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Paul Lafargue Quotes

Paul Lafargue was a French revolutionary Marxist socialist journalist, literary critic, political writer and activist; he was Karl Marx's son-in-law having married his second daughter, Laura. His best known work is The Right To Be Lazy. Born in Cuba to French and Creole parents, Lafargue spent most of his life in France, with periods in England and Spain. At the age of 69, he and 66-year-old Laura died together by a suicide pact.

Lafargue was the subject of a famous quotation by Karl Marx. Soon before Marx died in 1883, he wrote a letter to Lafargue and the French Workers' Party organizer Jules Guesde, both of whom already claimed to represent "Marxist" principles. Marx accused them of "revolutionary phrase-mongering" and of denying the value of reformist struggles. This exchange is the source of Marx's remark, reported by Friedrich Engels: "ce qu'il y a de certain c'est que moi, je ne suis pas Marxiste" . Wikipedia  

✵ 15. January 1842 – 26. November 1911
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Paul Lafargue: 5   quotes 6   likes

Famous Paul Lafargue Quotes

“When, in our civilized Europe, we would find a trace of the native beauty of man, we must go seek it in the nations where economic prejudices have not yet uprooted the hatred of work. … The Greeks in their era of greatness had only contempt for work: their slaves alone were permitted to labor: the free man knew only exercises for the body and mind. … The philosophers of antiquity taught contempt for work, that degradation of the free man, the poets sang of idleness, that gift from the Gods.”

Paul Lafargue

The Right to Be Lazy (1883), H. Kerr, trans. (1907), pp. 11-12

“Jehovah … gave his worshippers the supreme example of ideal laziness; after six days of work, he rests for all eternity.”

Paul Lafargue

The Right to Be Lazy (1883), H. Kerr, trans. (1907), pp. 12-13

“I am proudest of my Negro extraction.”

Paul Lafargue

As quoted in [Paul Lafargue and the Founding of French Marxism, 1842-1882, Derfler, Leslie, Harvard University Press, 1991, 15, https://books.google.com/books?id=L_E_OR6owEEC&pg=PA15]

“The blood of three oppressed races runs in my veins.”

Paul Lafargue

As quoted in [Paul Lafargue and the Founding of French Marxism, 1842-1882, Derfler, Leslie, Harvard University Press, 1991, 11, https://books.google.com/books?id=L_E_OR6owEEC&pg=PA11]

“Philanthropy means to steal wholesale, and give away retail.”

Paul Lafargue

The Religion of Capital (1887), New York Labor News (1918), p. 22

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