Lafargue, Paul (1841-1911)

Paul Lafargue was born in 1842 in Santiago, Cuba of mixed heritage. He moved
with his family to France as a young boy where he studied medicine and first
became involved in politics as a follower of Proudhon.
It was while a representative of the French working class movement to the First
International he became friendly with Marx and Engels and
changed his views to those of Marx. Married in 1868 to Laura
Marx, Marx's second daughter, the Lafargue's began several decades of
political work together, financially supported by Engels.

Paul was one of the founders of the Marxist wing
of the French Workers Party. From 1861 took part in the republican movement. In
1870-71 he carried on organisational and agitational work in Paris and Bordeaux;
after the fall of the Commune
he fled to Spain where he fought for the line of the General Council; they then
settled in London. After the bloody May Day in Fourmis (1891) he was sentenced
to a year's imprisonment. Lafargue fought against reformism and Millerandism
and was an advocate of women's rights.

Lafargue was an influential speaker and wrote numerous works on revolutionary
Marxism, including the humorous and well-known, "The Right
to Be Lazy" and "Evolution and Property". By age 70, in 1911, the elderly
couple commit suicide together, having decided they had nothing left to give to
the movement to which they devoted their lives.