In the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution, when the dominant demand of the labor movement was the right to work, the French socialist Paul Lafargue shocked his peers by proclaiming the right to be lazy.

The much-desired wage labor, encouraged by religious morality to feed capitalism, is nothing but a regime of slavery that destroys people by draining their vitality, independence, and health. The machines brought by the future can save humanity, but only if the time they free up truly becomes leisure—and is not, as usually happens, translated into harsher working conditions.

Without a trace of pretentiousness, Lafargue dismantles with complete clarity the sanctified myth of hard work, which always remains in fashion, in favor of genuine personal fulfillment within a liberating social environment.

Paul Lafargue was a French revolutionary socialist, theorist, and journalist, known as the son-in-law and collaborator of Karl Marx. He became especially famous for his work The Right to be Lazy, in which he offers a harsh critique of the excessive glorification of labor.