The Right to be Lazy by Paul Lafargue @ : = (Chases. Kere Publishing CompanyRich 70.08 LAZY ~ prosperous community. Lafen Inrtaoplicnon : Beenano Marszatex 3 Who was Paul Lafargue? itself be perverted by the dogma of work” Paud Lafargue Lafargue joked Jewish) before poli their black, red and Jewish blood to his her latter to Karl Marx’, His grandparents left after the Haitian revolution in 1804, along with 20,000 other French nationals and their servants, and settled in eastern Cuba, where they put down roots and created a was bor in Santiago de second larges parents permanently relocated, to Bordeaux, a southwest France. While educated in France, Lafargue retained his early knowlege of sh, which made possible a politically active year in Spai 1elyeéein Bordeauxche gained knowledge of Engi At sympathies all his life) precipitated his suspension from college for ‘wo years, In response he emigrated to London to continue his studies, and soon, following the trajectory of many other political émigrés, he ‘gravitated to Mare’s circle drawn to the radicalism of Marx's sociology ‘and economics.Rich To 8e Lazy 4 Lafargue’s visits to the Marx's courting Mars’s middle daught tp set up a medical practic: agitating for the French section of th rational) avis. Their continuing political of the Paris Commune in 1871, seein thee narrow escape to Spain o evoid asst by the lol pol “Ther vefug in Spain lasted a year during which they devoted themselves minuscule Marxist movement in opposition to the am ~ in this they failed. utterly. They retumed! to ive for ten years and when an aranesty was granted the moved back to Paris. With the general liberalization of iment in France, the Lafargues found amore ideas with the radicalized woikers. Their suet gain under police survellance, which am however itwas boon for spas the detailed record of ther political activity was retieable argue and Jules Guesde formed the fist Marist avrierTheparty grewinashorttenyeatsfromafew end of the century function P even though Lafargue was his mentor {intellectually sophisticated. For almost dhimselé in party at a time when electoral pol contended, was diversionary: an arena bubbling with grand expectations; Inmopiicrion : Bemano Manszavex Alfano in dfn. The Par Ore ver hte ea snowy pie ean wl ec ep Unk Mes nd lao Enga lage, Lafarge mrt an pass om politica ops oni oping ul et yor of hi vthen he lireanniand he aif ehingon polio the exhsion fly sin the wore Inthe yas of hi dials guint his comrades inthe pty ‘The Parti uvrier introduced Mans’s ideas to the Fre ‘with Paul Lafargue’s esays and commentar Lafargue accepted the basic premises of Mare’s thought determinism, class struggle ane the concept value. Acceptance of thors breed undesunag feo, ad how pe did many Marsists. be used as a “too!” to. For example, ion of American arkets in the nineteenth, ica, coupled withthe lack alobal dumping of US crops. ‘On amore theoretical level, Lafargue followed humane and theming stay or entvoplgy.A recy plied ver in sna env nel eon coment "ee mein ti ae pried Moa inh een He adoped Mor each nto aah ogiRach To we LAZY 6 to supporthis view that patriarchal, capitalist societies 2788 8 nes = tape changed Lafarge sed these insights and hisreadings oF VES seventecath century lian philosopher who wroteon the iso Paes myth to draw upon casi Greeklegends sevestons of mati distant past. safargue delved int historic and social stdies nos 28 scademic erie ‘but ike his sociospositcal citigue of Proudhon’s mispgy5 legacy 38 building blocks towardsa comprehensive vision of new society. Lafargue’s we re Revue Pilsopile, and be wes eventually rewarded with a oeptance, Lafargye used this eablshment expose ° promulgate amet nterpetations in an arena of mostly puerile bourgeois rive. Only after Workd War I aida European Marsst Iiterary 822M een ‘This new gee, of Lafarge’ creation, was Prompted in 1870 ¥E8 attended George ay PAu He reviewed the pay within the context ofthe larg iss ofthe hese plight a wom Ferinchical soit Late nanotherliterary fry, Lafrgue =n OS Tourgeoisieahralld by Victor Hugo's romantic, by casting ‘wh opposed the Pars Commune 2 “reactionary babu afargue rere sles interested in outaging the bourgecse than in aac ag bose ofthe ain of proltarans who aired him, 107 Oo” re ac authors for Lafrgue were targets 10 expose for complicity fendences that undermined the project ofa democratic society Lafargue took a more nuanced view of _ Zab ae a member of the sie who ‘LArgent’s publication. In Zola he saw a cr tevales, but who fled to recognize the role of social forces * the massively debilitating effects of wage slavery. For the bourg Iwmooucnon : Beawaro Maaszater ? and leaned too much on fate to determine the route his characters took. Zola introduced the working-class to literature, yet his realism unlike Balzac’s was facile. Lafargue wanted novelists to philosophize and plunge ‘he depths of rea life as Balzac did. Fifty years later one ofthe mosthighly regarded Marsst literary critics, Georg Lukacs, shared this distinction Lafargue amassed a passable appreciation of a vast repertoire of subject areas with which he assaulted bourgeois culture; in many of these forays he brandished an ironic style and wit that had no equal in nineteenth century Europe. The Sale of an Appetite, The Rights ofthe Horse and The Rights of Man, Pope Pius IX and Paradise, The Religion of Capital are just a few of his essays that prove this point, “The Right tobe Lacy stands as Paul Lafargue’s most devastating assault on the bourgeoisie precisely because it ridicules one oftheir core belief: ‘the work ethic. The assimilation of this pseudo-ethic by the proletariat provided Lafargue the ideal fol for his wit. To value wo good and asa pillar of proletar itmocked as secular devotion devoid of any ethical and aesthe shocked and outraged them. And further, o define work as misery to be avoided at all costs, cannot be tolerated, not only by the bosses, but also bby those who pretend to defend “The Workers” from a (falsely) perceived slander. We have lost a great dea! of revolution: hundred years due to the hegemony of bourgeois, reactionary ideas. But not totally. The Right to be Lazy remainsa classic text of resistance that can still be read today with delight.ici To se LAZY lraoplicTion = Bernard MARSZALEK ° The Essay “tw fongea brazen law forbidding any man to worksmore than three hours «doy, she earth, the old cath, erembling with joy would fel a new universe leaping within her.” Paul Lafergue By ridiculing the work ethic, Lafargue sought to inoculate the emerg- ing Prench working class against the deleterious effects of assimilating a self-serving bourgeois mentality. He argued against the “right to work” in the most devastating way possible — by employing satire. To his credit, Lafargue instead of supporting leisure as a modest request for a shorter ‘work-day- like the ten-hour day agitated for by the European labor orga- nizations ofis time chose to defend the outrageous concept oflaziness. He wanted to warn the French workers of the future hell he foresaw for them as they began moving into the new manufacturing centers under construction in northern France. While living in England he witnessed firsthand the devastating misery ofthe English industrial army barracked in the squalor of polluted cities. He had no reason to believe French capi- talism would take another path. ‘Advocating laziness is more than a rhetorical device to provoke a scan- dal. In one short phrase Paul Lefargue reversed the perspective on the economic system of exploitation developing, albeit unevenly throughout Burope. Like the frst glance ata film negative, a switch in perspectives reveals a seemingly unknown reality, yet a familiar one. Tis snot auto- pian trope, nor does it refer to false consciousness based on the cultural manipulations of elite “opinion leaders. To reverse perspective is not swallowing the red pill to reveal the Matrix or flying through the magi- cal mirror of Doctor Parnassus To reverse perspective does not open the10 ich To we Lazy mestions the one at hand ~ in this case, a social errogated and overcome as an obstacle tour door to another reality paradigm that must be desires. ism ~ that a job “to reverse perspective on a core belief system of ca satisfies our basic social needs — exposes the ideology of vifce that supports capitalism’ discipbine of production, Chris vaarare thi discipline that courses rough the wins ofa) even so-called vrei, to promote pride in production, as if til bad value divorced from its content. This absurd belie sel ‘the contention that vette are ented tothe “ruts of thelr Tabor” andjustaposes the pre” tevat as hero producers (of whatever crap) tothe capitalists as degen : ate idlers and profitess. “The historic degradation of work, fom a pre-capitalist aesthetic of Pro cmon with root in roditional societies and then every obec of beau, to reductionist economic category coincided withthe anor mation ofthe crafts person ino factory hand, Technology has but one and that isto reduce the cost of labor “Labor sev" ing” mechanization means jut that: the capitalist saves the cos of labor tprreplacng as many worker as post with machines. As a neces? 2 wation to this development, labor is de-skilled. Workers as tenders or shat Mar called dead labor (machines acquired from the profts of ing abor) ate therefore not an acidental sie elect of capitalism, "he transfer of the prideful labor ofthe skilled crafts persons, internalized as “of dignity, to the manuel labor ofthe factory hands that com a Fates value only fr the boss, marks a major ideological wiumph of capitalism, Besides questioning the vlue of jobs, Lafargue shattered anothe: taboo: ‘ime wasted by working. His sugges tural efficiencies could reduce che hours of work needs fobs Seen a8 8 mist plank in a socialist platform. For iity is not the reduc- 1 that new technologies and mane {ideological provocation, not ar the capitalist, the goel of increasing labor produ tion of houts to humanize the workplace, More recent investigations into Intpopucnio : BerwaRo MARSZALEK " chaplain shot sponte ange srjaruente conan oro oe ote? Te Tet ofS on eo en et pay toa ihe sana orig fice opro a ic telmge ev cratered engi mete ered hurl sd hve emai dod Or vould ty ilo i ev a snd ls ay om eo ee tt cn nok Stns mad ith sn a fe Sook opem teste wont dyRight To 8e Lazy 20 ogni ool pomp ean Tam rat Sent tepoemacion” a Marg fail oa nha Do Boss DUP” (Paste) Te Ren of sep Neg te) WL? No C9741) dies: ve athe [ran Memerkl + ; in ned ST eto Fae i The Right to be Lazy | 4 tems .e introduction of progressive unemployment trough + Paul Lafargue ada denn ac On oy emma a Sa SAREE SS ciety i pREFACE i tecome fo enpenc : ‘Solidarity Bookshop was Chicago's ‘anarcho-surtealo-marxist incubator of cultural: Soa be M.Thiess,at a private session of the commission on primary education of 1849, sac: “Iwish to make the influence of the clergy all powerful \ spo Tb, Te Calg of Abe (Cason Pose 15) oe because | count upon it to propagate that good ae uaine which 6 Audeé Gor’s nny oso te i sh ar a Ee : teaches man that he is here below to suffer, and not that other petrerery ee : philosophy which on the contrary bids man to enjoy.” M. Thiers was pean, hen Bey PP 20) stating the ethics of the capitalist dass, whose flerce egoism and narrow intelligence he incarnated. ‘The Bourgeoisie, when it was struggling against the nobility sustained by the dergy, hoisted the flag of free thought and atheism; but once ‘triumphant, it changed its tone and manner and today it uses religion to support its economic and politcal supremacy In the fifteenth and Sixteenth centuries, It had joyfully taken up the pagan tradition and ‘glorified the flesh and its passions, reproved by Christianity; in our days, gorged with goods and with pleasures, it denies the teachings of its thinkers like Rabelais and Diderot, and preaches abstinence to the wage workers, Capitalist ethics, a pitiful parody on Christian ‘ethics, strikes with its anathema the flesh of the laborer its ideal is ‘to reduce the producer to the smallest number of needs, to suppress his joys and his passions and to condemn him to play the part of 2 ‘machine turning out work without respite and without thanks. ‘The revolutionary socialists must take up again the battle fought by the philosophers and pamphleteers of the bourgeoisie; they must march Up to the assault of the ethics and the social theories of capitalism;2 Ricit To 2¢ Lazy they must demolish inthe heads ofthe cass which they cal to action the prejudices sown in them by the ruling lass; they must procein in the faces of the hypocrites of all ethical systems that the earth shall ‘cease to be the vale of tears for the laborer; that in the communist society ofthe future, which we shal establish “peaceably if we the impulses of men willbe given a free fe good, we have nothing to ave » and they will not be avoided except by the harmonious development 1. Beddoe says, “It is only when a race reaches its m ¥ physical development, ets highest point of energy and, moral vigor.” Such was also the ‘opinion of the great naturalist Charles Darwin? ‘This refutation of the “Right to Work” which ! am some additional notes appeared in the weekly Eg: series. sainte-Pélagie Prison, 1883 1. Decates Les Pasions de me aoe a ee emery ofthe Arroploicl Society (in tference to Charles Barwints Descent of Man) The Right To Be Lazy Let us be lazy in everything, except in loving and drinking, except in being lazy. ~ Lessing Chapter | A Disastrous Dogma [A strange delusion possesses the working classes of the nations wi capitalist civilization hols its ove. This dlaion drags init nn ae individual andsocial woes which fortwo centurieshavetorturedsadhurnanity. “This dehson isthe love of work the farious pasion for wok, pushed even to the exhaustion of the vital force ofthe individual and his progeny. Instead of opposing this mental aberration, the priests, the economists and the ‘morals have cist sacred halo ver work Blind ad finite men they have ‘wished to be wiser than their God weak and contemptible men, they have ‘presumed to rehabilitate what their God had cursed. , who do not profess to bea Christian, an economist or @ moralistI appeal ftom their judgement to that oftheir Gods from the preachings of ther religious, economics o five thought ethics tothe frightful omsequences of workin capitals society In capitalist society work is the cause of all intellectual degeneracy ofall organic deformiey. Compare the thorough-bred in Rothschil’s stables, served by a retinue of bipeds, with the heavy brute of the Norman farmns ‘which plows the earth, carts the manure, hauls the crops. Look at the noble savage whom the missionaries of trade and the traders of religion have not yet corrupted with Christianity, syphilis and the dogma of work, and then look at our miserable aves of machines.24 Rigi To #& Lazy ‘When, in our civilized Burope, we would find «trace of the native Beauty amen, we must go sekitin the nations where economic prejudies have cooted the hatred of work. Spain, which, alas, is degenet oast of possessing fewer factories than we have of prisons an ‘put the artist rejoices in his admiration of the hardy Andalusian, tyown a he native chestnuts, straight and flexible as a steel rod andthe eset leaps at hearing the beggas superbly draped in his ragged eae patleying om terms of quai with the duke of Ossuns Fos the Spaniard, Pa hom the primitive animal has not been atrophied, work the worst somvof slavery? The Greek in tei era of greatness had only contempt for vin thie daves alone were permitted to labor: the free ran kev only sree fr the body and mind. And soit was in this era that men Iie seine, Phidias, Aristophanes moved and breathed among the peoples nthe time when a handfal of heroes at Marathon crushed the hordes vseasi, soon ta be subdued by Alexander. he philosophers of antiquity vaught contempt for work, that degradation ofthe fet many the Poss sang of idleness, that gift from the Gods: (0 Melibee Deus nobis hace oti fect? Jesus inhi sermon on the Mount, preached idleness: “Consider the likes the fed, how they grow: they toll no, neither do they spin: snd yet Tsay unto you that even Solomon inal his glory was not arayed He aoncof these! Jehovah the bearded ancl angry god, gave his worshipers the supreme example of ideal laziness after six days of work he rests for all, eternity. com the other hand, what are the races for which work isan organic necessity? The Am ; the Scotch, those Auvergnians of the British Isles; the Galicans of Spain; the Pomeranians, those many; the Chinese, those Auvergnians of Asia. In the classes that love work for work's sake? The sant proprietors te ie shopkeeper the former Dent Goubs ovr a fs the later crouched i their shops, burrow ike the mole in his bterrancan passage and never stand up to look at nature leisurely Richt 70 ve Lazy : Paut Lasarcue Fo sade ele he pe class embracing ll the producers Of ied mans he ca wih ig itself will fee humanity om servile tl nd wl make ofthe human animal fee being the plea, betraying its nstins despising its historic mission, he et itself be perverted by the dogma of work Rude and terrible has been its onset Alita nd soci wes arbre of i pasion work. i 1. Earopean iploes pose in wonder before opment ves befor the phy best andthe pro iin Feu echoes a hornet othe cee Hans La Gon icin Ge worl vic reson yatta ree eee tort tee ha eon melon and ae a a nel opps rete pronon of cea ‘Thecvlved men of ancent Rome, winess Caesar and Tacitus regarded wit Following Ps raster ofthe Bishops, held up the barbarians 3 "We ae immodes before the barbarians, who are more chaste than we. Ben moc the they vail do ath i an ecepe the frst example of eerie labor inthe history of man, According to biblical tration, the 2.The Spenish prover sys: Descanzares salud (Rest is health) 3.0Mal J A godtas granted us this iene, Viel, Buel (See Appendix)Roi To ae Lazy Rigi To ae Lazy : Paut Larancue 2 Chapter Il Blessings of Work 3n 1770 at London, an anonymous pamphlet appeared under the ttle, An Bssay on Trade and Commerce, itmade some ste ‘was indignant that head the fixed idea that in their qual ‘men all the individuals composing it have by right of birth the privilege ‘of being freer and more independent than the laborers of any country in Furope. This idea may have its usefulness for soldiers, since it stimulates theit valor, but the less the factory workers are imbued with it the better for themselves and the state. Laborers ought never to look on themselves as independent of their superiors. It is extremely dangerous to encourage such infatuation in a commercial stat like ours, where perhaps seven- cighths of the population have lite or no property. The cure will not be complete until our industrial laborers are contented to work six days for the same sum which they now earn in four® Thus, neatly a century before Guizot, work was openly preached in London as a curb to the noble pas- sions of man.““The more my people work, the less vices they will have, wrote Napoleon on May 5th, 1807, from Osterod. “I am the authority. and I should be disposed to order that on Sunday after the hour of se vice be past, the shops be opened and the laborers return to their work” ‘To root out laziness and curb the sentiments of pride and independence which arise from it, the author of the Essay on Thade pi prison the poor in ideal “work-houses", which should become “houses of terror, where they should work fourteen hours a day in such fashion thet ‘Twelve hours of work a day, that isthe ideal of the philanthropists and th century. How have we outdone this nec pl Jhave become ideal houses of correction in which28 Right To Be Lazy the toiling masses are imprisoned, in which they are condemned to compulsory work for twelve or fourteen hours, not the men only but aso ‘women and children. And to think that the sons of the heroes of the “Terror have allowed themselves to be degraded by the religion of work, to the point of accepting, since 1848, 65a revolutionary conguest the law limiting factory labor to twelve hours. They proclaim es a xevol principle the Right to Work. Shame tothe French proletariat! Onl ave been capable of such baseness. A Greek of the heroic times would have required twenty years of capitalist civilization before he could have conceived such vileness. nd ifthe miseries of compulsory work and the tortures of hunger have ‘more in number than the locusts of the ited them. ‘This work, which in ‘arms in their hands, this they have imposed on their families they ha red upto the barons of industry their wives and children, With their own hands they have demolished their domestic hearths. With their own hands they have dried up the milk ‘women carrying and nursing their babes the mines and factories to bend their backs re broken the life etarians! Where are descended upon the prel Bible, it is because the prol June 1848 the laborers demanded of their wives. The have been obliged to go i and exhaust their necves. Wit childten? Today we have factory gis and women, pale dt with impoverished blood, with disordered stomach: ‘They have never known the pleasure ofa healthful pes they be capable o nd the children? Twelve hours of ‘work for children! 0, misery. But nota the Jules Simon of the Academy of ‘Moral and Political Science, not all the Germinys of jesuitism, could have invented a vice more degrading to the intelligence of the children, more corrupting oftheir instincts, more destructive oftheir organism than work in the vitiated atmosphere of the capitalist factory. Richt To ae Lazy : Paul Lapaacue 2 Our epoch has been called the century of work, It isin fact the century Of pain, misery and corruption. ‘And all the while the philosophers, the bourgeois economists ~ from the paingally confused August Comte to the ludicrously clear Leroy Beaulieus the people of bourgeois literature — from the quackishly romantic Victor “Hugo ta the atlesly grotesque Paul de Kock ~ all have intoned nauseating songs in honor of the god Progress, the eldest son of Work Listen to them ‘and you would think that happiness was soon to reign over the earth, that its coming was already perceived. They rummaged in the dust of past centuries to bring beck feudal miseries to serve as a somber contrast to the delights of the present times. Have they wearied us, these satisfied people, yesterday pensioners at the table of the nobi ets cof the capitalist class and fatly paid? Have they reckoned us weary of the peasant, such as La Bruyere described him? Well, hee isthe biliantpiczare ‘of proleta sin the year of capitalist £40, penned by one of their own men, Dr. Ville, member of tut, the same who in 1848 was a member ofthat scientific society (Thiers, Cousin, Pass, Blanqu, the academician, were in it), which disseminated among the masses the nonsense of bourgeois economics and ethics. day Its of manufacturing Alsace that Dr: Villermeé speaks —the Alsace of Kestner ‘and Dollfus, those flowers of industrial philanthropy and republicanism. But before the doctor raises up before us his picuure of proletarian miseries, Jet us listen to an Alsatian manufacturer, Mr. Th. Mieg, of the house of Dollfus, Mieg & Con depicting the condition of the old-time artisan: “At Mulhouse ffty years ago (in 1813, when modem mechanical industry ‘was just arising) the laborers were all children of the soil, inhabiting the town and the surrounding villages, and almost all owning a house and often litte field” * It was the golden age of the laborer. But time Alsatian industry did not deluge the world with its cott ‘ake millionaires out of ts Dollfus and Koechlin. But twenty-five years after, when Villermé visited Alsace, the modern Mi the capitalist ‘workshop, had conquered the country in its insatiable appetite for hurnan labor it had dragged the workmen from their hearths, the better to wringRigut 10 se Lazy ss out the labor which they contained. Ir was by thousands hem and Be oe flocked togettier at the signal of the steam whistle, ‘hat the workers ap gent mabe Viet “ie thous out of serene hous ‘ in ighborng vig, Sse of then by igh rents oad in neighboring cape miles from the factory where they worked.” mon ee eee 1 aeons Be emai each mori nto the cy nd dpa ech vein oa ‘were a multitude of women, pale, often walking bare-footed rand who forlac of erbrellas when the rain o so fl sh gene ohne Thr vg of young chien sill? cy eal pale covered with its + rj mache which ops on ter wile ey woe They ae er protected fom the sen bees their thes de water; bat to nao so a they adn trad oid under thet shing sb sesh ma of ia hich must serve he fod ntl ine for tem to rer ore. ofan insaferablylong day atleast fiften hours~isadded for these fatigue of the panel daily journeys, Consequently treyrench hme versed bythe need fle, and net day they sa nae ample sted inode reach the factory by the pening rove ook he holes in which were packed those wo Fodgein he os + gay at Mulhouse in Dornach and the neighboring houses ome of those teach in its comer on straw fami miserable lodgings where (0 end kept in ts produce this sad real, that while in the families ‘merchants, shop-keepers or factory superintendents, cof the manufacturer, eit ie chren each thei etfs yea this se bal eases © est Fefredhape oft ears inthe fais of weavers and coton spinners” Rich To a& Lazy : Pawn LarARcUE a ‘Speaking of the labor of the workshop, Villermé a task, it isa torture and it is inflicted on children. is not a work, observes, thatthe convicts in prisons work but ten hours, the slaves in the ‘West Indies work but nine hours, while there existed in France after its Revolution of 1789, which had proclaimed the pompous Rights of Men. “factories where the day was sicteen hours, out of which the laborers were allowed only an hour and a haf for meals” What ble abortion of the revolutionary principles of the bourgeoisie! What woeful gifts from its god Progress! The philanthropists hail asbenefactors of bumanity those who having done nothing to become rich, give work to the poor. Far better were it to scatter pestilence and to ppoison the springs than to erecta capitalist factory in the midst of a rural population, Introduce factory work, and farewell joy, health and liberty; farewell to all that makes life beautiful and worth Living ‘And the economists go on repeating to the laborers, “Work, to increase social wealth’ and nevertheless an economist, Destutt de Tracy, answers: “It i in poor nations that people are como are ordinarily poor”; and his disciple Cherbuliez continues: “The laborers themselves in cooperating toward the accumulation of productive capital contribute tothe event which sooner or later must deprive them of part of their wages": But deafened and stupefied by their own howlings, the economists answer: “Work, always work, to create your prosperity, and in the name of Christian meekness a priest of the Anglican Church, the Rev. Mr. Townshend, intones: Work, work, night and day. By working you ‘make your poverty increase and your poverty releases us from imposing ‘work upon you by force of law. The legal imposition of work “gives too ‘much trouble, requires too much violence and makes too much noise. Hunger, on the contrary, is not only a pressure which is peaceful, silent and incessant, but as tis the most natural motive for work an italso provokes to the most powerful efforts” Work, work, prol increase social wealth and your individual poverty; work, work, in ox2 Rit To 8 Lazy that becoming poorer, you may have more reason to work and become ‘miserable, Such isthe inexorable law of capitalist production. Because, lending ear to the fallacious words of the economists, the proletcians have given themselves up body and soul to the vee of work they precipitate the whole of society into these industrial crises of over production which convuls the social organism. Then because there 8 pleshors of merchancise and a dearth of purchasers the shops are dosed working people with its whip of athousand ashes, sized by the dogma of work, not understanding thet the over-work which they have inflicted upon themelves during the time of pretended prosperity isthe cause oftheir present misery do not run tothe granaries of wheat and cry: “We ae hungry, we wish to eat True wre have not a red cent, but beggars as we are, its we, nevertheless, who tered the grapes” They do not besiege the eachouse of Bonnet or Jujurieux, the inventor of industrial convents,and ‘ry out "M Bonnet here are your working women sile workers spines wemers; they are shivering pitifully under thelr patched cotton dresses; Jets they who have spun and woven the sik robes ofthe fashionable Nomen of all Christendom. The poor creatures working thirteen hours 4 day had no time to think of their toilet. Now, they are Ihave time to rustle in the silks they suk: teeth they have devoted themselves to your fortune and have lived in “ibstinence. Now they are at lisuze and wish to enjoy litle ofthe fruits of their labor. Come, M. Bonnet, give them your si famnish his muslins, M. Pouyer-Cuertier his calicos, M. Pinet his boots fox theix dear litle fet, cold and darap. Clad fiom top to toe and gleeful they wil be delightful to Took at. Come, no evasions, you ate a fiend fof humanity, ae you not, and a Christian into the bargain? disposal of your working isthe fortune they have built up for you of ther flesh; you want to help busines, get your goods into cic here are consumers ready at hand. Give them: unlimited credit, You are simply compelled to give creit to merchants whom you do not know from Adamn ot Eve, who have given you nothing, not even a glass of YYour working women will pay the debt the best they can. If at matt Right fo ae Lazy + PAUL LAFARGUE 3 let their notes go to protest, and if they have nothing to attach, you and that they pay you in prayers. They will send you to paradise better than your black-gowned priests steeped in tobacco” Instead of aking advantage of periods of crisis fora general distribution of ther products and a universal holiday, the laborers, pershing with hunges, go-and beat theirheads against the doors ofthe workshops. With pale faces ‘emaciated bodies pitiful speeches they assail the manufacturers. "Good M. ‘Chagot, sweet M. Schneider, give us work, itis not hunger, but the pasion for work which torments us? And these wretches, who have scarcely the strength to stand upright, sell twelve and fourteen hours of work twice as cheap as when they had bread on the table. And the philanthropists of industry profitby their Jockouts to manufacture at lower cost Ifindustrial crises follow periods of overvorkas inevitably as night follows day, bringing afer them lockouts and poverty without end, they aso lead to inevitable bankruptcy. So long asthe manufacture has credit he gives fee rein tothe rage for work. He borrows, and borrows again, to furnish raw material to his laborers, and goes on producing without considering that the market is becoming satiated and that if is goods dor't happen to be sold, his notes will still come due. At his wits’ end, he im ‘pankershe throws himself at hs eet, offering his blood, his honor. "A litte gold wil do my business better” answers the Rothschild. “You have 20,000 paits of hose in your warehouse; they are worth 20¢ I will take them at 44” The banker gets posession of the goods and sells them at 68 or 8, and pockets certain frisky dollars which owe nothing to anybody: but the ‘manufacturer has stepped back fora better Teap. At last the crash comes ‘and the warehouses diggorge. Then so much merchandise is thrown ‘out of the window that you cannot imagine how it came in by the door Hundreds of millions are required to figure the value ofthe goods that are destroyed. In the ast century they were burned or throven into the watet* Bue before reaching this decision, the manufacturers travel the world over in search of matkets for the goods which are heaping up. They force their government to annex Congo, to seize on Tonquin, to better down,4 Rich? To ee Lazy the Chinese Wall with cannon shots to make an outlet for their cotton goods. In previous centuries it was a duel to the death between France ancl England as to which should have the exclusive privilege of selling to “America and the Indies. Thousands of young and vigorous men reddened the seas with their blood during the colonial wars of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. ‘There is a surplus of capital as wel as of goods. The financiers no longer know where to place it. Then they go among the happy nations who are loafing in the sun smoking cigarettes and they lay down railroads, erect factories and import the curse of work. And this exportation of French capital ends one fine moraing in diplomatic complications. In Egypt for ‘example, France, England and Germany were on the point of hair-pulling to decide which usuters shal be poid fist. Orit ends with wrs hike that in Mexico where Brench soldiers are sent to play the part of constables to collect bad debts “These individual and social miseries, however great and innumerable they say be, however eternal they appear, sh like hyenas and jackals at the approach ofthe lion, when the p all say “I will” But to arrive atthe realization of ts strength the st must trample under {oot the prejudices of Christian ethics, econ jes and free-thought ethic. Iemmist return to its natural instincts, it must procaim the Rights of ‘Laziness, thousand times more noble and more sacred than the anaemic Rights of Man concocted by the metaphysical lawyers of the bourgeois revolution. It must accustom itself to working but three hours 2 day, reserving the rest of the day and night for leisure and feasting, ‘Thus far my task has been easy I have had but to describe real evils well known, als, by all of us; but to convince the proletariat thatthe ethics inoculated into it is wicked, that the unbridled work to which sven itself up forthe last hindzed yeas isthe most terrible scourge that hhas ever struck humanity, that work will become a mere condiment to the pleasures of idlenes, 2 beneficial exercise to the human organism, a passion useful to the socal oxganism only when wisely regulated and Rigi To ae Lazy : Pawn Lasancut 353 limited to a maximum of three hours a day; this is an arduous task beyond ny strength. Only communist physiologists, hygienists and economists could undertake it. In the following pages I shall merely try to show that given the modern means of production and their unlimited reproductive power it is necessary to curb the extravagant passion of the laborers for ‘work and to oblige them to consume the goods which they produce. 1 At the fist Congres of Charities eld at Brussels in 1857 one of the richest rhanufhctures of Marquette, nese Lille, M. Serve, to the plavdts of the members ‘eats ol The materialist wil always reget that here no hell in which to confine {hove Christian philanthropic mrderes of childhood. 2. Speech delivered before the Intemational Society of Practical Stuis in Socal ‘Boonomics a aris in Mey 1863, and published in he French Benois. hole and monarchical manufacturers af ‘which harmonize delightully with ll politica and religious ory abot 5 industrial Congress held in Bertin in losses in the iron fndsty of Gecmany daring the st crisis were exis oa Petpet on iar init Oli Ghd Brand bet Romeo upon hand ut News he eo ‘Tredof cml theron wl no beng ona aro epee‘Laura in the early 1880's, after the Lafargues' return to France Rice To 82 Lary Rice 10 9¢ Lazy : Paul LaFARGUE a Chapter til The Consequences of Over-Production [A Greck poet of Cicero's time, Antiparos, thus sang of the invention of the water-mill (for grinding grain), which was to free the slave women and bring back the Golden Age: “Spare the arm which turns th millers, and sleep peacefolly. Let the cock warn you in vain that day is breaking. Demeter has imposed upon the nymphs the labor ofthe slaves, ‘and behold them leaping merrily over the wheel, and behold the axle tree, shaken, turning with is spokes and making the heavy rolling stone revolve, Let us live the life of our fathers, and let us rejoie in idleness lover the gifts that the goddess grants us” Alas! The leisure which the pagan poet announced has not come. The blind, perverse and murderous passion for work transforms the liberating machine into an instrument for the enslavement of free men. Its produc s impoverishes them. A good working woman males with her needles only five meshes a minute, while certain circular knitting machines make 30,000 inthe same time. Every minute of the machin valent toa hundred hours of the workingwomen's labor, or again, every minute of the machine’ labor, gives the working women ten days of rest. What is true for the ting industey is more or less true for all industries reconstructed by wlern machinery. But what do we see? In proportion as the machine is improved and performs man’s work with an ever increasing rapidity and exactness, the laborer, instead of prolonging his former rest times, redoubles his ardor a8 if he wished to rival the machine. Ob, murderous competition! and ‘That the competition of man and the machine might have free course, the proletarians have abolished wise laws which limited the labor of the artisans of the ancient guilds; they have suppressed the holidays.*38 Ricit To se Lazy Because the producers of that time worked but five days out of sever are we to believe the stor economists that they lived on nothing but air and fresh water? Not so, they had leisure to taste the joys of earth, to make love and to frolic, to banguet joyously in honor of the ‘unknown authors of the romances make our mouths water with pictures of those monumental feasts! with which the men of that time regaled themselves between two battles and two devastations, in which School have told the story ofthese feasts in their dei ae the sublime gargantuan stomachs of those days: where are the sublime brains encircling all human thought? We heve indeed grown puny and degenerate. Embalmed becf, potatoes, doctored wine and Prussian schnaps, judiciously combined with compulsory labor have weakened cour bodies and narrowed our minds. And the times when man cramps his stomach and the machine enlarges its out-put are the very times ‘when the economists preach to us the Malthusian theory, the religion of abstinence and the dogma of work. Really it would be better to pluck out sach tongues and throw ther tothe dogs Because the working class, with its simple good faith, has allowed itself to be thus indoctrinated, because with its native impetuosity it has blindly into work and abstinence, the capitalist lass has found itself ‘condemned to laziness and forced enjoyment, to unproductiveness and over consumption, But if the over-work of the laborer bruises is flesh and tortures his nerves itis also fertile in griefs for the capi “The abstinence to which the productive class condemns itself obliges the selves to the aver-consumption of the products tously by the laborers. At the beginning of capi production a century or two ago, the capitalist was a steady man of reasonable and peaceable habits. He contented himself with one wife or ‘thereabouts. He drank only when he was thirsty and ate only when he was hungry. He left to the lords and ladies of the court the noble virtues of capitalists to dev tured out st | Richt To a€ Lazy : PAU. LAFARGUE 39 debauchery. Today every son of the newly rich makes it incumbent upon, himself to cultivate the disease for which quicksilver isa specific in order to justify the labors imposed upon the workmen in quicksilver every capitalist crams himself with capons stuffed with truffles and with the choicest brands of wine in order to encourage the breeders of blooded poultry and the growers of Bordelais. In this occupation the orgenism rapidly becomes shattered, the hair falls out, the gums shrink eway from the teeth, the body becomes deformed, the stomach cbtrudes abnormally, respiration becomes difficult; the motions become labored, the joints become sf the fingers knotted. Others, too feeble in body the fatigues of debauchery, but endowed with the bump of philanthropi¢ discrimination, dry up their brains over px philosophy in elaborating thick soporific houss of compositars and pressmen. The women of feshion live martyrdom, in tryin seamstresses die in making. They night from one gown into another. For hours together they give up their hollow heads to the artists in hai who ateny cos insist on assuaging their passion for the construction of false chignons. Bound in their corsets, pinched in thei boots, decollette to make a coal-miner blush, they whis ‘around the whole night through at their charity balls in order to pick up ‘few cents for poor people - sanctified endure ‘To fulfill his double social funct the capitalist was not only obliged to violate his modest tate, to lose his laborious habits of two centuries ago and to give himself up to unbounded sdigestibles and syphilitic debauches, but also to withdraw labor an enormous mass of men in order to enlist them of non-producer and over-consumer, Here are a few figures to prove how colossal is this waste of productive we population of England and 776259 male and 10,289,965Richt To Be Lazy governors, policemen, clergy, magistrates, soldiers, prostitutes, artist, Scientists, tc, next the people exclusively occupied with eating the labor of others under the form of land-rent, interest, dividends, etc. .. there remains a total of eight million individuals of both sexes and of every ages Jncluding the capitalists who function in production, commerce, finance, etc, Out of these eight millions the figures run: ‘Agricultural laborers, including herdsmen, servants and farmers daughters living at home ~1,098,26 ‘Factory Workers in cotton, wool, hemp, linen silk, knitting 642,607 Mine Workers — 565.835 Metal Workess: Domestics ~ 1,208,648 aces, rolling mils, ec.) ~ 396,998 “if we add together the textile workers and the miner, we obtain the figures of 1.208442; if to the former we ad the metal workers, we have a total of 1,039,605 persons; that isto say, in each case a mumber below that of the modera domestic slaves. Behold the magnificent result of the ‘epitalist exploitation of machines” To tis clas of domestics, the sie of “which indicates the stage attained by capitalist civilization, must stil be added the enormous dass of unfortunates devoted the vain and expensive tastes of the rich lasses: diamond cutters, lace- makers, embroiderers binders of luxurious books, seamstresses employed on expensive gowns decorators of wil, tc:* Once settied down into absolute laziness and demoralized by enforced enjoyment, the capitalist clas inspite ofthe injury involved in its new ‘Soon it began to look upon any change with bie conditions of life resignedly accepted by the working clas and the sight of the organic degradation engendered by the depraved passion for work increas sversion for all compulsory Jeasures. tis precisely at that time that, class ‘without taking into accout hhed imposed upon itself as a social duty, the proletarians took it into their heads to inflict work on the capitalists. Artiess as they were, they Rigi 10 9¢ Lazy : Pau Lararoue 4“ took seriously the theori of work proclaimed by the economists and their loins to inilict the practice of these theories aria hoisted the banner, “He who will not 1831 rose up for bullets or work. The federated laborers of March 1871 called their uprising “The Revolution of Work” To these outbreaks of barbarous fury destructive ofall cap joy and laziness, the capitalists had no other answer than ferocious repression, but they know that if they have been able to repress these xevolutionary explosions, they have not drowned in the blood of these sigantic massacres the absurd idea of to inflict ‘work upon the idle and reputable classes, and iti to avert this misfortune that they surround themselves with guards, policemen, magistrates and supported in laborious unprodutiveness, There is no more room, for illusion as to the function of modern armies, They are permanently ‘maintained only to suppress the “enemy within.” Thus the forts of Paris, and Lyons have not been built to defend the city against the foreign Dut to crush it in case of revolt. And if an unanswerable ex called for, we mention the army of Belgium, thet paradise of ca is guaranteed by the European powers, and neverthel army is one ofthe strongest in proportion to its population, The glorious battlefields of the brave Belgian army are the plains of the Borinage and of CCharlezo. It is in the blood of the unarmed miners and laborers that the Belgian officers temper their swords and win their epaulets. The nations of Europe have not national armies but mercenaty armies. They prot ‘the capitalists against the popular fory which would condemn: hours of mining or spinning. Again, while comp the working class has developed abnormally the stomach of class, condemned to over-consumption. iat wishi Its neutr Yor alleviation ofits painful labor the capitalist class has withdrawn from the working classa mass of men far superior to those stil devoted to usefil production and has condemned them in their turn to unproductiveness and over-consumption, But this troop of useless mouths in spite of its 1e goods which the7 Rice To ve Lazy svishing to consume them and without even thinking whether people will be found to consume them, Confronted with this double madness of the laborers killitg themselves ‘vegetating in abstinence, the great problem of no longer to find producers and to multiply their discover consumers, to excite their appe them fictitious needs. Since the European laborers, and hunger, refuse to wear the stuffs they weave, to drink the wines from the vineyards they tend, the po sarers in their goodness of heart must run to the ends of the earth to find people to wear the clothes and dink the wines: Europe exports every year goods amounting to billions of dollars to the four corners of the earth, to nations that have no nee« of them. But the explored continents are no longer vast enough. Virgin countries are needed. European manufacturers dream night and day of ‘Africa, of a lake in the Saheran desert, ofa railroad to the Soudan. They anxiously follow the progress of Livingston, Stanley, Du Chaillus they listen open-mouthed to the marvelous tales of these brave travelers. What 1own wonders are contained in the “dark continent”! Fields are sown ith elephants’ teeth, rivers of cocoanut oil are dotted with gold, millions bate as the faces of Dufaure and Girardin, are awaiting 10 teach thein decency, and bottles of schnaps and bibles from which they may learn the virtues of civilization. But all to no purpose: the over-fed capitalist, the servant class greater in numbers than the productive class, the foreign and barbarous nations, gorged with European goods; nothing, nothing can melt away the mountains of products heaped up higher and more enormous than the pyramids of Egypt. The productiveness of Buropean laborers defies all consumption, all waste ‘The manufactuters have lost their bearings and know not which way “They can no longer find the raw material to sa depraved pession of their laborers for work. In our woolen districts dirty and half rotten rags are raveled out to use in making certain cloths sold Richt 10 ee Lazy : Paut Laancue 8 under the name of renaissance, which have about the same durability as the promises made to votes. ad of leaving the silk fiber in epoch will be called the “Age of Adulteration”j humanity received the names of “The Age of Stone,"“The Age of Bronze,” from the character of their production. Certain ignorant people accuse out pious manufacturers of fraud, while in realty the thought which animates them is to furnish work to their laborers, who cannot resign ity ofthe goods, if they are an inexhat labor, nevertheless prove the ingenuous phi and the horrible perversion of the laborers, who to gratify their vice for ‘work oblige the rhanufacturers to stifle the cries of their conscience and to violate even the laws of commercial honesty. ‘And nevertheless, in spite of the over-production of goods in spite of the adulterations in manufacturing, the laborers encumber the market {in countless numbers imploring: Work! Work! Their super abundance ‘compel them to bridle their passion; on the contrary it carries point of paroxysm. Let a chance for work present ite, thither they rush then they demend twelve, fourteen hours to glut their appet for work, and the next day they are again thrown out on the pavement with no more food for their vice. Every year in all industries lockouts ‘occur with the regularity of the seasons. Over-work, destructive of the organism, is succeeded by absolute rest during two or four months, and when work ceases the pittance ceases. Since the vice of work is diabolically attached to the heart of the laborers, since its requirements stifle al the other instincts of nature, since the quantity of work required by society is necessarily limited by consumption and by the supply of raw materials, ‘why devour in six months the work of a whole year; why not distribute it “uniformly over the twelve months and force every workingman to content“a Ricit To Be Lazy himself with six or five hours a day throughout the year instead of geting indigestion from twelve hours during six months. Once assured of their daily portion of work, the laborers will no longer be jealous of each other, no longer fight to snatch away work from each others hands and bread fiom each other's mouths, and then, not eshausted in body and mind, they will begin to practice the virtues of laziness Brutalized by their vice, the laborers have been unable to rise to the conception ofthis fact, that to have work fo all itis necessary to apportion it lke water on a ship in distress, Meanwhile certain manufacturers in the name of capitalist exp! have for a long time demanded a legal day. Before the commission of 1860 on professional one of the greatest manufacturers of Alsace, M, Bourcart of 1, declared: “The day of twelve hours is excessive and ou ven, while work ought to be stopped at two o'clock on, Saturday. I advise the adoption of this measure, onerous at frst sight. We have tried it in our for four years and find ourselves the bette production, fer fom having diminished, ha of machines M.E, Passy quotes the following manufacturer M. Ottevaere: “Our machines, although the same as those of the English spinning mills, do not produce what they ought to produce ‘or what those same machines would produce in England, although the spinners there work two hours a day les. We all work two good hours ‘too much, Iam convinced that if we worked only eleven hours instead of, thirteen we should have the same product and we should consequently produce more economically” Again, M. Leroy Beaulieu affirms that itis a remark of great Belgian manufacturer that the weeks in which a holiday {alls result in a product not less than ordinary weeks An ariscratic government has dared todo what people, duped Simplicity bythe morals, never dates, Bexpiog the lofty and industial considerations ofthe economists, who like the bieds fill omen, ‘raked that to reduce by one hour the workin factories was to decree the ruin of English inst, the government of England has forbidden by Pence ET Richt 10 at Lazy : Pau Laracue 45 tly enforced to work more than ten hours a day and as before i ion ofthe world. ‘The experiment tried on so great a scale is on records the experience of certain intelligent capitalists is on record, They prove beyond a doubt that to strengthen human production itis necessary to reduce the hours of labor and multiply the pay days and feast days, yet the French nation is not convinced. But if the miserable reduction of two hours has increased English production by almost one-third inten years, what breathless speed ‘would be given to French production by al f the working Gay to three houts, Cannot the laborers understand that by over-working themselves they ethaust their own strength and that of their progeny, that they are used up and long before their time come to be incapable of any work at all, that absorbed and brutalized by this single vice they are no longer men but pieces of men, that they kill within themselves all beeutiful faculties, to leave nothing alive and flourishing except the furious madness for work. Like Arcadian parrots they repeat the lesson of the economist: “Let us work, let us work to increase the national weal steal equi tno other than -nough to lose afew months ago. its services become more costly?” ‘To force the capitals necessary to raise wages of flesh and blood. Do you ask for proofs? They can be furnished by hundreds. In spinning, the self-acting mule was invented and applied st “Manchester becausethe spinnersrefused to worksuchonghoursasbefore. Jn America the machine is invading all branches of farm production, from themaking of butter tothe weeding of wheat. Wy because the free and lazy, would prefer a thousand deaths to the bovi French peasant. Plowing, 50 to the laborer in our ful and so cr“6 Richt To 8 Lazy glorious France is in the American West an agreeable open-air pastime, swhich he practices in a sitting posture, smoking his pipe nonchalantly. ed te hia ta replaced te wos BASSE peoole might na longer have moe an over day Cu of ete. tthe aber om he yrs th church in der te bert sejugte ‘Eemunder eyo of work. 7 heed apis the hldays does not sppear ot de modem indus sme our "t ‘between the fifteenth enc daysby thataf ten, a eu tas on cus ght wee but rete which perme the out She Faw cat Se people ocweks Don Rodrigo dare winshisbsieby xpeling Sand the Rorancare elts he sor7 {es bodes fueron en Burgos, {Gs torsbodas en Sas “ants viene deli genes Guero caben prlas plazas (The weding as Doar ina yen wots wore spent So many people ca ‘The mn of the seven wes weddings independence 2. Rail Ma’ Capital “L“The proportion in hich the population ofthe counts employed domes thesarver of the wey asada tp wal wefan cvation. (EM Dan, Ireland Before and fer the {hotthere waa soci guendon ever sincehe ceased poverty-stricken lawyer of TReCoE Peocope undoubiedy alldad to this ever-increasing domesti dass when he announced the advent of ner social sata, -o expe The Bagh goverment oath ests of nd bo sit Fe ae petty tos oy ston cst ope 6. Pal Letoy Beaulieu, La Question Our au XIX se (1872) 7. Louis Reybaud, Le cto son regime, es robles (1863). Richt To BE Lazy : Pawn LaRARGUE a Chapter lV New Songs to New Music ‘We have seen that by diminishing the hours of labor new mechanical forces will be conquered for social production. Furthermore, by obliging the labor i smensely increased, The capitalist class once relieved from its function of «universal consumer will hasten to dismiss its train of soldiers, magistrates, journalists, procurers, which it has withdrawn from useful labor to help it in consuming and wasting, Then the labor market will overflow. Then willbe required an iron lw o puta limit on work. It willbe impossible to find employment for that swarm of former unproductives, more mamer- ‘ous than insect parasites, and after them must be considered all those who provide for their needs and their vain and expensive tastes, When there are no more lackeys and generals to decorate, no more free and matried pros- titues to be covered with laces, no more cannons to bore, no more palaces to build, there will be need of severe laws to compel the working wornen ‘and working men who have been employed on embroidered lace, iron ‘workings, buildings, to take the hygienic and calisthenic exercises requisite to re-establish their health and improve their race. When once we begin to consume European products at home instead of sending them to the devil it wil be necessary thatthe sailors, dock handlers and the draymen sit down arid learn to twirl their thumbs. The heppy Polynesians may then love as they lite without fearing the civilized Vemus and the sermons of European moralists, And tat all: In order to find work forall the non-producers of our in order to leave the industrial equipment to go ‘on developing indefinitely, the class will be compelled, like the capitalist cass, to do violence to its taste for abstinence and to develop indefinitely its consuming tead of eating an ounce or two4“ Rigit to se Lazy of grisly meat once a day, when it eats any, it will eat juicy beefsteaks of a ‘pound or twor instead of drinking moderately of bad wine, it will become ‘more orthodox then the pope and will drink broad and deep bumpers of Bordeaux and Burgundy without commercial baptism and will leave water to the beasts. "The proletarians have taken into their heads to inflict upon the capitalists of forge and factory: that is their great mistake, because of social antagonisms and civil wars. Work ought to be forbidden and not imposed. The Rothschilds and other capitalists should be allowed to bring testimony to the fact that chroughout their whole lives they have been perfect vagaborids, and if they swear they wish to continue to live as perfect vagabonds in spite of the general mania for work, they should be pensioned and should receive every morning atthe city hall afive-dollar gold piecefor theirpocket money. Social discords will vanish. Bondholders ‘and capitalists wil be first to rally to the popular party, once convinced that far from wishing them harm, its purpose is rather to relieve them of the labor of over-consumption and waste, with which they have been ‘overwhelmed since their birt. As for the capitalists who aze incapable of ven hi proving their title to the name of vagabond, they willbe allowed to fo their instincts. There are plenty of disgusting occupations in which to place them. Dufaure mightbe set at cleaning public closets, Gallift' might perform surgical operations on diseased horses and hogs. The members of the amnesty comraission might be sent to the stockyards to pick out the oxen and the sheep to be slaughtered. The senators might play the Lorgeril and Broglie could cork champag to be muzzled as 2 precaution agains in the departments of state and other public houses. It would, however, be necessary to put the ‘public funds out of the reach of the capitalists out of due regard for their acquired habits ‘But vengeance, harsh and prolonged, will be heaped upon the moralists ici To ae Lazy : Paws Larancue 4 ‘who have perverted natare, the bigots, the canters, the hypoctit other such sects of men who disguise themselves like meskers to deceive ‘the world. For whilst they give the common people to understand thet they are busied about nothing but contemplation and devotion in fastings mn of their sensuality — and that only to sustain and aliment ~ it is so far otherwise that on the contrary, God knows, what cheer they make; et Cur Bacchanalia vivunt? You may read it their red snouts, and gulching be rejoicing, when instead of swallowing dust as on the 14th of July under capitalism, the communists and collectvists will eat, drink and dance to their hearts’ content; the members of the Academy, cof moral and political sciences; the priests with long robes and short, of the economic, catholic, protesta vist and free-thought chutch; the propagandists of Malthusianism, and of Christian, altruistic, independent or dependent ethics, clothed in yellow, shall be compelled to hold a candle until it bums their fingers, shall starve insight of tables loaded with meats, fruits and flowers and shall agonize with thirst in sight of flowing hogsheads. Four times @ year with the changing seasons they shall be shut up like the knife grinders’ dogs in great wheels and condemned to grind wind for ten hours, ‘The lawyers and legislators shall suffer the same punishment. Under the regime of idleness, to kill the time, which kills us second by second, there willbe shows and theatrical performances always and always. And here we have the very work for our bourgeois legislators, We shall organize thern {nto traveling companies to go to the fairs and villages, giving legislative ‘exhibitions. The generals in riding boots, their breastsbriliantly decorated with medals and crosses, shall go through the streets and courts levying recruits among, the good people. Gambetta and his comrade Cassagnac e-rolling his eyes and shall threaten every cone with his father’s pis as soon as they show ‘him Laller’s portrait. Gambetta will discourse on foreign politics and onso Rect To se Lazy litle Greece, who makes 2 doctor of him and would set Burope on fire to pilfer Turkey; on great Russia that stultfies him with the mincemeat she promises to make of Prussia and who would fain see mischief brewing in the west of Europe so as to feather her nest in the east and to strengle nihilisa at home; on Me. Bismark who Was good enough to allow him to pronounce himself on the amnesty .. then uncovering his mountainous belly smeared over with red and white and blue, the three national colors, the wil eat the tattoo on it, and enumerate the delicate litte ortolans, the ‘rafes and the glasses of Margaux and Y quem that it has gulped down to encourage agriculture, and to keep his electors of Belleville in good spirits. In the barracks the entertainment will open with the Electoral Farce. In the presence of the voters with wooden heads and asses’ ears, the bourgeois candidates, dressed as clowns, wil dance the dance of political liberties, wiping theinselves fore and oft with their freely promising clecoral progranas, and talking with tears in ther eyes of the miseries of| the people and with copper in their voices of the glories of France. Then the heads ofthe voters wil bray solidly in chorus, bi an! ‘Then will start the great pley, The Theft ofthe Nation's Goods Capitalist France, an enormous female, hairy-faced and bald-headed, fat, ith sunken eyes; sleepy and yawning, is steetching wach, At her feet Industrial Capitalism, a gigantic organism of iron, with an ape-like mast, is mechanically devouting men, women and children, whose thrilling and heart-rending cries fill the ats the bank with a marten’ muzal; a hyena’ body and harpy-hands, i coins out of his pocket. Hordes of miserable, emaciated -ags, escorted by gendarmes with drawn sabers, pursued 1g them with whips of hunger, are bringing to the feet of capitalist France heaps of merchandise, casks of wine, sacks of gold ‘and wheat. Langlois, his nether garment in one hend, the testament of Proudhon in the other and the book of the national budget between his teeth, isencamped at the head ofthe defenders of national property and is Rica 1 we Lazy : Pau Larancue st mounting guard. When the laborers, beaten with gun stocks and pricked with bayonets, have laid down their burdens, they are driven away and the door is opened to the manufacturers, merchants and bankers. They ‘hurl themselves pell mell upon the heap, devouring cotton goods, sacks of ‘wheat, ingots of gold, emptying casks of wine. When they have devoured all they can, they sink down, filthy and disgusting objects in their ordure ‘and vomitings. Then the thunder bursts forth, the earth shakes and opens, Historic Destiny arises, with her iron foot she crushes the heads of the «capitalists, hiccoughing, staggering, falling, unable to flee. With her broad hhand she overthrows capitalist France, astounded and sweating with fear. I, uprooting from its heart the vice wich dominat its nature, the working class were to arise in its to demand the Rights of Man, which are but exploitation, not to demand the Right to Work whichis b misery, but to forge a brazen law forbidding any man to work more than three hours day, the earth, the old earth, trembling with joy would feel 2 new universe leaping within her. But how should we ask a proletariat ‘corrupted by capitalist ethics, to take a manly resolution. Tike Christ, the doleful personification of ancient slavery, the ms ‘women and the children ofthe proletariat have been climbing pai fora century up the hard Calvary of pain; for a century compulsory hhas broken their bones, braised their flesh, tortured their nerves; for 8 centary hunger has torn their entrails and their brains. Oh Lazines, have pity on our long misery! Oh Laziness, mother ofthe arts and noble virtues, be thou the balm of human anguish! 2, Galfer was the generat who was dicciy responsible forthe massce of 2, li icecily responsible for the sf dhousands 3, Rabelais, Pantagral, 4.2 de Cag ei fate Gries prominent cone pain, journalist and duelist. ‘ nisRecut To Be Lazy Richt to ae Lazy : Paut Larancue 53 Appendix (Our moraliss are very modest people. If they invented the dogma of work, they still have doubts ofits efficacy in tranquilizing the soul, rejoicing the spirit, and maintaining the proper functioning of the entrails and other ‘organs. They wish to try its workings on the populace, it aniinca vi, before ‘turning it against the capitalists, to excuse and authorize whose vice is theit peculiar mission. : But you three-for-a-cent philosophers, why thus cudgel your brains to work ‘out an ethics the practice of which you dare not counsel to your masters? ‘Your dogma of work, of which you are so proud, do you wish to seit scoffed at, dishonored? Let us open the history of ancient peoples and the writings of their philosophers and lar givers.“I could not affirm says the father of history, Herodotus, “whether the Greeks derived from the Egyptians the contempt which they have for work, because I find the same contempt ‘stabished among the Thracians the Cythians, the Persians the Lydians ina word, because among most barbarians those wis learn mechanical arts and ‘ven ther children are regarded asthe meanest oftheir citizens. Allthe Greeks have been nurtured in this principle, particularly the Lacedaemonians” “At Athens the citizens were veritable nobles who had to concer themselves bot with the defense and the administration of the community, lke the savage warriors from whom they descended. Since they must thus have all ther time free to watch over the interests of the republic, with thelr ‘mental and bodily strength, they lad all labor upon the slaves. Likewise at ‘Lacedaemon, even the women were not alowed to spin or weave that they ‘ight not detract from their nobility”? ‘The Romans recognized but two noble and free professions, agriculturesa Riu To Be Lazy and arms. All the citizens by right lived at the expense of the treasury without being constrained to provide for their living by any of the sordid arts (thus, they designated the trades), which rightfully belonged to slaves. "The elder Brutus to arouse the people, accused Tarquin, the tyrant, of the special outrage of having converted fre citizens into artisans and masons* “The ancient philosophers had theie dispntes upon the origin of ideas but they agreed winen it came to the abhorrence of work. “Nature,” said Plato in his social utopia, his model rep are has made no shoemaker not smith. Such occupations degrade the people who exercise them. Vile mercenaries, nameless wretches, who are by their very condition excluded from political rights. As for the merchants accustomed to ly and deceiving they will be allowed in the city only as a necessary evi “The citizen who shall have degraded himself by the commerce of the shop shall be prosecuted for this offense. I he is convicted, he shall be condemned to a year in prison; the punishment shal be doubled for each repeated offense." In his Economics, Xenophon writes, “The people wo give themselves ‘up to manual labor are never promoted to pubic offices, and with good reason. The greater part of them, condemned to be seated the whole day Jong, some even to endure the heat of the fire cont cannot fal to be changed in body, and itis almost inevitable thatthe mind be affected “What honorable thing can come out of a shop?” asks Cicero, “What can commerce produce in the way of honor? Everything called shop is ‘unworthy an honorable man, Merchants can gain no profit without ying, ‘and what is mote shameful than falsehood? Again, we must regard as something base and vile the trade of those who sell ther toil and industry, for whoever gives his labor for money sells himself and puts himself in the rank of slaves.”* Proketarians, brutalized by the dogma of work, listen to the voiee of these philosophers, which hes been concealed from you with jealous care: A citizen who gives his labor for money degrades hitnself to the rank of slaves, he commits a crime which deserves years of imprisonment, Rigi? To se Lazy : Pau. Lararcue 55 ‘Christian hypocrisy and capitalist utilitarianism had not perverted these philosophers of the ancient republics. Speaking for free men, they expressed their thought naively, Plato, Aristotle, those intellectual giants, beside whom our latter day philosophers are but pygmnies, wish the citizens of their ideal republics to live in the most complete for as Xenophon observed, “Work takes all one has no leisure for the republic and his friends” According to Plutarch, the great claim of Lycurgus, wisest of men, to the admi ‘was that he had granted leisure to the citizens of Spat ‘them any trade whatever. But our moralists of Christianity and capitalism will answer, “These thinkers and philosophers praised the institution of slavery” Perfectly true, but could it have been otherwise, granted the ‘economic and political conditions of their epoch? War was the normel state of ancient societies. The free man was obliged to devote his time to discussing the affairs of state and watching over 1 trades ‘were then too primitive and clumsy for thos them to exercise their bitth-right of soldier and citizen; thus the philosophers and law- sivers if they wished to have warriorsand citizensin their heroic republics, ‘were obliged to tolerate slaves. But do not the moralists and economists of capitalism praise wage labor, the modern slavery; and to what men does the capitalist slavery give leisure? To people like Rothschild, Schneider, harmful slaves of their vices and of defense, ‘that if every tool could by itself exec function, a§ the masterpieces of Daedalus moved themselves or as the ‘ipods of Vulcan set themselves spontancously at ther sacred works if for example the shuttles of the weavers did their ov weaving, the foreman of the workshop would have no more need of helpers, nor the master of slaves?” Aristotle's dream is our reality. Our machines, with breath of fre, with limbs of unwearying steel, with fruitfulness, wonderful inexhaustible, accomplish by themselves with docility their sacred labor. And56 Rice To 6e Lazy nevertheless the genius of the great philosophers of capitalism remains dominated by the prejudice of the wage -worst of slaveries. They do not yet understand thatthe machine isthe saviour of humanity the god who shell redeem man from the sordidae artes and from working for hire, the god who shall give him leisure and liberty. 3, Herodots Book I 2. Biot. De Laboition de Pesclavage ancien en Oxide, 1040. 3. Linp Book L 4, Pat's Republi Book V. cae The Rights of the Horse and the Rights of Man Paul Lafargue Capitalist Civliztionhasendowed the wage-worker with the metaphytical Rights of Man, this econer sis only to rivet him more closely and more firmly ty “I make you free” so speak the Rights of Man tothe ‘wretched living and turn your employer into a mlionai your liberty for a mouthful of bread. He will imprison you ten ‘twelve houts in his workshops; he will not let you go till you are weatied to the marrow of your bones, till you have just enough strength left to gulp down your soup and sink into a heavy sleep. You have but one of your rights that you may not sell, and that isthe right to pay taxes” Progress and Civilization may be hard on wage-working humanity but they have all a mother’s tenderness for the animals wi eall"lower” Civilization has especially favored the equine race: it would be too great 2 of general notoriety, that I may awaken and inflame the passionate desires of the workers, now torpid in their misery. Horses are divided into distinct classes. The equine aristocracy enjoys so ‘many and so oppressive privileges, that if the human-faced brates which levalets and grooms were not morally ‘not feeling their shame, they would have rebelled against their lords and masters, whom they rub down, groom, brush and