The Right to Be Lazy - Paul Lafargue

The Right to Be Lazy and Other Writings by Paul Lafargue, translated by Alex Andriesse, intro by Lucy Sante / ISBN 9781681376820 / paperback from New York Review of Books Classics, published 20202 *** “The writing is vivid, pointed, hilarious. To paraphrase Elizabeth Bishop, Lafargue is scathing, but cheerful.” —Michael Autrey, Booklist Now in a new translation, a classic nineteenth-century defense for the cause of idleness by a revolutionary writer and activist (and Karl Marx's son-in law) that reshaped European ideas of labor and production. Exuberant, provocative, and as controversial as when it first appeared in 1880, 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 cl