[lbo-talk] service coops (was Servant culture)

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Wed Aug 13 06:55:05 PDT 2003



>
> Let's say Merry Maids and/or what have you were worker-owned coops a
la
> Thomas Weisskopf or David Schweickart; who on the list would denounce
such
> purchase-sale of labor power as exploitative? Or should the household
> division of labor be an exclusively intra-home phenomena?
>

That was the exact thought I had when I read _Nickel and Dimed_ . Why can a two-bit capitalist (Ehrenreich's term) start and run a domestic service firm but not a union or a coop? After all, it is a very low-capital venture, all it takes is a few thousand bucks to rent office space and purchase vaccum cleaners and cleaning agents - even poor people can do that.

Unfortunately, Ehrenreich did not even hint that solution. Instead, she chose to extensively rant about the life styles of people who hire domestic servants. In so doing she acted like a jester of limousine liberals. Ruling classes always hired jesters who entertained them by mocking their life styles - but no jester was ever allowed to say anything that might undermine his employer's power or coffers.

Wojtek



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