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A Black Social Theorist? Reading The Right to Be Lazy by Paul Lafargue

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Abstract

The article provides a fresh reading of The Right to be Lazy by Paul Lafargue (1842–1911). Lafargue’s text, first published in 1880, has recently been republished. The article examines the resurgent interest in Lafargue in light of current debates about retirement age and shortened working days. It points to the shaping of Lafargue’s essay by his experience of a kin-based organization of intellectual production: Lafargue was a son-in-law of Karl Marx and was configured in the Marx circle as a mixed-race Creole. Changes in the reception of Lafargue’s critique of the “dogma of work” are noted, and the article argues that the double suicide of Lafargue and his wife sheds its own light upon his famous essay.

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Notes

  1. Paul Lafargue, The Right to Be Lazy: And Other Writings (New York: New York Review of Books, 2023). The other writings included in this edition are “A Capitalist Catechism,” “The Legend of Victor Hugo,” and “Memories of Karl Marx.”.

  2. “With my mug of a métèque [pejorative for a shifty looking southern immigrant], a wandering Jew,... an alien.” The song was greeted as a cry of revolt of all minorities.

  3. Albion Small, 1907.

  4. An earlier 1898 English translation by Harriet Lothrop published by the New York International Publishing company retained the subtitle of the original, as did Bernstein’s 1881 and all subsequent German translations. Spanish and Italian translations available today omit the sub-title.

  5. e.g., The Right to Leisure, transl. James Blackwell (Glasgow: Labour Literature Society, 1893).

  6. The essay was published in the more relaxed censorship regimes of Tito’s Yugoslavia, in Poland and in Cuba, where Lafargue, born in Santiago, was claimed as a Cuban Marxist.

  7. Engels worried about the reception of the essay in Germany. “Beware of the Droit à la Paresse. Parts of it were too much even for the French…” Engels to E. Bernstein 13 Nov. 1883, The Collected Works Vol. 47, p. 69. And there are two oblique references to the work in correspondence between Laura Lafargue and F. Engels: Engels to Laura Lafargue, “Let me ask you to see that we get…the list…surely Paul will not push the Droit à la Paresse far enough to refuse me that little bit of work.” 8 Oct. 1889, Correspondence, Vol. 2, p. 325; Laura Lafargue to Engels, “Paul and I have been exercising ‘le droit à la paresse’ these last few days by taking plenty of exercise” 9 June 1893 Correspondence, Vol. 3, p. 259.

  8. Russell [1932] 1935.

  9. Jean Maitron, 1969.

  10. The first French translation of Marx’s Grundrisse (manuscripts composed 1857–1861) was published only in 1967. The first English translation, in 1973.

  11. Leslie Derfler, 1991, p. 1.

  12. After several centuries of relative latency, the late nineteenth century was a period of intense, racialized anti-semitism in France. Anti-semitic passages of Lafargue’s writings and public speeches appear in satirical writings designed to entertain (e.g., “Lamentations de Job Rothschild,” in La Religion du Capital, 1886) and in speeches crafted to achieve popular emotional mobilization. When challenged, after a trial in which he was accused of encouraging attacks upon Rothschild, Lafargue claimed that he focussed upon Rothschild as the “personification” of modern finance, and regretted there were so few Jews among French socialists as Jews are “habile, intelligent, indefatigable., single-minded (dévoués)” Lafargue, P. [1886] 1970, pp. 187–188. At the time of the Dreyfus case, unlike Guesde, Lafargue supported Dreyfus. And he classed official organs of anti-semitism, together with Catholic newspapers, as reactionary. On Engels’ “understanding” of French anti-semites, when himself confronted with “Jews of Polish origin and with German names,” see Engels to Lafargue, 22 July 1892, Engels, et al., Correspondence, Vol. 2, p. 184.

  13. Lafargue, Textes Choisies, [1866] 1970, p. 20; Derfler, 1991, p. 53.

  14. Karl Marx to Jenny Marx, 5 Sept. 1866, “Lettres (inédites) a ses filles” La nouvelle revue socialiste 26, Nov. 1-Dec. 15, 1928; Marx to Eleanor Marx, 5 Sept. 1866 and 26 April 1869, The Collected Works of Marx and Engels Vol. 42, p. 315, Vol. 43, p. 271.

  15. Engels to Laura Lafargue, 25 Dec.1894, cited in Derfler 1998, p. 154, n. 4. See also, Jenny Marx to Engels 17 Jan. 1870, Collected Works Vol. 43, p. 552, Engels to F. Sorge 14 Nov. 1891, cited in Derfler, 1998 p. 99, n. 54; Engels to Auguste Bebel, 26 Nov. 1891, cited in Derfler 1998, p. 101; Laura Lafargue to Engels, 17 Jan. 1870, cited in Derfler 1991, p. 76; Engels to Laura Lafargue, 26 April 1887, 11 June, 1889, 6 Jan. 1892, in Engels, et al. Correspondence, Vol. 2, pp. 37, 276, Vol. 3, p. 154.

  16. Marx to Laura Lafargue, 11 April 1868 and Marx to Engels, 11 April 1868, The Collected Works Vol. 43, pp.7,9. See also Paul and Laura Lafargue to Jenny Marx, 6 April 1868, cited in Derfler 1991, p. 59. The wording is an allusion to J. G. Seume’s poem “Der Wilde.”.

  17. Paul Lafargue to Engels, 25 July 1884, Engels, et al., Correspondence, Vol. 1, p. 222.

  18. Lafargue married Laura, Marx’s second daughter in 1868. The Communard, Prosper-Olivier Lissagaray, courted Marx’s youngest daughter Eleanor, who helped write and translate his History of the Paris Commune, though their relationship, meeting with Marx’s disapproval and the hostility of Paul and Laura Lafargue was broken off. Charles Longuet who, like Lissagaray, was a Communard and, like Lafargue, had published in La Rive Gauche, married Marx’s eldest daughter, Jenny, in 1872.

  19. Marx to Engels, 7 Aug. 1866, cited in Derfler, 1991, p. 42.

  20. Yvonne Kapp 1972, pp. 42–45. Marx wrote Engels, “Appearances must be maintained for the children’s sake.” Marx to Engels, 31 July, 1865; Jenny Marx to Engels, 24 Dec. 1866 The Collected Works Vol. 42, p. 577.

  21. One socialist leader remarked of Eleanor that she seemed “inspired with some of the eloquence of the old prophets of her race.” Chushichi Tzuzuki, 1967, p. 156. Yet one of the daughters of Marx’s atheist, German Protestant identified family wrote to another upon meeting a young Rothschild that he was attractive, but “trop juif.” The Protestant family of Marx’s wife had opposed her marriage, though Marx’s father had converted to Lutheran Christianity in order to be able to practice law.

  22. Saint Dominique had the highest number of free “persons of color” in the Western world. Non-marital unions between white males and African women, slave or free, frequently led to the manumission of the women if enslaved, and to “Creole” progeny who could legally inherit substantial property and wealth, including slaves. Lafargue’s paternal grandfather may or may not have been killed in the Haitian revolution, and his paternal grandmother, either an ex-slave or free “person of color” was, together with her son, among many who fled to Louisiana and Cuba during the Haitian Revolution.

  23. Letter, Karl Marx to Paul Lafargue, 13 Aug. 1866. The Collected Works Vol. 42, p. 304.

  24. Lafargue never practiced as a physician. Early in the marriage, the couple considered emigrating to Louisiana, where Lafargue’s family held property, but decided against it. Lafargue tried, and failed, to earn a living as an engraver, and briefly undertook work in an insurance firm which went bankrupt. Though both Lafargue and Laura Marx did many translations, and Lafargue sometimes published a piece a day in small pamphlets or newspapers, neither the translations nor the journalistic ephemerae paid enough to support the couple, who repeatedly turned to Engels to cover costs of rent and food.

  25. Laura Lafargue to Engels, 16 Oct.1893, #540, Engels, et al., Correspondence. Vol. 3, pp. 304–305. It is characteristic that while demurring on adding her name to a translation on which she collaborated, Laura Lafargue reminded Engels of her husband’s need for money.

  26. The party was founded after Lafargue and Guesde were expelled from another French socialist party, unwelcoming to representatives of a “Prussian” in London.

  27. French socialists antagonistic to Lafargue and to “Marxism” compared Marx to the Pope, and Marxists with “ultramontane” Catholic clergy. Derfler, 1991, p. 216. For Engels’ disparagement of Lafargue’s “French” qualities, Engels’ awareness of French hostility to German Socialists, and French suspicion of Lafargue as their mouthpiece, see Engels’ letter to Eduard Bernstein 25 Oct. 1881, cited in Derfler, 1991, p. 198.

  28. Engels to Paul Lafargue, 27 June, 1893, #527, Engels, et al., Correspondence. vol. 3, p. 273.

  29. Jacques Girault, Intro. to Paul Lafargue, Textes Choisis 1970. Paris: Éditions Sociales. Vol. 1, p. 100.

  30. Marx to Engels, 7 June 1866; 4, July 1882; 11 Nov. 1882, cited in Derfler, 1991, p. 52, p. 207.

  31. Albion Small, in a one sentence review of the 1907 American edition of The Right to be Lazy in the American Journal of Sociology, dismissed it as a “satirical,” “extravagant tirade,” an instance of “neurotic socialism” designed to entertain. Small, 1907.

  32. See Marx’s discussion of the proclaimed Right to Work and failure of the national workshops (Ateliers) in newspaper articles published in 1850, republished by Engels in 1895 under the title The Class Struggles in France, 1848–1850, p. 41, p. 51.

  33. “And to what men does capitalist slavery give leisure? To the useless and pernicious Rothschilds and Boucicauts, who are themselves slave to their vices and their servants,” Lafargue, 2023a, b, p. 19. An ironic choice of villains for an advocate of expanded mass consumption. Boucicaut, founder of Le Bon Marché, set the template for the modern department store.

  34. Lafargue, “La Journée légale de travail réduite à huit heures” l’Égalité, 26 Feb., 5 & 12 Mars, 1882, pp. 8–48.

  35. “…étant donné les moyens de production modernes et leur puissance reproductive illimitée, il faut mater la passion extravagante des ouvriers pour le travail et les obliger à consommer les marchandises qu’ils produisent” (1883 edition). In the earlier 1880 edition, the passage argues that a three-hour working day would be sufficient to supply all the needs of society on condition that workers “s’astreignent à consommer eux-mêmes tous les produits de leur travail.” In both editions, the text implies a cultivation of needs as well as return to natural instincts, an induction of producers into a new role as consumers, and a domestic rather than export market for goods. Lafargue, “Droit à la Paresse,” Textes Choisis. p. 121, n. 1.

  36. Ô Paresse, mère des arts et des nobles vertus, soit le baume des angoisses humaines!” (final words of the 1880 serialized publication) Lafargue, “Droit à la Paresse,” Textes Choisis 1970, p. 141.

  37. “For many years I accompanied him on his evening walks…it was in the course of these strolls that he gave me my education…” “Every night I did my best to transcribe what I had just heard.” Unfortunately I lost these precious notes.” Lafargue, “Memories of Karl Marx,” 2023 p. 105.

  38. Karl Marx, [1857–1881] 1973, “Contradiction between the foundation of bourgeois production and its development. Machines etc. The Grundrisse, transl. Martin Nikolaus. Marxists.org/archive/Marx/works/download/pdf/Grundrisse.pdf.

    pp.623–633. See also Marx, K. [1857–1861]1971, pp. 123–152.

  39. Lafargue, [1900] 2000; Lafargue, “Memories of Karl Marx” 2023, p. 104.

  40. “… je me tue avant que l’impitoyable viellesse qui m’enlève un à un les plaisirs et les joies de l’existence et qui me dépouille de mes forces physiques et intellectuelles ne paralyse mon énergie, ne brise ma volonté et ne fasse de moi un charge à moi et aux autres.” Paul Lafargue, La dernière lettre: anthologie des derniers mots des grands hommes. Éditions du Seuil, 2017, p. 83.

  41. In one online translation of the suicide note, the first-person plural is substituted for the first-person singular throughout the letter. “We promised ourselves…we fixed…our resolution….etc.” Cited in Gordon, “Paul Lafargue.” https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backiss/vol1/no1/lafargue.html

  42. Tsuzuki, 1967, p. 178.

  43. Derfler, 1998, p. 297.

  44. “Des Funérailles Grandioses” l’Humanité, 4 Dec. 4, 1911.

  45. Even Edouard Bernstein, who had wished to bring Aveling to trial for the suicide death of Eleanor Marx, who translated Le Droit à la Paresse into German, and who in correspondence attributed the Lafargue suicide to Lafargue’s “Negro blood,” adopted a romantic trope, declaring an imperative moratorium on questioning by observing of Lafargue’s wife, “We must assume she agreed to join her husband.” Longuet, J. 1982, pp. 310–312. See also, Fred Thompson, “He…doubted whether he would be of much more use to the movement. He told his wife of his intentions and she did not want to remain after him.” Thompson, 1975, p. 22.

  46. Louis Aragon, 1934, pp. 273, 288ff.

  47. In a front page article, The New York Times reported, “His wife, to whom he confided his intentions, refused to survive him therefore they died together.” “Marx’s Daughter a Suicide” NYTimes, Nov. 27, 1911, p. 1.

  48. Jacques Macé, 2001.

  49. Lafargue, P. [1887–1888] 1970, “Le Lendemain de la revolution” in Textes choisies, pp. 239–245.

  50. Lafargue, P. [1866] 1970. “La Nouvelle Generation,” (La Rive Gauche, No. 1, July 1866) in Textes Choisies, p. 81.

  51. Philippe Frey, 2019. Observing that reduced working hours are needed to combat climate change, Frey claims a “Necessity to Be Lazy” should be argued in ecological terms.

  52. On the themes of French national “laziness,” see Steven Greenhouse, 1987; Robert Zaretsky, 2023.

  53. Maynard Keynes, M., “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren” [1930] The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes, vol. 9, Essays in Persuasion. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.

  54. André Gorz, 1989, pp. 203–212.

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  1. Department Sociology, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, A1C 5S7, Canada

    Judith Adler

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This paper greatly benefited from the thoughtful, painstaking editorial suggestions of Society’s editors, Daniel Gordon and Andreas Hess. Ronald Schwartz directed me to an important reference. As always. Volker Meja has been a source of multi-faceted encouragement and support.

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Adler, J. A Black Social Theorist? Reading The Right to Be Lazy by Paul Lafargue. Soc 60, 750–760 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-023-00876-3

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