The Right to be Lazy by Paul Lafargue

[JimN]

http://assassinsclan.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/lazy-dog.jpg

Paul Lafargue's classic socialist critique of the capitalist work ethic
(applicable only to the working class) dates from 1883. This means that some of the bourgeois politicians and ideologues mentioned in the pamphlet have long since been, deservedly, forgotten, but it remains a powerful presentation of the case that what workers should be demanding is not the "right to work" under capitalism but the "right to leisure" in a socialist society, where machines could be used to lighten labour and free people to engage in activities of their choice.

Lafargue's approach to work in a socialist society - that it should be minimised - is only one of two possible socialist approaches to the question. While Lafargue emphasised the "Right to be Lazy" (or, less provocatively, the "Right to Leisure"), his contemporary fellow Socialist across the Channel, William Morris, was arguing that what workers should be demanding was what might be called the "Right to Attractive Work". As he put it:

"I claim that work in a duly ordered community should be made attractive by the consciousness of usefulness, by its being carried on with intelligent interest, by variety, and by its being exercised amidst pleasurable surroundings" (Useful Work versus Useless Toil, 1884).

The two different approaches suggest two different policies that might be
pursued in a socialist society: maximum automatisation so as to minimise working time or making as much work as possible attractive and personally rewarding. Lafargue writes here of reducing the working day to 2 or 3 hours. Morris would not have seen the point of this even if he went on to claim above that "the day's work should not be wearisomely long" : if people were getting some enjoyment out of their work surely, on his view, they would want to engage in it for longer than a couple of hours or so a day. As this is not an issue that can be resolved in the abstract, all we can do is to leave the matter to be settled in socialist society in the light of the preferences of those living in it.

This from the introduction to Lafargue's classic re-issued in a pamphlet by the Socialist Party of Great Britain

To read the rest whole piece and to find how to get your hands on the pamphlet see here:

http://tinyurl.com/yhjx5g7 (http://tinyurl.com/yhjx5g7)

[whore]

well, obviously we are fighting for a society, surely, when we are all free to work as much, or as little, as we like.

in other words, we have to fight for the right to be lazy, but when we want to work, it has to be attractive.

[Incendiarism]

Good work. I came across it while reading Tom Lutz' Doing Nothing, and he mentions Lafargue, the pamphlet, and his relation with Karl Marx.

I completely agree with whore, though.

[RED DAVE]

There's an old British workers song called something like "A British Working Woman Enters Heaven." One of the lines, which is, i believe, wrongfully attributed to James Agate, goes like this:


Don't pity me now, don't pity me never;
I'm going to do nothing for ever and ever.Any British comrades have the rest of the words for it?

RED DAVE

[The Idler]

The modern equivalent is How to be Idle (2005) and How to be Free/The Freedom Manifesto: How to Free Yourself from Anxiety, Fear, Mortgages, Money, Guilt, Debt, Government, Boredom, Supermarkets, Bills, Melancholy, Pain, Depression, Work, and Waste (2007) by Tom Hodgkinson.

[LeninistKing]

I think that one of the worst things of the American Capitalist system is the excess of work and domestic chores. We need a people's government in America that would care about even the food that americans eat, how they cook it, how they prepare it and a government that would care so much about the people that it would step in the shoes, so that it might design a country specifically for citizens, not for corporations. A system whithout so much work. Too much work is even bad for the back. No wonder may americans suffer from back aches. I think that working 10 hours a day is anti-scientific, and many americans work 10 hours and more a day

.



http://assassinsclan.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/lazy-dog.jpg

Paul Lafargue's classic socialist critique of the capitalist work ethic
(applicable only to the working class) dates from 1883. This means that some of the bourgeois politicians and ideologues mentioned in the pamphlet have long since been, deservedly, forgotten, but it remains a powerful presentation of the case that what workers should be demanding is not the "right to work" under capitalism but the "right to leisure" in a socialist society, where machines could be used to lighten labour and free people to engage in activities of their choice.

Lafargue's approach to work in a socialist society - that it should be minimised - is only one of two possible socialist approaches to the question. While Lafargue emphasised the "Right to be Lazy" (or, less provocatively, the "Right to Leisure"), his contemporary fellow Socialist across the Channel, William Morris, was arguing that what workers should be demanding was what might be called the "Right to Attractive Work". As he put it:

"I claim that work in a duly ordered community should be made attractive by the consciousness of usefulness, by its being carried on with intelligent interest, by variety, and by its being exercised amidst pleasurable surroundings" (Useful Work versus Useless Toil, 1884).

The two different approaches suggest two different policies that might be
pursued in a socialist society: maximum automatisation so as to minimise working time or making as much work as possible attractive and personally rewarding. Lafargue writes here of reducing the working day to 2 or 3 hours. Morris would not have seen the point of this even if he went on to claim above that "the day's work should not be wearisomely long" : if people were getting some enjoyment out of their work surely, on his view, they would want to engage in it for longer than a couple of hours or so a day. As this is not an issue that can be resolved in the abstract, all we can do is to leave the matter to be settled in socialist society in the light of the preferences of those living in it.

This from the introduction to Lafargue's classic re-issued in a pamphlet by the Socialist Party of Great Britain

To read the rest whole piece and to find how to get your hands on the pamphlet see here:

http://tinyurl.com/yhjx5g7 (http://tinyurl.com/yhjx5g7)

[Robocommie]

I just want to pet that dog.

I don't know how feasible it is to ever make work really attractive. Work is unpleasant because it is by definition what we do because we have to. There will always be jobs that have to be done that nobody's going to really WANT to do. However, I do think that once the means of production are controlled by the workers, people will certainly take a sort of pride in their work, since it is literally their work, and they're not just being pushed around by some asshole manager squeezing another dollar out of their hide.