Paul Lafargue's masterpiece, The Right To Be Lazy, at once funny and serious, witty and profound, elegant and forceful, is a logical expansion of The Right to the Pursuit of Happiness announced by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. It was not only extremely popular but also brought about pragmatic results, inspiring the movement for the eight-hour day and equal pay for men and women who perform equal work. It survives as one of the very few pieces of writing to come out of the international socialist movement of the nineteenth century that is not only readable-even enjoyable-but pertinent. This new translation by Len Bracken, fuller than previous versions in English, is supplemented by Lafargue's little-known talk on The Intellectuals.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
"Rather than a denial of work or an affirmation of leisure as an end in itself, The Right To Be Lazy [is] a celebration of life, or rather of what life could be: not merely recuperation from labor, but the essence of life itself." (Leslie Derfler) "Lafargue doesn't just denounce the 'religion of capital,' but all social systems based on work as the sole individual and social value." -- Thierry Paquot in Le Monde diplomatique
Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French
Original Language: French
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Stolen leisure,
By "arturzăo" (Campinas - Brazil) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Right to Be Lazy (Paperback)
Fight for the right to have a good time and taking ease witheverything seems to be an utopia nowadays. Written in the 19thcentury, Lafargue's book, a Cuban socialist, and it's an splendid manifesto to protect this necessity so despised at the present time.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
LOTS of typos and errors in this book,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Right to Be Lazy; And Other Studies (Paperback)
This book was obviously scanned from another document and NEVER proofread at all. While the content was interesting, I found the poor quality and misspellings due to the scanning process very distracting. Whoever decided to copy and release this book should have taken the time to make the necessary corrections.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Lazy review,
By Coyote Lightning (The West) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Right to Be Lazy; And Other Studies (Paperback)
This is probably a good book. I haven't gotten around to reading it yet, but I expect it will be worth the time and effort. I'll get to it tomorrow or the next day, hopefully. Maybe someone else can write a review for me in the meantime.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
Sometimes I have the feeling I am the only person who remembers a certain popular sociological cliche of the late fifties and sixties about the imminent arrival of the Age of Mass Leisure. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, National Guard, Karl Marx, Louis Philippe, Rights of Man, Fred Thompson, Victor Hugo, Hotel de Ville, Louis Napoleon, Industrial Revolution, Paul Lafargue Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Sometimes I have the feeling I am the only person who remembers a certain popular sociological cliche of the late fifties and sixties about the imminent arrival of the Age of Mass Leisure. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, National Guard, Karl Marx, Louis Philippe, Rights of Man, Fred Thompson, Victor Hugo, Hotel de Ville, Louis Napoleon, Industrial Revolution, Paul Lafargue Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
50
books
cite this book:
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- Paul Lafargue and the Founding of French Marxism, 1842-1882 by Leslie Derfler on 12 pages
- How to Be Idle by Tom Hodgkinson on 4 pages
- Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic by John De Graaf on page 135, Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums in America by Tom Lutz on page 106, page 109, and Back Matter
- Dancin' In The Streets!: Anarchists, IWWs, Surrealists, Situationists & Provos In The 1960s - As Recorded In The Pages Of The Rebel Worker & Heatwave (Sixties Series) by Franklin Rosemont on page 40, page 169, and Back Matter
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