Paul Lafargue

Paul Lafargue was a socialist writer, political organizer, and early advocate of Marxism in France and Spain. Born in 1842, he became Karl Marx's son-in-law and wrote across economics, anthropology, literary criticism, and political theory. The Right to Be Lazy attacks the belief that endless labor is inherently virtuous and turns satire against both capitalist production and the labor movement's demand for more wage work. First published in French as Le Droit à la paresse, it remains his best-known pamphlet. The Sale of an Appetite uses allegory instead: a starving worker contracts to digest food for a wealthy man, making exploitation bodily and absurd. Charles H. Kerr translated both works into English; his press issued The Sale of an Appetite in 1904 with illustrations by Dorothy D. Deene. Read together, the pamphlet and story show Lafargue shifting between direct argument and grotesque fiction while keeping consumption, labor, and unequal ownership at the center of his critique.