The Right To Be Lazy and Other Writings
Paul Lafargue, Alex Andriessse
3.63(6013 readers)
Exuberant, provocative, and as controversial today as when it first appeared, Paul Lafargue's The Right to Be Lazy is a call for the workers of the world to unite--and stop working so much! Lafargue, Karl Marx's son-in-law (about whom Marx once said, "If he is a Marxist, then I am clearly not"), wrote his pamphlet on the virtues of laziness while in prison for giving a socialist speech. At once a timely argument for a three-hour workday and a classical defense of leisure, The Right to Be Lazy shifted the course of European thought, going through seventeen editions in Russia during the Revolution of 1905 and helping shape John Maynard Keynes's ideas about overproduction. Published here with a selection of Lafargue's other writings--including an essay on Victor Hugo and a memoir of Marx--The Right to Be Lazy reminds us that the urge to work is not always beneficial, let alone necessary. It can also be a "strange madness" consuming human lives.
Publisher
NYRB Classics
Publication Date
11/29/2022
ISBN
9781681376820
Pages
121
Categories
About the Author
Paul Lafargue
French revolutionary Marxist socialist and Karl Marx's son-in-law.Lafargue was born in Cuba to French and Creole parents. Karl Marx even once reffered to him by the n-word.
Lafargue his main work was called the right to be lazy. In which he calls upon not only the right to work, but also the right to be lazy. At the beginning of that book he claimed that the African slaves lived under better circumstances than the European worker.
At 69 he died together with his wife Laura in a suicide pact.
Lafargue his main work was called the right to be lazy. In which he calls upon not only the right to work, but also the right to be lazy. At the beginning of that book he claimed that the African slaves lived under better circumstances than the European worker.
At 69 he died together with his wife Laura in a suicide pact.
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