Note: The following is a transcript from a video produced by Acid Horizon and released on Zer0 Books and Repeater Media’s Youtube channel. If you enjoyed this work, consider joining the Acid Horizon patreon account or enjoying some designs from Crit Drip.
“A strange madness has taken hold of the working class in nations where capitalist civilization reigns…this madness is the love of work, the moribund passion for work, pushed to point where the vital forces of the individual and his progeny are exhausted.” These are the words of Paul Lafargue from “A Right to Be Lazy”, an anti-capitalist, anti-productivist, and anti-work tract published in 1883. “The Right to Be Lazy” was a piece of writing whose impact and influence in its day was practically on par with Marx and Engels “The Communist Manifesto”. Like the “Manifesto” this was not a work of high theory; Lafargue’s intention was to send a shockwave throughout the mass of workers, opening their eyes to the reality of the soul-crushing grind demanded by life under capitalism. In his work, Lafargue observes that societies in antiquity generally manifested an absolute hatred for work. He notes, for instance, that in Ancient Greece only it was the slaves who were permitted to work. However, in Lafargue’s view, the 19th century proletarian worker expressed a willingness to embrace the servile labor demanded by their capitalist masters. Lafargue writes that the proletariat has been “perverted by the dogma of work, tempted to abandon its historical mission to emancipate itself from the fetters of capitalism. He chastises the working class for allowing themselves to be infected with the oppressive moralism of the bourgeoisie. The European ruling class elevated the virtues of work to a kind of religion. Moreover, their de facto priesthood advocated for putting the poor and dispossessed into workhouses where they would suffer the humiliation of working 14-hour days. Those imprisoned in workhouses were enslaved under the pretense that poverty and the supposed idleness associated with being poor was a kind of moral illness.
Lafargue also excoriates the bourgeois ideal of “Progress”. For Lafargue, “progress” was the capitalist’s empty promise, a chimera, as what actually “progressed” was the capitalist’s methods of exploitation and his grip on the means of production. Lafargue furthermore criticizes workers’ demands and organizing strategies amidst crises of industrial overproduction and ensuing work stoppages of his time. Massive surpluses of commodities would leave laborers out of work and without a wage. However, rather than demand equitable distributions of the excess and an extended break from the job, workers would pound on factory doors demanding more work. Meanwhile, their capitalist counterparts destroyed stores of surplus commodities, creating an artificial scarcity which in turn left the proletariat dependent upon wages for survival. Buying into the capitalist virtues of hard work and progress meant a kind of trade off for the working class. Rather than reclaiming time for leisure or asserting “the right to be lazy”, the workers enlisted to build the edifice of industrial capitalism remained enslaved to it.
Lafargue finds an ally of sorts in philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, another figure who, well, understood the value of time spent not selling one’s labor. There’s a popular image of Nietzsche which is often used to prop up today’s grindset mentality: a poor conflation of the grindset mentality with Nietzsche’s übermensch, or Superman, a special individual whose pursuit of personal excellence means spending most of their waking moments involved in goal-oriented activities. This notion of the übermensch is grossly misunderstood against some of Nietzsche’s other ideas, namely his anti-utilitarianism as well as his broader critique of rationality. In Nietzsche’s work The Gay Science, he lambastes the bad conscience often expressed by those obsessed with work and progress. He witnesses a tendency among some people to feel guilty when they aren’t making moves or firing on all cylinders. Nietzsche also identifies the phenomenon we now call “fear of missing out” as a symptom of this particular form of bad conscience. Consider how the desire to always stay in sync with the times lures us onto the hamster wheel news feeds and social media. Nietzsche also takes aim at those devalue leisure by placing it firmly beneath the value of work. For those committed to an image of personal growth or development, recreation and relaxation are sometimes seen as just a necessary supplement to work--and some folks are even ashamed if they indulge in rest and repose. Once again, for Nietzsche, these are the pangs of bad conscience. Enjoyment becomes merely treated as a reward: “Hey, you’ve worked so hard! You owe it to yourself to take that vacation!” or “You deserve that drink—or that expensive purchase!” We buy back our enjoyment at the price of remaining servile to a principle of self-improvement.
We can see the more extensive sociopolitical impact of these attitudes as they form a broader social circuitry of punishment and reward. The ruling class preys upon attitudes and behaviors which derive from the normalization of our collective reward schedules. But for Nietzsche, it’s not just about avoiding the horror of becoming a cog in machine: the material and psychological consequence of our obsession with work diminishes our capacity to savor the sublime and unique spirit of idleness. For example, I live in the woods, and sometimes there’s nothing more fulfilling to me than letting go, hitting the trail, and allowing my senses wander without purpose. I mean, for me, this is real juice! This is just about the best life has to offer!
Lastly, Nietzsche has a specific message for philosophers, scholars, and just anyone who values the pleasure of contemplation. He writes in Human, All Too Human
“…an indication that esteem for the meditative life has decreased is that scholars today compete with active men in a kind of hasty enjoyment, so that they seem to value this kind of enjoying more than the kind that actually befits them and, in fact, offers much more enjoyment. Scholars are ashamed of otium. But leisure and idleness are a noble thing.
If idleness is really the beginning of all vices, it is at least located in the closest vicinity to all the virtues: the idle man is still a better man than the active man.
You don't think that by leisure and idling I'm talking about you, do you, you lazybones?”
Nietzsche might think that today’s academics would do well to detach from the apparatus of professionalization which honors the virtue of near-constant productivity. The challenge of engaging in thoughtful reflection today has been intensified by the speed and character of life under capitalism—so much so that those who enjoy the life of the mind become accustomed to a frenetic pace which undermines their enjoyment of contemplation.
Finally, we come to writer and philosopher Georges Bataille. Bataille holds a view on laziness which casts it as a sort of metaphysical counterweight to the illusion of solidity that undergirds human goals and aspirations. Bataille regularly noticed within himself the onset of fatigue when in the final stretch of one of his writing projects. This fatigue induces a kind of stupor; maybe you’ve experienced something similar while trying to complete a long essay, record an intricate song, or finish up some similar creative task. In these moments, it’s almost as if we become detached from the project in a way that causes us to no longer identify with it. Bataille writes that being overcome by idleness opens us to an oceanic feeling marked by laziness, denial, forgetfulness, and languishing which drowns within it the more industrious and instrumentalized side of ourselves. Despite how detrimental this might be to our personal projects, it reveals a sublime aspect of idleness in its ability to estrange us from our work. For Bataille, there is a deep, abysmal formlessness which pulls upon everything that is formed—and this is true even for those things we hold closest to heart. However, Bataille suggests that laziness itself could be “used as an unbreakable energy”: that perhaps there was a way to engender the power of formless and the way its continuity prevails upon every intention.
Coming full circle to Lafargue, we should raise the question of how “the unbreakable energy of laziness” might be utilized politically. What if we weren’t just unashamed of leisure and idleness, as Nietzsche suggests, but that affirming the virtue of idleness was itself an act of political resistance, a force angled against the notion of unlimited growth and progress? What if the workers of Lafargue’s day agitated more powerfully to claim their right to surpluses of commodities—not to mention their time? Could the capitalist system of the 19th century have been brought to a complete halt by a prolonged event of widespread refusal of work? How might the refusal of work lead to other interventions against the exploitation of capitalism and the state? Consider for a moment how even the brief blip in the normal flow of the labor-to-capital circuit during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic brought about a crisis which demanded the ruling class make immediate and drastic changes to preserve itself. How might the collective refusal of work and the affirmation of our “right to be lazy” serve as a step towards liberation? What do you think?
Loved the vid. I wrote a post on 'The Right to Be Lazy' a few months back. Here's a link :: https://eternalreturnpress.substack.com/p/the-right-to-be-lazy