Who is served by the end of work?
Michael Taube
The Right to Be Lazy and Other Writings
by Paul Lafargue
NYRB Classics
$15.95, 124 pages
In the deep, dark underbelly of Reddit, the influential social news website, there lurks a subgroup called r/antiwork. Established on Aug. 14, 2013, it’s described as a “subreddit for those who want to end work, are curious about ending work, want to get the most out of a work-free life, want more information on anti-work ideas and want personal help with their own jobs/work-related struggles.”
There are reportedly 2.4 million Idlers, or members, with more than 39,700 holding the status of “not working.” Posts contain everything from topical articles related to anti-work to complaining about jobs and capitalism. There are web links to songs and YouTube videos for inspiration. There’s a large library that links to books, essays, quotes, and articles related to anti-work, class struggle, culture, property, idleness, and more.
The anti-work movement isn’t a modern phenomenon, however. Its roots can also be traced back to the 19th century. One of its earliest proponents was Paul Lafargue, who happened to be Karl Marx’s son-in-law. New York Review Books recently released a small volume of Lafargue’s largely forgotten writings, The Right to Be Lazy and Other Writings, through its Classics line.
The leftist scribe, who worked as an editor at the socialist French newspaper L’Egalite, had the same panache for philosophical and economic reasoning as his father-in-law (and an equally delusional worldview). His memoir on Marx, essay on Victor Hugo, and short Q&A about the capitalist catechism infused intelligence, wit, analysis, and a literary style that would intrigue even the harshest of critics.
The Cuban-born Frenchman was largely a socialist by political persuasion with elements of Marxist thinking heavily sprinkled about, though Marx himself denounced him. Originally published as a newspaper article in 1880, “The Right to Be Lazy” was revised by Lafargue into a pamphlet three years later while he was sitting in the political wing of Paris’s Sainte-Pelagie prison. It’s a treatise against the right to work, which he viewed as a form of slavery in a capitalist society, and why the labor movement should oppose it. Lafargue argued that the proletariat must abandon its work-related shackles and “return to its natural instincts” by proclaiming what he described as the “Rights of Laziness, a thousand times more noble and more sacred than the anaemic Rights of Man concocted by the metaphysical lawyers of the bourgeois revolution.”
In his brand of Socialist/Marxist Xanadu, the average laborer would only have to work three hours per day, “reserving the rest of the day and night for leisure and feasting.” He theorized that “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 other’s hands and bread from each other’s mouths.” With the labor movement “not exhausted in body and mind,” they could then “begin to practice the virtues of laziness.”
Louis Blanc, a 19th-century French historian and socialist politician, is credited with coining the concept of right to work. His motion led the provisional government of France’s Second Republic to undertake two positions on Feb. 25, 1848: “to guarantee the livelihood of the workers by work” and “to guarantee work for every citizen.” Lafargue believed “work is the cause of all intellectual degeneracy, of all organic deformity” in a capitalist society. He was displeased that the proletariat, “the great class embracing all the producers of civilized nations,” was “betraying its instincts, despising its historic mission.” “Shame to the French proletariat! Only slaves would have been capable of such baseness.”
Lafargue was far from the only leftist writer, thinker, and academic who favored the right to be lazy over the right to work. Bertrand Russell, for instance, wrote a piece for the October 1932 issue of Harper’s Magazine titled “In Praise of Idleness.” The British philosopher and mathematician suggested that “there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached.”
Russell, similar to Lafargue, incorrectly equated work with the concept of slavery. “The morality of work is the morality of slaves,” he wrote, “and the modern world has no need of slavery.” While acknowledging leisure has always had a place in our civilization, “in former times leisure for the few was rendered possible only by the labors of the many. But their labors were valuable, not because work is good, but because leisure is good. And with modern technic it would be possible to distribute leisure justly without injury to civilization.”
Which brings us to his controversial defense of idleness. “The wise use of leisure, it must be conceded, is a product of civilization and education,” Russell argued. “A man who has worked long hours all his life will be bored if he becomes suddenly idle. But without a considerable amount of leisure a man is cut off from many of the best things.”
What was Russell’s solution? “If the ordinary wage-earner worked four hours a day there would be enough for everybody, and no unemployment — assuming a certain very moderate amount of sensible organization.” He quantified this position in the following manner. “When I suggest that working hours should be reduced to four, I am not meaning to imply that all the remaining time should necessarily be spent in pure frivolity. I mean that four hours’ work a day should entitle a man to the necessities and elementary comforts of life, and that the rest of his time should be his to use as he might see fit.”
What should we make of all this?
As a utopian vision, or a short-term change of pace in our fast-paced world, Lafargue and Russell’s position sounds rather pleasant on the surface. Many of us enjoy having leisurely moments, taking vacations, and soaking up a lazy Sunday morning. There’s nothing wrong with establishing a proper work-life balance, either.
But in the harsh reality of life, a liberal democratic society would never be able to maintain any level of productivity on the backs of lazy capitalism-hating people. Moreover, it’s worth noticing that today’s rich, even the heirs, tend to be overworked strivers compared with their ancestors from a time when upper class and leisure class were synonymous.
The West has been largely defined and motivated by cherished principles such as hard work, economic growth, opportunity, and development. Lafargue, Russell, Marx, and others refused to acknowledge these basic concepts — understood concepts in their lifetimes. Each attempted to convince society to see the light about work and embrace laziness and idleness at the level of ethos. The Idlers on the r/antiwork subreddit likely feel the same way, too.
Hence the radical anti-work Left would be wise to ignore this fever-induced fantasy and heed some real advice from U.S. author Freddie deBoer, a self-described “Marxist of an old-school variety.” As he wrote on his Substack on July 21, 2022, “the left is about work, it always has been, and if we were to give that up, I have no idea what we’d stand for or what power we would have.” Truer words from a Marxist thinker have rarely been spoken.
Michael Taube, a columnist for four publications (Troy Media, Loonie Politics, National Post, and Epoch Times), was a speechwriter for former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.