Singing to Tractors (was Re: O Happy Day)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>CB: In general I agree with movement to resolve the ancient 
>antagonism between predominantly mental and predominantly physical 
>labor.
>
>There is some issue of "workerism" , romanticising physical labor by 
>some radicals.
>
>However, not touched here or on LBO-Talk is the wellknown, 
>platitudinous even , but true ANCIENT SNOBBERY OF PREDOMINANTLY 
>MENTAL LABORERS which is part of the elitism of ruling classes which 
>exploited predominantly physical laborers down through the class 
>societies.

As a matter of fact, I think that _workerism is rooted in ancient 
snobbery of intellectuals against predominantly manual laborers_. 
Workerists think that manual laborers are uninterested in questions 
of culture, sexuality, etc., patronizingly under-estimating manual 
laborers' intellectual capacity & interest.  I have very little 
tolerance for workerism, because I was brought up by blue-collar dad 
& pink-collar mom who were & still are deeply interested in books, 
movies, etc.  Politicized workers _especially_ have _no_ time for 
Philistinism, which workerists -- emblematized by the college-boy 
"junior Stalin" who is surprised to find a book in a back-pocket of a 
steel worker's pants that Mike LeFevre remembers in his oral history 
collected by Studs Terkel -- imagine is appropriate for the working 
class.  Workerism turns off workers from socialism.

Yoshie