Yoshie Furuhashi
Fri, 15 Dec 2000 13:13:53 -0800
Lou: > >The problem is not Cuba but the workerist romanticization of manual >>labor _amongst leftist -- including Marxist -- intellectuals in rich >>nations_. I'm saying that workerists are out of touch with actual >>manual laborers, who in fact long for more time to read books, enjoy >>movies, have intellectual conversations, dream of sexual fulfillment, >>etc. -- all of which workerists sneer at as if they were luxuries out >>of keeping with socialism. >> >>Yoshie > >If you run into any of these people, you can put a hungry wolverine in >their underwear for me. There is no shortage of workerists here, on LBO-talk, & on your list, from you to Wojtek who otherwise have little in common. Intellectuals' love-hate relationship with being intellectuals, which unfortunately emerges as contempt toward other intellectuals & workerism that turns off manual laborers from socialism. >Frankly, I think it is a waste of time to blather >on about whether educated people should or should not dig ditches in >capitalist society for the "good of their soul". My only interest in these >sorts of questions is based on the importance of intellectuals being >integrated into socially necessary manual work in developing societies that >have just overthrown capitalism. A rather arcane subject, I know, but one >that is of intense interest to me. Actually existing socialism -- be it planned or market -- has never been able to do away with the division between manual & mental labor. Hence the Prague Spring. The collapse of the USSR. "Democratic oppositions" in Serbia. And so on. And so forth. So this is a question that should interest all here. What has saved Cuba so far may be that Cubans in fact have addressed this question of the division of labor explicitly; for instance many films by Tomas Gutierrez Alea revolve around this question: _Memories of Underdevelopment_ (1968); _Up to a Certain Point_ (1984); _Strawberry & Chocolate_ (1993); _Guantanamera_ (1994); etc. And he was celebrated in Cuba as well as in other nations for it, instead of being marginalized artistically. Most importantly, as he demonstrates in some of his films, the division of labor is not simply between mental & manual; it is the root of oppressions based on gender and sexuality. Yoshie