I was reading the super summarized version of capital that Nia Frome wrote on red sails, and this question popped into my head. In the general formulation, capitalists exploit workers who they employ, because they pay them a wage that is not in line with the value that they imbue into their product. When I think about a laundromat, though, there’s not really any employees to be exploited, seemingly. There’s certainly an owner, and they are renting out a service, but they don’t have employees working under them. Is it more akin to like, being a landlord? I was also thinking it has similarities to the Terry Pratchett “boots theory of socioeconomic unfairness” in the sense that if you can’t afford the whole washing machine, or live in a place without one, you end up spending much more on washing clothes in the long run. Anyways, I would love to hear your thoughts comrades :].
sure, they act as a landlord, but then there's also the indirect exploitation involved in producing the washing machines, the detergent, and then in turn people mining minerals for that, mining coal for electricity, etc.
Right, but that indirect exploitation applies to effectively everything in everyone's life and doesn't have a lot to do with the laundromat owner specifically.
Lots of laundromats do have employees; there has to be an attendant and if the owner wants to have business hours longer than they’re willing by to work they’ll have to hire someone.
I think any business with an owner and no employees can probably be classified as somewhere between a skilled laborer and a landlord, depending on how much capital is involved in their business. A web developer might only own $1000 worth of computer equipment and their main contribution is their knowledge. A laundromat owner owns many thousand dollars worth of laundry equipment and a space to keep it in, and only provides a small contribution of their own skills.
If by "attendant" you mean somebody physically in the building at all times, then no, laundromats don't need attendants. A lot of the time they just have someone come in once or twice a day (if that), make sure things are working, clean the bathroom, and leave. Could be the owner or could be hired out. Overnight you can do your laundry without seeing another soul, at least in my experience.
Even if there's no labor employed, the owner is doing the same thing as a landlord: Turning an amount of money into capital, then charging a rent on it over time to make a profit. I think something could be said about them turning the labor embedded in the washing machines into profit, since they're only good for some finite number of cycles, but it's secondary to the main part of renting.
They're either shopowners or landlords, depending on if they're renting the land and equipment or own it. Only difference is the labor of washing is provided by the people using the machines instead of by employees like at a dry cleaner.
They own the means of production (of clean and dry clothes).
They can increase the "rents" or reduce supply or let the machines go unmaintained/replaced and charge the same amount of money for less and less of a service. Heck, I'm sure I've seen signs in laundromats that say something like "Not responsible if the machines eat your money".
So yeah, like, the people who are using the machines would be the people most likely to be exploited.
Most likely people who consistently use laundromats probably don't have stable housing.
I think you’re on the right track. I would say that self-service industries extract capital more than they exploit labor, at least directly from consumers. They fill an economical niche that only exists because of the labor exploitation of workers in other sectors of the economy. So yeah, if you can’t afford a washing machine then a laundromat is one of your only options; you’re part of a captive market.
It’s the same for vending machines and gas pumps.
i agree that they're most like landlords, barely even petit-boug due to the rarity of having formal employees or skilled labor they perform. of coirse in the basic motion of capital accumulation 1 landromat becomes 2 becomes 3 and then they're definitely bourgeois bosses, but its definitely a strange initial situation
