Paul Lafargue, the disciple and son-in-law of Karl Marx, helped to found the first French Marxist party in 1882. Over the next three decades, he served as the chief theoretician and propagandist for Marxism in France. During these years, which ended with the dramatic suicides of Lafargue and his wife, French socialism, and the Marxist party within it, became a significant political force.
In an earlier volume, Paul Lafargue and the Founding of French Marxism, 1842-1882, Leslie Derfler emphasized family identity and the origin of French Marxism. Here, he explores Lafargue's political strategies, specifically his break with party co-founder Jules Guesde in the Boulanger and Dreyfus episodes and over the question of socialist-syndicalist relations. Derfler shows Lafargue's importance as both political activist and theorist. He describes Lafargue's role in the formulation of such strategies as the promotion of a Second Workingmen's International, the pursuit of reform within the framework of the existent state but opposition to any socialist participation in nonsocialist governments, and the subordination of trade unionism to political action. He emphasizes Lafargue's pioneering efforts to apply Marxist methods of analysis to questions of anthropology, aesthetics, and literary criticism.
Despite the crucial part they played in the social and political changes of the past century and the heritage they left, the first French Marxists are not widely known, especially in the English-speaking world. This important critical biography of Lafargue, the most audacious of their much maligned theorists, enables us to trace the options open to Marxist socialism as well as its development during a critical period of transition.
Leslie Derfler is Professor of History, Florida Atlantic University.
Table of Contents
Contents List of Illustrations Preface Introduction 1. Faults Enough and to Spare 2. Defending the Faith 3. Beyond All Possible Bounds 4. The Parisians Have Gone Mad 5. That Damned Congress 6. Fusillade at Fourmies 7. A Dangerous Dream 8. Peasants and Patriots 9. Beaten But Not Stoned 10. Let Us Storm the Forts 11. The Myth That Seems Absurd 12. Pleasantries or Naïvetés 13. Absurd and Incredible Conduct 14. Party of Opposition 15. Socialism and the Intellectuals 16. A Force Retarding Human Progress 17. The Unperceived Force 18. One Reform on Top of Another 19. Simply . . . Logical Afterword Notes Index
What People are Saying About This
Lafargue deserves the scholarly attention that Derfler has bestowed on him. He was co-founder, along with Jules Guesde, of the Parti Ouvrier Français; the son-in-law of Karl Marx, a principal claim to fame among his contemporaries; a member of the French legislature; the author of a paradoxical pamphlet on the right to be lazy. His life with Laura Marx was punctuated by dramatic episodes, and ended tragically with their double suicide…Lafargue is always on center stage, as the narrative covers everything he wrote that appeared in the periodical press, as well as his activities in his own party and in the broader French political scene during the last three decades of his life.
Patrick H. Hutton
This is a splendid biography. Derfler has taken an interesting tack on Lafargue's maturity. He provides a perspective on a militant passing from his prime. This theme resonates with our own times, an era in which one might say the socialist movement has seen better years. I see Derfler's account as the story of a middle aged man's resilience and courage in a milieu in which his youthful effectiveness was beginning to lessen.
— Patrick H. Hutton, The University of Vermont
Frank Manuel
Lafargue deserves the scholarly attention that Derfler has bestowed on him. He was co-founder, along with Jules Guesde, of the Parti Ouvrier Français; the son-in-law of Karl Marx, a principal claim to fame among his contemporaries; a member of the French legislature; the author of a paradoxical pamphlet on the right to be lazy. His life with Laura Marx was punctuated by dramatic episodes, and ended tragically with their double suicide…Lafargue is always on center stage, as the narrative covers everything he wrote that appeared in the periodical press, as well as his activities in his own party and in the broader French political scene during the last three decades of his life.
