author
Paul Lafargue
1842–1911
A sharp-tongued socialist writer and activist, he is best remembered for The Right to Be Lazy, a provocative attack on the worship of work. Born in Cuba and active mainly in France, he moved through the political worlds around Karl Marx while developing a voice very much his own.
2 Audiobooks
The right to be lazy, and other studies
by Paul Lafargue
Le droit à la paresse : réfutation du droit au travail de 1848
by Paul Lafargue
About the author
Paul Lafargue was born in Santiago de Cuba on January 15, 1842, and became a French political writer, journalist, economist, literary critic, and socialist activist. He spent much of his life in France, with periods in England and Spain, and is widely remembered as one of the early popularizers of Marxist ideas in the French-speaking world.
He married Laura Marx, Karl Marx's second daughter, in 1868, and was closely connected to the wider socialist movement of his time. Lafargue was also a leading figure in the French socialist movement and helped shape the French Workers' Party alongside Jules Guesde.
His best-known work, The Right to Be Lazy (1883), remains his most famous and surprising book: instead of praising endless labor, it mocked the moral obsession with work and argued for a freer, more humane life. That mix of polemic, wit, and political conviction still makes his writing feel lively more than a century later.