Paul Lafargue (Author), Bernard Marszalek (Editor), The Right to Be Lazy: Essays by Paul Lafargue.

by | Sep 16, 2014 | Research

SUMMARY: According to the publisher’s abstract, “At once a masterpiece of critical theory and rip-roaring radical humor, this is one of the most spirited attacks on the notion of the “work ethic” ever to be published. Featuring a revised edition of the original English translation by Charles Hope Kerr, this collection also includes four of Paul Lafargue’s lesser-known critiques (including the ‘Catechism for Investors’), as well as a biographical sketch by longtime Wobbly organizer Fred Thompson and a new introduction. … Paul Lafargue (1842?–1911) was a Cuban-born socialist revolutionary.” In 1880 Paul Lafargue, the author of the popular essay “The Right to be Lazy,” characterized the love of work “a strange delusion” that acts as an excuse to denigrate proposals to separate income from jobs. A new anti-authoritarian and pleasurable culture awaits to be born, but the bosses everywhere (including in the heads of too many proletarian leaders) wish to abort it. The exact institutions that would separate income from jobs are not clearly spelled out in Lafargue’s, and so it is impossible to say the extent to which he is a forerunner of the basic income movement, but certainly the idea of the right to be lazy and the desire to separate income from work move in that direction.

Paul Lafargue (Author), Bernard Marszalek (Editor), The Right to Be Lazy: Essays by Paul Lafargue. AK Press, 2011

The right to be lazy
The right to be lazy

Dylan Matthews, “Basic income: the world's simplest plan to end poverty, explained.”

by | Sep 13, 2014 | Research

SUMMARY: “In recent months, discussion of basic income proposals have become fairly mainstream, but not so mainstream that most people know what the phrase ‘basic income’ means. With that in mind, here are the basics (get it?) of the idea, in [answers to the following] eleven questions.”

1) What is basic income?
2) Who supports basic income?
3) Has a basic income been implemented anywhere?
4) Wouldn’t this destroy the economy?
5) Could a basic income ever happen in the United States?
6) I believe it’s customary to provide a music break? [“Money for Nothing”]
7) Will a basic income save us from the robot uprising?
8 ) What’s the liberal/leftist case for basic income?
9) What’s the conservative/libertarian case for basic income?
10) What’s the liberal/leftist case against basic income?
11) What’s the conservative/libertarian case against basic income?

Dylan Matthews, “Basic income: the world’s simplest plan to end poverty, explained.” Vox, September 8, 2014

VOX

Vox

Tom Clark, “When it comes to our welfare system, we’ve lost the plot”

by | Sep 13, 2014 | Research

The author discusses the history and current state of various safety net programs in Britain, as well as possible improvements and solutions, such as the “citizen’s income” proposed by the organization Compass.

Tom Clark, “When it comes to our welfare system, we’ve lost the plot”, The Guardian, 27 July 2014

A protest outside the London offices of Love Productions, which made the TV programme Benefits Street. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian

A protest outside the London offices of Love Productions, which made the TV programme Benefits Street. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian