Cajo Brendel

A message I have been asked to pass on from Dave Douglass.

"I am deeply saddened that Cajo is dead. We had concluded our debate with the publication of my little pamphlet All Power To The Imagination (published by Class War) in which I reprint his ideas and my polemic against his conclusions. Following this we agreed to disagree.

Most anarcho’s in Europe are aware of only the opening shots of this debate and not
the subsequent in-depth riposte and counters.

Other than our public polemic we had a fair bit of private correspondence, and in that
Cajo made the sharpest criticism of me of the whole encounter. This was for responding to his ideas as though he was the foe and not simply as a comrade with whom I disagreed. He was right, and afterwards I altered the tone of my responses and we exchanged some friendly correspondence. Cajo was most comradely and supportive during the ‘last stand ‘ of the miners in 92/93 when the Government of John Major aided at length by the Liberal-Democrats forced through the final decimation of the coal industry. Other than the political significance of that attack was the deeply traumatic personal upheaval and life change engendered by it, and the depth of depression it had thrown me and a great many other miners into. I found Cajo’s words at this time most helpful.

For all this we never met, and for that I am greatly saddened. I am sure that in a more
relaxed arena and over a glass of beer we may both have appreciated a little more of
each others reasoning.

Cajo was a great thinker and writer and humanitarian. His motivation was unquestionably respect for and love of the working class and its struggle to be free of economic and social oppression, and all that stood in the way of that. That union leaders and through them frequently union structures obstruct our progress to that goal
is undoubtedly correct. The extent that this is true and the conclusions which follow from that was the basis of our much publicised polemic.

I shall miss you old comrade, but your words will be rattling my head for the rest of my life.

David Douglass"

well TBH 'the struggle of the working class' sounds a bit monolithic. and almost simplistically optimistic.

i reserve the right to support whichever struggles i choose. i'm not going to be cajoled into supporting everything that dave says is working class

ok fine. but i think it is you that has misunderstood TBH - i wasn't saying i was choosing which class to support, just which struggles or even what is a struggle.

politicians: no fun

eta: i mean you're operating with far too many asumptions for your last post to make sense IMO. it's just bad philosophy - nothing about being an individualist

It's good to hear Dave respond.

I don't think it was claimed that you were. The (comradely) criticisms from myself were that you are a full-timer at present;

So I then apologise - it was an honest mistake. I'm not really aware of what being an Organiser entails, or rather what its place is in the union hierarchy, but I understand you've made some attempts at 'organising' them themselves?

And to clarify, do you disagree with anarchists holding positions that are full-time/carry a level of power?

I have just checked my email, here's Dave in a slightly less friendly mood than I have;

"Can you just correct this latest slur that I was on 100% lease leave or something. Can
you tell them, no, I was a coalface worker, at the coal face for 30 plus
years, I worked shifts along with the men who elected me, I was allowed,
during days of relative peace, time off to attend the monthly council
meetings, or to represent workers at disciplinary and concilliation
meetings. As the screws tightend all time off work was banned and I and the
other representatives were put on the worse shifts often in highly dangerous
and potentially fatal parts of the mine. Any time we used to represent
workers or their widows or families was then marked down as absence, and if
you had enough 'time off' they sacked you. As branch Delegate I was subject
to regular election, subject to dismissal, spoke only on mandate from the
men, recieved no more- and usually slightly less-than the average wage of
the workers I represented. So not by any stetch of the imagination was I 'a
full time' official of this or any other union. I have always been a worker,
at the coal face, in the thick of it and on the self same back breaking
shifts, or later, on the worse anti social shifts the management could
devise. So can we finally nail that lie ? It proves you havent read All
Power To The Imagination which responded to all this crap 20 years ago. By
the way, what does the questioner do for a living and where is s/he in the
social pecking order of capitalist society ?
Copies of Power To The Imagination are still available from me or the IWW or
Class War, £6 post paid. Before another myth starts no I have not been paid
to write that book and in fact put 50% of the money up for it to be
published which I never fully recovered, but that was my choice and I was
greatful for CW for publishing it."

Dave again; " By the way I have no problem with someone working full time as a representative so long as they are subject to regular election and subject to dismissal and have no more than the average wage of the workers they represent. But the truth is, I was never one of these. As you know."

not that this is important but i could have wordered that better/clearer/etc..

Devrim - All Power to the imagination is essential reading for this debate.

Dave said this "Life isnt black and white, the 'union' isnt a monolith, class war takes
place through it, and within it. I repeat that if you dont understand the significance of the class struggle within
unions, you do not understand the struggle of the working class". For me -this is the essential point, virtually all the theory about unions looks like it is esoteric, that it takes place outside on engagement in the here and now, the reality of struggle today in the workplace. Rather than explore possibilities and engage in wider class struggle, all there is is regurgitation of positions, which helps no-one.

An example of this is Dispatch issue 1, awfully well meaning, but it is 'struggle lite' with an absence or 'real people' in it. What is it trying to achieve? If it is trying to achieve nothing it will achieve nothing, and because it isn't clear that is exactly what it looks like it is doing. It talks about things in the ultra left way - a description of events with no people - you need a participants perspective for that. I will not hand this to posties I know, and I know I am not alone in that, cos it is poor.

well it's mostly written by a postie with other public sector workers doing the rest. the back is written largely in first-person from the pov of said postie, on strike. so it is written by participants, which would be obvious to anyone who'd actually read it.

i mean it was written by a striking postie, and you won't hand it to posties because it wasn't? wtf

it actually isn't 'ultra-left' enough imho, since as soon as it came out the union called off the strike far sooner than expected (look at the comments on royal mail chat, they're certainly split , but many posties are saying stuff like 'union bosses, royal mail bosses - same shit' - are they also detached from their own struggle?). i've no idea where this notion that if you're critical of unions you are automatically a bystander comes from - and i don't think there's really anything in dispatch critical of the CWU anyway, which was in my bystanderish opinion an oversight in light of subsequent developments.

It's not sectarian, it's petty personal sniping. Pretty irrelevant anyway because this person wouldn't be interested in a real workers struggle, only stuntist fantasy . Anyway let's not derail the thread.

VOlin said "Eh? I think that's completely unfair, and (following on from threads specifically speaking about this) would ask you to show a better bulletin - i.e. one that isn't trot-preaching or the safe union line and that does the basics of providing an all round picture of the disputes. The fact is you can't, and this is little more than pointless sectarianism."

Yes, you are right. There isn't a better bulletin that I know of and that is a shame. That does not mean that one should not be written. No, it is not sectarianism because I haven't provided an alternative, it is critique though.

it certainly wouldn't hurt for that kind of thing, although writing at the start of the dispute there wasn't necessarily much that could have been drawn on - although in fact via the copious links to royalmailchat personal experience is available by the bucket load. bit of a weird reason to refuse to distro what you say is the best leaflet on an ongoing dispute though.

and it still doesn't make it ultra-left, i don't think there was anything critical of the union in it, although it called for mass meetings and the like, they're a bit of a postie tradition i'm told, as older posties may well remember.

you ask what it's trying to achieve, well it's purpose is twofold. firstly to encourage postal workers to communicate directly with each other both in person via mass meetings and online via royalmailchat, controlling the struggle from the bottom up. secondly to inform public sector workers of the wider dispute in other sectors over the same government pay ceiling (and within the postal service as communication about e.g. wildcats at the other end of the country is not great) . the feedback from posties has been pretty positive, and i had a couple of good chats when dishing some out at shift start down here.

but all this is derailing the thread on Cajo...