In order to dismiss the current philosophers who LaFargue disagrees with he uses a mix of history and philosophy against the “moralists”: Let us open the history of ancient peoples and the writings of their philosophers and law givers. “I could not affirm,” says the father of history, Herodotus, “whether the Creeks derived from the…
First off, I really like the title to this chapter. It invokes Spring and a certain freeness to me. The ability to structure not only new things but things in a new context to support these new things. It’s just a nice phrase in general, really. Lafargue builds off his latest conclusions that giving the laborer more time…
While I was planning to finish this series in a week things got in the way…okay mostly laziness and shitty internet. We are off to a good start with LaFargue considering promises of the Greek poet Antiparos who more or less claimed that new technology would liberate us from work. That it would give us…
What would this series be without a few delays? Hopefully this much longer post makes up for it! First, just look at the passage that Lagargue quotes at the beginning from a pamphlet entitled An Essay on Trade and Commerce: …the factory population of England had taken into its head the fixed idea that in their quality…
There is always a bit of contradictions or weirdness with the pro-lazy position and it’s really well emphasized in the quote LaFargue puts at the top of this chapter: Let us be lazy in everything, except in loving and drinking, except in being lazy. – Lessing People always want to make fun of the pro-lazy position,…
Starting today and into most of next week I will be excerpting and analyzing Paul LaFargue’s The Right to be Lazy (or alternatively here). Heaping praise and raising criticisms where I think necessary. I can’t promise much content in a given post but hopefully we’ll all get something out of it. After this is all…
I wanted to republish this but have not gotten any response from the author on Twitter and figured I would just excerpt the best parts and just do that instead. One of the earliest and most interesting parts about this is the history of the cubicle. Some of which you can find here: The original designs…
Sorry for the lack of original content lately. I’ve been busy with other projects and the past day or two struggling to figure out what original content I could provide. I don’t want to just drown you guys in republishings of great anti-work content even if it is pretty great (in my opinion of course…). So…
(You can also find this essay here, as of publishing I have not asked the Anarchist Library for permission to reprint and also could not find E. Kerr) Work less to live more. What a beautiful slogan! I wonder if the one who coined it understood the unintended truth it contains, that work is the…
Weeks discusses utopian and practical demands in terms of reducing work, feminist’s relation to work as well as Marxists and much more here, More than a century ago, the Industrial Workers of the World, or Wobblies, called for the four-hour workday. Should we be considering something similar now? Kathi Weeks explores why radicals should envision a…