Paul Lafargue - O Direito à Preguiça

"A strange madness dominates the working classes of nations where capitalist civilization reigns. This madness is the love of work, the dying passion for work, carried to the point of exhausting the vital forces of the individual and his offspring."

In an era where the religion of work demands ever-increasing labor sacrifices from its faithful in exchange for a place in the holy community of honest citizens, reading "The Right to Be Lazy" (1880) is to commit a salutary capital sin. In the 19th century, when the saints of capitalism were already lining up in the firmament of the economy, Paul Lafargue, in prison, ironically refined this classic and iconoclastic essay. Focusing on the devotion to work that had captivated the workers of the time, the author questioned the universality and historicity of this absurd zeal in a society where the individual abstained from his free time in the name of overproduction and obsessive accumulation. Essential reading in our times, *The Right to Be Lazy* is an eloquent manifesto against the vice of work, which corrupts human faculties, and in defense of the fundamental freedom to use our time as we please.

The life of Paul Lafargue (1842-1911), revolutionary intellectual and son-in-law of Karl Marx, is inseparable from the history of French socialism. Born in Santiago de Cuba, he settled in Paris in 1851, where he studied medicine and saw his interest in political life awaken. Expelled from the university for subversive activities, he went into exile in London, where he promoted the First International. His staunch defense of the Paris Commune earned him several prison sentences, persecution by the authorities, and flight to Spain. He was a prolific polemicist and editor for periodicals such as *L’Egalité* and *La Tribune*. He committed suicide, along with his companion Laura Marx, in 1911.