Now in a new translation, a classic nineteenth-century defense for the cause of idleness by a revolutionary writer and activist (and Karl Marx's son-in law) that reshaped European ideas of labor and production. Exuberant, provocative, and as controversial as when it first appeared in 1880, Paul Lafargueโs The Right to Be Lazy is a call for the workers of the world to uniteโand stop working so much! Lafargue, Karl Marxโs son-in-law (about whom Marx once said, โIf he is a Marxist, then I am clearly notโ) wrote his pamphlet on the virtues of laziness while in prison for giving a socialist speech. At once a timely argument for a three-hour workday and a classical defense of leisure, The Right to Be Lazy shifted the course of European thought, going through seventeen editions in Russia during the Revolution of 1905 and helping shape John Maynard Keynesโs ideas about overproduction. Published here with a selection of Lafargueโs other writingsโincluding an essay on Victor Hugo and a memoir of MarxโThe Right to Be Lazy reminds us that the urge to work is not always beneficial, let alone necessary. It can also be a โstrange madnessโ consuming human lives.