Doug Henwood wrote:
> Why should looking at the world from the underside
of
> an automobile make you wiser than someone who reads,
> writes, and talks for a living?
>From Adorno's talk "Zur Bekämpfung des Antisemitismus
heute":
"When an anti-semite says that Jews avoid hard physical labor, it would not wise to point out how many Eastern European Jews were shoemakers and dressmakers, and how many Jews in New York today are Taxi drivers. To do so is to already make an allowance to anti-intellectualism and to resort to the level of the opponent. Instead, one should state that the whole argument is a resentment-argument: because one works hard or believes that one must work hard, and because one knows that hard physical labor is already superfluous nowadays, one denounces those of whom it is said, whether true or untrue, that they have it easier. A true counter-argument would be to say that manual labor of the traditional sort is completely superfluous these days, that it has been overtaken by technology, and that there is something deeply dishonest about accusing a particular group of not working hard enough physically. It is a human right, not to torture one's self physically, but rather to develop one's self mentally."