Seeing wealthy ppl joke about not being able to do laundry or get themselves a glass of water, is so gross to me.
For the love of Stalin these ppl need to be put in gulags / re-education centers asap.
The fucking romanticism about this disgusts me to my core. These people could be doing infinitely better things, but they live and work like slaves. ITS WRONG! The system is not okay! But Neo-liberals and their constituents have such a weird complex about these dystopian or feudal aspects of society!
At the very least, they have their own families. Why wouldn’t they want to be caring for them and their own homes?
Domestic workers lives are consumed by their employers AND they’re forced into the weird intimacy “they’re part of the family”.
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I had a thing with a royal once (daughter of an earl I think it was, I have no clue how that shit works nor do I care) for a very short time but got to a mansion once. Even for these lower royalty there were servants. Proper weird people.
These people are forced to do everything you want which just creeped me out. Want drinks? Stay where you are, they got it. Food? Same. Clothing? Same. A drive? Here’s the chauffeur.
Like, be useful and do something yourself. Even the girl was weird and had some sort of normal people fetish it seemed.
I’m getting the images of when partisans captured the winter palace.
Same vibe?
Lmao yes. Just staring in disbelief.
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It’s also incredibly common in Latin America and not just among the wealthiest echelon. And it’s nearly always lighter Latinos employing darker-skinned.
There’s the classic attempt at justifying it as well, that maids are “part of the family”, with a lot of them (in the wealthier houses) living either full-time or part-time in the house they clean.
You ever see the movie Roma? I’d love to see someone do an ML analysis of that film… iirc it tries to do the same thing (IE “humanize” the class subordination of the main character, who’s a maid working for a wealthy family). I saw it way later, so I have no idea about the communist discourse around the movie.
I haven’t, but it looks like I’m going to have to add it to my to-watch list
Over on reddit r/readscarepod someone posted screenshots of a domestic helper website in Singapore describing the different nationalities you can get for a domestic helper. OP accurately described it as akin to talking about dog breeds.
It’s fucking disgusting.
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COVID was so good for the foreigner population remaining in China. It was a long overdue culling. All the SerpentZA types are 2 years gone. Most of the liberal colonial wannabes, the consoomer tourists left, and they were mostly unable to return when they realized their error. Fuck em.
Glorious just glorious. Thank you sharing this.
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There are edge cases ofc. Such as taking care of elderly people but again it can be argued that capitalist work ethic means that family members aren’t given the time to adequately take care of their elders and etc.
Caregivers are generally performing unpaid labour for their family or close friends. They are expected to hold a full-time job while giving care or receive poverty level checks from the government.
This is a different subject than hiring domestic workers and it’s more related to disability rights, but people are ignored by the government the same way.
I do agree with your sentiment but I have to ask you to elaborate on how caregiving and domestic labour are separate issues?
What differentiates caregiving and domestic work? Are they not both performing the same duties?
Unless you mean the key differentiator is that for caregivers, the work is a necessity, but for domestic labourers it isn’t?
Domestic labour can be a part of caregiving. But domestic workers aren’t performing the duties of a caregiver. Caregivers specifically help disabled, ill and/or injured people with medication, personal hygiene, feeding, going to the toilet, etc.
The difference would be the type of role the person is performing. A domestic worker (or “maid”) is working as a servant for an entire household. A caregiver works (takes care of) the care receiver.
There are professional caregivers but the majority of caregivers are unpaid family and friends struggling against the capitalist system.
Edit: remember that work and labour don’t mean the same thing.
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Any update on the rich arab post?
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I’ll be waiting
Yes. Particularly when they compare them to caregivers. You just know they would laugh in the face of someone who needs assistance to use the toilet.
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My mother worked as a housekeeper for petty rich old people. I never thought too much about it about since my mom was someone who naturally liked cleaning and tidying stuff up. The kinds of bourgeoisie that piss me off are the ones that would fret over something like a tiny scratch on their refrigerator.
some of these old f*cks honestly… so much their bank accounts will come to do for them soon.
Interesting write-up. There’s something I wanna discuss about the gig economy but it’d be a long post so I’ll do it later.
Thanks, gonna read this soon.
This is a good writeup, thanks for sharing
honestly the fact that servants/maids exist in the first place to me show the inherent limitations to the patriarchal family structure. in the same way that traditional and productive labor was socialized, reproductive labor should also be socialized and/or automated, and this would require a different familial structure.
because the division of reproductive labor is the primary contradiction of patriarchy, socializing reproductive labor is the main way that you can actually liberate non-men and thus smash the patriarchy. in this sense, maids/servants as they exist now very clearly constitute an unequal division of reproductive labor, offloading it onto less fortunate women and supporting the decaying patriarchal family unit.
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interesting story. i have thought about how, even within market socialism, having a low cost of labor makes for much cheaper prepared food. continually decreasing the necessary amount of weekly hours as you decrease market dominance and overproduction, means people have more time to eat out. as restaurants become less market-dependent, it may become healthy enough to eat at them every day regardless of the restaurant. and, as this all occurs food production may look more and more localized like what you described and less about the production of nonperishable snacks. even now it can serve as a happy medium so that everyone doesn’t have to have a full oven or what have you.
Hiring sex workers is very similar to hiring a servant and is disgusting too.
Yes
no point about moralizing about colonizers and fascists… there is a language they speak tho.
