5 Quotes & Sayings By Paul Lafargue

Born in April 1842, Paul Lafargue was the son of a butcher. At the age of thirteen, he apprenticed himself to a tailor. Soon after his apprenticeship was completed, his father's business failed and he had to find work as an unskilled laborer. He became involved in the labor movement and became an active member of the International Working People's Association Read more

His socialist beliefs led to his imprisonment during the French Revolution. After his release, he worked as secretary to Karl Marx for about two years until Marx left for England where he continued his research into political economy and philosophy.

1
In proportion as the mass of citizens who possess political rights increases, and the number of elected ruler’s increases, the actual power is concentrated and becomes the monopoly of a smaller and smaller group of individuals. Paul Lafargue
2
Work, work, proletarians, to increase social wealth and your individual poverty; work, work, in order that becoming poorer, you may have more reason to work and become miserable. Such is the inexorable law of capitalist production. Paul Lafargue
3
Confronted with this double madness of the labourers killing themselves with over-production and vegetating in abstinence, the great problem of capitalist production is no longer to find producers and to multiply their powers but to discover consumers, to excite their appetites and create in them fictitious needs. Paul Lafargue
4
In proportion as the machine is improved and performs man's work with an ever increasing rapidity and exactness, the labourer, instead of prolonging his former rest times, redoubles his ardour, as if he wished to rival the machine. O, absurd and murderous competition! Paul Lafargue