From Insult to Manual Labor

[Leo Casey]

I have to admit that I, also, had no idea what the
term Sheeney meant. I thought it was a typo for
Sweeney -- it didn't make a lot of sense, but then,
neither did the posting as a whole. But I still
wonder, was there a big lacuna in my street education,
or is it an archaic insult, such that we are
witnessing a kind of pedantic anti-Semitism? I know
pedantic anti-Semitism sounds oxymoronic, but I find
the whole episode really peculiar to begin with. Why
would someone post anti-Semitic insults here of all
places?

Having actually spent some considerable time in
windowless factories as a wage laborer, I find the
cult of manual labor to be a particular fetish of
workerist _intellectuals_. It reminds me of the line
in the _German Ideology_, where Marx waxes poetic
abour Communism in terms of hunting in the morning,
fishing in the afternoon and doing philosophy after
dinner. It is a rather pregnant formulation, begging
for deconstruction -- how interesting that he would
choose the main activities of a hunting and gathering
society [the return to the glorious, unalienated
past], but present them in a form that evokes their
status in the modern world -- as hobbies and
avocations. The real world of relying on hunting and
gathering is not so idyllic. So, too, for those who
find glory in manual labor -- when you have to do it
to stay alive, it's a different story.  

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