November 1, 2022
First published in 1883, this bracing anti-capitalist manifesto gets a fresh translation for the era of the Great Resignation. With scathing wit, LaFargue takes aim at the ideological underpinnings of late-stage capitalism, the "disastrous dogma of work," calling with irresistible logic to free the "miserable servants of the machine" from boom-and-bust cycles of overproduction via the institution of a three-hour workday. Less persuasive is his lengthy takedown of Victor Hugo, a splenetic diatribe that calls out the beloved literary titan as a mercenary hypocrite with a tendentious rancor that, especially juxtaposed with the fawning hagiography of his father-in-law Karl Marx that follows, highlights the LaFargue's rhetorical zeal over his more substantial but less showy critiques on women's rights and socialism, not included here. VERDICT A sly, irreverent sibling to The Communist Manifesto, LaFargue's argument against our willing servitude to what we'd now call hustle culture and growth-at-all-costs is as trenchant and necessary as the day it was written, if not more so.
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October 10, 2022
Paul Lafargue (1842-1911) may have been the first person to use the term "Marxist." Karl Marx, his father-in-law, did not approve of the term. Given the merry satiric style of this work, Lafargue laughed all the way to prison. It was while in prison in 1883 that Lafargue revised and expanded his newspaper article to this pamphlet published the same year. He was again in prison when elected to parliament and was released to take his seat. According to Sante's introduction to this new translation, "he was the first socialist to enter that body." Along with freshly relevant "The Right to be Lazy," this short book contains "A Capitalist Catechism," "The Legend of Victor Hugo," and "Memories of Karl Marx." If the Hugo pamphlet means to tear down a French icon, the memoir of his father-in-law means to humanize--and lionize--a man inextricably bound up with his theories. The writing is vivid, pointed, hilarious. To paraphrase Elizabeth Bishop, Lafargue is scathing, but cheerful.
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December 5, 2022
These piercing essays from socialist Lafargue (1842–1911) offer a valuable window into early Marxist thinking. Revised in Sainte-Pélagie prison, where Lafargue was imprisoned several times for his activism, the selections include the title essay, in which the author argues that the working class is too swayed by the Christian and capitalist notions that work provides the best path to self-actualization. Instead, Lafargue argues, work is the site of humiliation, and the working classes should “rise up in all their terrible strength and call... for the passage of an ironclad law prohibiting any man from working more than three hours a day.” In “The Legend of Victor Hugo,” penned on the occasion of Hugo’s funeral in June 1885, Lafargue contends that the celebrated author was, no matter what his books professed, the personification of bourgeois values. Elsewhere, a tribute to Karl Marx, who was Lafargue’s father-in-law as well as his mentor, veers toward hagiography but provides keen insights into the subject’s character. Fluidly translated by Andriesse and introduced by Lucy Sante, these pieces speak to the present moment, when pandemic-related disruptions have provoked reconsiderations of where, how, and why people work. Readers will relish this incendiary blast from the past.