Paul Lafargue

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Paul Lafargue 1869, photographer German Fehrenbach

Paul Lafargue (born January 15, 1842 in Santiago de Cuba , † November 26, 1911 in Draveil , Département Seine-et-Oise , today Département Essonne ) was a French socialist and doctor .

Life

Origin and youth

Paul Lafargue spent the first years of his life in his birthplace Santiago de Cuba. Also be born already there father François was the son of a French father and a Creole that after the Haitian Revolution had fled in 1791 from Haiti to Cuba. Paul Lafargue's mother, Ana Virginia Armaignac, also had a French father who had fled Haiti and was born in Jamaica to a native Caribean. François Lafargue worked as a cooper and owned a coffee plantation ; Paul was probably the couple's only child.

In 1851 the family moved to France, where they settled with the assets they had brought with them in Bordeaux, the grandfather's hometown. Paul Lafargue continued his school education, which he had begun in the progressive Colegio de Santiago, initially at the grammar school in Bordeaux and completed it in 1861 with the Baccalauréat in Toulouse.

Studied and politicized in Paris and London

He then went to Paris to study pharmacy , where he soon switched to medical school. There he began his intellectual and political career. He was a supporter of positivism and came into contact with republican groups that led to Napoleon III. were in opposition. In this phase he was influenced by the work of the social scientist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon , whose ideas of anarchism he followed. He joined the French section of the International Workers' Association (First International) founded in 1864 and soon afterwards gave preference to the revolutionary theories of Karl Marx and Auguste Blanquis over anarchism.

As a co-organizer and prominent participant in the international student congress in Liège in 1865, whose discussions of radical atheist and revolutionary theses had caused a public scandal, Lafargue was banned from attending all French universities. He went to London in 1866 to continue his medical studies at St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College and to continue to get involved in the labor movement. In London he became a regular guest at Karl Marx's house, where he met his daughter Laura , to whom he became engaged in September 1866. The couple married in April 1868 just before Lafargue graduated from medical school in July. He received his political training from Marx. In March 1866 he was elected to the General Council of the International Workers' Association, where he represented Spain until 1868.

Activity in France and Spain

In the autumn of 1868 he returned to France, where he sharply attacked Mikhail Bakunin's anarchism in a series of articles and thus started his successful career as a political journalist. In 1870 he helped found the Paris section of the First International. After the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War , he fled with his family to Bordeaux in 1870, and after the fall of the Paris Commune in 1871, he went into exile in Spain. All three of the couple's children died during those years.

In Spain, Lafargue worked as a representative of the First International and for the first time translated texts by Marx and Friedrich Engels into Spanish. Within the labor movement there, however, anarchism prevailed against the Marxism propagated by Lafargue.

Final return to France

After the amnesty for the Communist fighters in 1882 and the resulting return of the Lafargue to France, he founded the Parti ouvrier , the first Marxist party in France , with Jules Guesde in the same year . In 1889 he opened the International Workers' Congress in Paris.

Lafargue wrote numerous articles for newspapers and magazines. He wrote several contributions to the series The History of Socialism in Individual Representations edited by Eduard Bernstein , which Bernstein, loyal to Lafargue, accepted as editor even when he considered it unsuccessful, such as his study on The Settlements of the Jesuits in Paraguay .

death

Grave of Paul Lafargue

In 1911 the couple died of suicide after attending the opera . Lafargue wrote about the reasons in a note left behind:

«Sain de corps et d'esprit, je me tue avant que l'impitoyable vieillesse qui m'enlève un à un les plaisirs et les joies de l'existence et qui me dépouille de mes forces physiques et intellectuelles ne paralysis mon énergie, ne Brise ma volonté et ne fasse de moi une charge à moi et aux autres. »

“Healthy in body and mind, I kill myself before the relentless old age, which has taken away all the pleasures and joys of existence from me one after the other and robbed me of my physical and mental powers, paralyzes my energy, breaks my will and me for makes me and others a burden. "

15,000 people accompanied the funeral procession to the Père Lachaise cemetery , where Lenin gave a funeral oration on behalf of the Russian Social Democrats . Eduard Bernstein praised the socialist as “the most intellectually important leader of socialism in France”.

Positions

The right to be lazy , French first edition

With Lafargue, the focus is on the criticism of consumption , i.e. the sphere of consumption of capitalist production. Lafargue also reflects the conditions for working people after the revolution . In his most famous text, The Right to Laziness of 1883 - the subtitle according to a “refutation” of the right to work called for in the Paris February Revolution of 1848  - he criticized the bourgeois work ethic and the contemporary ideological concept of work as well as the consequences of overproduction .

Lafargue saw his fundamental criticism of nationalism based on the Communist Manifesto . Nonetheless, he was criticized for this by Marx with the term “ proudhonized Stirnerianism ”, which was later criticized and persecuted primarily as cosmopolitanism .

His internationalism also became the background for racist attacks on Lafargue as a " mulatto ". Marx himself spoke of his son-in-law as the “Negro” or the “Creole”.

Lafargue was asked about his parentage at socialist congresses. Bernstein wrote: "The awareness that he partly descended from members of oppressed [...] races seems to have influenced his thinking early on". When asked about his ancestry, the saying goes that he is proud to be descended from " Negroes ". Right from the start of his political activities he defended himself against racist and anti-feminist attacks by his comrades. So it said in an article signed “Paul Lafargue, Mulatte”: “You throw the term homme de couleur in our faces as an insult . It is our task as revolutionary mulattos to take up this designation and to prove ourselves worthy of it. Radicals in America, make mulatto your rallying cry! […] It describes misery, oppression, hatred. Do you know something nicer? "

Works (selection)

  • Wedding songs and customs. Study of the Origin of the Family. In: The new time. Review of intellectual and public life. 5 (1887)
    Issue 1, pp. 14-21,   Issue 2, pp. 79-85,   Issue 3, pp. 97-105 .
  • The proletariat of manual labor and brain labor. I . In: The new time. Review of intellectual and public life. 5 (1887) and 6 (1888)
    Issue 8/1887, pp. 349-355,   Issue 9/1887, pp. 405-411,   Issue 10/1887, pp. 452-461,   Issue 3/1888, pp. 128-140 .
  • The legend of Victor Hugo. In: The new time. Review of intellectual and public life. 6 (1888)
    Issue 4, pp. 169-176,   Issue 5, pp. 215-222,   Issue 6, pp. 263-271 .
  • Circumcision, its social and religious significance. In: The new time. Review of intellectual and public life. 6 (1888), No. 11, pp. 496-505.
  • Past and present adultery. In: The new time. Review of intellectual and public life. 7 (1889)
    No. 5, pp. 193-205,   No. 6, pp. 248-255 .
  • Crime in France from 1840–1886. Studies of their development and their causes. In: The new time. Review of intellectual and public life. 8 (1890)
    Issue 1, pp. 11-23,   Issue 2, pp. 56-66,   Issue 3, pp. 106-116.
  • The development of property . From d. Franz. V. E. Amber. German Cooperative Publishing, London 1890. (= Social Democratic Library, Vol. 31.), online (Berlin 1893)
  • The religion of capital. German Cooperative Publishing, London 1890 (= Social Democratic Library, Vol. 34.)
  • The socialist movement in France from 1876–1890. In: The new time. Review of intellectual and public life. 8 (1890), No. 8, pp. 337-353
  • Karl Marx: Personal memories. In: The new time. Review of intellectual and public life. 9. 1890-91, Volume 1 (1891)
    Issue 1, pp. 10-17,   Issue 2, pp. 37-42
  • On the population question in France. In: The new time. Review of intellectual and public life. 11. 1892-93, 2nd vol. (1893)
    issue 40, pp. 404-410,   issue 41, pp. 423-428
  • Vilfredo Pareto : Karl Marx: Le capital. Extraits faits par Paul Lafargue. Guillaumin, Paris 1893. ( Petite Bibliothèque économique française et étrangère. )
  • with Jules Guesde : Le Program du Parti ouvrier, ses considérants & ses articles. 3. éd., Impr. Du Parti ouvrier, Lille 1894.
  • Communism and capitalism. Communism and economic development . Translated by Richard Bernstein. Verlag der Expedition des “Vorwärts”, Berlin 1894, online
  • The branches of the Jesuits in Paraguay. In: Karl Kautsky (ed.): The precursors of modern socialism. Volume 2: From Thomas More to the eve of the French Revolution. Dietz, Stuttgart 1895, pp. 719-749.
    • New edition under the title The Jesuit State in Paraguay. In: Karl Kautsky, Paul Lafargue (eds.): Precursors of modern socialism. Volume 3: The first two great utopians: Thomas More. Thomas Campanella. The Jesuit state in Paraguay. Dietz, Stuttgart and Buchhandlung Vorwärts, Berlin 1921, pp. 123–172.
  • Idéalisme et matérialisme dans the conception de l'histoire. Conference de Jean Jaurès et réponse de Paul Lafargue. 1895.
  • Mr. Casimir-Perier's Presidency. Scenes from the parliamentary comedy comedy. In: The new time. Review of intellectual and public life. 13. 1894-95, 1st Vol. (1895)
    Issue 20, pp. 635-640,   Issue 21, pp. 668-672,   Issue 22, pp. 697-704
  • History of socialism in detail. By Eduard Bernstein, C. Hugo, Karl Kautsky, Franz Mehring, Georg Plechanow and Paul Lafargue. Vol. I first and second part. Volume III first and second part. Dietz Verlag, Stuttgart 1895–1897.
  • Pamphlets socialistes. Le droit à la paresse. La religion du capital. L'appétit vendu. Pie IX au paradis. Giard & Brière, Paris 1900
  • Marx's historical materialism. In: The new time. Weekly of the German Social Democracy. 22. 1903-1904, 1st Vol. (1904)
    Issue 25, pp. 780-788   Issue 26, pp. 824-833
  • Personal memories of Friedrich Engels. In: The new time. Weekly of the German Social Democracy. 23. 1904-1905, 2nd Vol. (1905), Issue 44, pp. 556-561
  • Christian charity. In: The new time. Weekly of the German Social Democracy. 23. 1904-1905, 1st vol. (1905)
    Issue 3, pp. 75-85,   Issue 4, pp. 118-127,   Issue 5, pp. 145-153 .
  • The causes of belief in God. In: The new time. Weekly of the German Social Democracy. 24. 1905-1906, 1st vol. (1906)
    issue 15, pp. 476-480,   issue 16, pp. 508-518,   issue 17, pp. 548-556 .
  • Economics, science and mathematics. In: The new time. Weekly of the German Social Democracy. 24. 1905-1906, 2nd vol. (1906), issue 27, pp. 25-30
  • Origin and development of the concept of the soul (= supplements to the Neue Zeit issue 6) Stuttgart 1909
  • Le Déterminisme économique de Karl Marx. Recherches sur l'Origine et l'Évolution des Idées de Justice, du Bien, de l'Âme et de Dieu. V. Giard & E. Brière, Paris 1909. ( Bibliothèque Socialiste Internationale. )
  • The problem of knowledge. In: The new time. Weekly of the German Social Democracy. 28. 1909-1910, 1st vol. (1910)
    issue 24, pp. 836-844   issue 25, pp. 868-874
  • The French language before and after the revolution. Translated by Karl Kautsky jr. (= Supplementary books to Neue Zeit, issue 15), Stuttgart 1912.
  • Pol 'Lafarg. Inst. K. Marksa i F. Engel'sa; Socinenija. Pod red. D. Rjazanova. T 1 Gosizdat, Moskava 1925. ( Biblioteka naucnogo socializma. )
  • The religion of capital . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1930
  • The right to be lazy & personal memories of Karl Marx. Edited and introduced by Iring Fetscher . Europäische Verlagsanstalt / Europa Verlag Wien, Frankfurt am Main 1966 (= Political Texts. ), Online (Berlin 1891)
  • From the origin of ideas. A selection from his writings from 1886 to 1900. Edited by Katharina Scheinfuß with an afterword by Dieter Kurz. Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1970. (= Fundus series , 24/25).
  • Essays on history, culture and politics. Ed. by Fritz Keller, Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin 2002.
  • The religion of capital. From the Frz. by Andreas Rötzer. Matthes & Seitz Berlin, 2009, ISBN 978-3-88221-748-3 .
  • The right to be lazy: Rejection of the "right to work" of 1848 . Translated by Ute Kruse-Ebeling. Reclam Verlag, Ditzingen 2018, ISBN 978-3-15-019487-4 .

literature

Web links

Wikisource: Paul Lafargue  - Sources and full texts
Commons : Paul Lafargue  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Leslie Derfler: Paul Lafargue and the Founding of French Marxism, 1842-1882 p. 14, Harvard University Press, 1991 (English)
  2. ↑ a b c Lafargue, Paul , in: International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 2008, accessed via encyclopedia.com on August 30, 2013 (English)
  3. ↑ Derfler, pp. 19–24
  4. ↑ Derfler, pp. 25–33
  5. ↑ Derfler, p. 38
  6. ^ Eduard Bernstein's correspondence with Karl Kautsky (1891-1895) , edited by Till Schelz-Brandenburg. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2012, ISBN 978-3-593-41693-9 . Letter from Eduard Bernstein to Karl Kautsky, March 30, 1895, pp. 523-531, on Lafargue pp. 523-525.
  7. ↑ Marx's Daughter A Suicide; Dies with Paul la Fargue, Her Husband, Who Feared Old Age. . The New York Times . November 27, 1911. Retrieved June 13, 2009.
  8. ↑ Lenin's funeral speech, December 3, 1911 (English)
  9. ↑ Klaus Nerger: The grave of Paul Lafargue
  10. ↑ Marx to Engels, August 23, 1866: "But yesterday I told our Creole that if he cannot clamor to English manners, Laura will put him in the air without any trouble." ( Marx-Engels-Werke , Volume 31, p. 253).
    Marx to his daughter Jenny, September 5, 1866: "The day before yesterday the Lormiers were here and also the Negrillo." (Marx-Engels-Werke, Volume 31, p. 528)
  11. ↑ See: Fritz Keller : Paul Lafargue . Quotes: ibid
personal data
SURNAME Lafargue, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Socialist and a son-in-law of Karl Marx
DATE OF BIRTH January 15, 1842
PLACE OF BIRTH Santiago de Cuba
DATE OF DEATH November 26, 1911
Place of death Draveil