oil. The explosion at IBM was so extensive that 600 employees had to report elsewhere for work on Thursday, and the damage at Mobil forced its office to close for the day.

By warning the police an hour in advance, the anonymous saboteurs gave 100 night workers an opportunity to evacuate the endangered buildings, and no injuries resulted from the explosions. But by making sure the threat was carried out, the bombers also gave credence to 137 anonymous bomb scares which flooded the city during the next fourteen hours. The threats caused the evacuation of thousand from apartments, college dormitories, and the offices of the New York Times.

In a letter which reached UPI shortly after the explosions, a party calling itself "Revolutionary Force 9" claimed credit for the acts. "IBM. Mobil, and General Telephone are enemies of all life," the letter explained. "All three profit not only from death in Vietnam, but also from American imperialism in all of the Third World."

In terms of their analysis, the saboteurs could not have picked a better target for an assault on social ills. The corporate structure exercises the predominant influence in political and social decision-making. so it is with relation to this structure that change must take place. And since it exercises control over state and legislative machinery, it has the power to obstruct legal or peaceful change which is inimical to its own interest.

In the view of the terrorists, the Vietnam war and "the racist oppression of Blacks. Puerto Ricans, and other minority colonies outside American" have been profitable to the economy and therefore an integral product of the political system. Thus it becomes necessary to strike at the corporations as the dynamic behind that system.

THE rationale for isolated and secretive action stems from the fact that the saboteurs have read most white Americans out of the "oppressed" category. It is true, they maintain, that whites serving in Vietnam have been unduly victimized, and that "the degradation of [being] forced into lives of anti-human work" has resulted in social and cultural disadvantages. But most whites, they say, are too contented with the economic benefits of the capitalist system to challenge it, and may even be prospering from the wealth which America extracts from Third World peoples.

Only a minority of Americans, they conclude, will act against the system. The impetus for social change will come from the black "colony" in America and from those in the Third World who are confronted with the apparatus of the American state. Their own limited bombing action will serve as an example to those in this country who would have a rational motivation to join them.

The views of "Revolutionary Force 9" do not account for what the economic system has done to whites as well as to blacks. Rather than increasing the white man's prosperity, the Vietnam war and other forms of "defense" spending have resulted in higher taxes and decreased purchasing power during the past five years. And although he is economically better off than his black counterpart, the white American is still struggling to maintain an adequate income in the face of rising costs and the efforts of corporations to clamp a lid on wage increases. His economic advantage over the black man does not result from any form of mutual antagonism. It results from racist hiring practices and income differentials imposed from above.

A successful strategy against the economic monolith will not result from secretive acts of terrorism, but from mass actions against corporations and the government to achieve economic and social gains. As it was, the bombing barely succeeded in closing IBM and Mobil for a day. A successful strike would close these firms and end war production until they had effected far-reaching changes in basic policy.

The bombing tactic of the "Revolutionary Force 9" must be rejected as useless and counterproductive. It violates all principles of mass understanding and democratic participation. It will do nothing to win social change.