16 Facts About Paul Lafargue

1.

Paul Lafargue was a Cuban-born French revolutionary Marxist socialist, political writer, economist, journalist, literary critic, and activist; he was Karl Marx's son-in-law, having married his second daughter, Laura.

2.

Paul Lafargue's best known work is The Right to Be Lazy.

3.

Paul Lafargue was the subject of a famous quotation by Karl Marx.

4.

Paul Lafargue's father was the owner of coffee plantations in Cuba, and the family's wealth allowed Lafargue to study in Santiago and then in France.

5.

Each of Paul Lafargue's grandparents was of a different ethno-religious origin.

6.

Paul Lafargue's paternal grandfather was a French Christian from the region of Bordeaux.

7.

Paul Lafargue's paternal grandmother was a mulatto from Saint-Domingue who had fled to Cuba following the Haitian Revolution.

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8.

Paul Lafargue's maternal grandfather was a French Jew, and his maternal grandmother was a Jamaican woman who claimed to be of indigenous Taino ancestry.

9.

In 1851, the Lafargue family relocated back to its hometown of Bordeaux, where Paul attended secondary school.

10.

In 1865, after participating in the International Students' Congress in Liege, Paul Lafargue was banned from all French universities, and had to leave for London in order to start a career.

11.

Paul Lafargue finally settled in Madrid, where he contacted some members of the International's Spanish chapter.

12.

The task given to Paul Lafargue consisted mainly of gathering a Marxist leadership in Madrid, while exercising an ideological influence through unsigned articles in the newspaper La Emancipacion.

13.

Between 1873 and 1882, Paul Lafargue lived in London, and avoided practising medicine as he had lost faith in it after the death in infancy of his and Laura's three children.

14.

Paul Lafargue opened a photolithography workshop, but its limited income forced him to request money from Engels on several occasions.

15.

Paul Lafargue participated with public activities such as strikes and elections, and was imprisoned several times.

16.

Nevertheless, Paul Lafargue continued his defence of Marxist orthodoxy against any reformist tendency, as shown by his conflict with Jean Jaures, as well as his refusal to participate with any "bourgeois" government.