Paul Lafargue (1842–1911)

Activist of French workers’ movement and international workers’ movement; an outstanding Marxist theorist and propagandist; one of the main founders of the French Workers’ Party and the Second International.

Lafargue was born in 1842, in Santiago, Cuba, into a French colonialist’s family. His father was a coffee plantation owner and his family was well off. In 1851, his family relocated from Cuba back to Bordeaux, France, where Lafargue completed his secondary schooling and enrolled in the University of Paris in 1864 to study medicine. After the establishment of the International Workingmen’s Association in September 1864, Lafargue joined the Paris section of the International and began to devote himself to the workers’ movement. In February 1865, Lafargue was commissioned by the Paris section to report to the General Committee in London, became a frequent visitor to Marx’s home, and married Laura, Marx’s second daughter, in 1868. Lafargue was a member of the General Council of the First International, and served as corresponding secretary for Spain from 1866 and 1869. He participated in the establishment of International branches in France from 1869 to 1870 and in Spain and Portugal from 1871 to 1872. During the Paris Commune, he organized the struggle of Bordeaux workers in solidarity with the Commune, and fled to Spain after the Commune’s defeat. In 1872, he attended The Hague Congress of the International, and assisted Marx and Engels in their struggle against Bakunin. In 1879, he assisted Jules Guesde in founding the first Marxist party in France—the French Workers’ Party. He returned to France in 1882, participated in the founding of the Second International in 1889, and opposed Bernsteinism and Jaurès-Millerandism during the Second International. From 1891 to 1893, he served as a member of the French National Assembly.

Lafargue was an outstanding Marxist theorist and propagandist and made important contributions to the study of Marxist theory and the spread of Marxism in France. Under the guidance of Marxist theory, Lafargue carried out creative scientific research in many fields such as philosophy, political economy, scientific socialism, linguistics, etc. His important works include Le Parti ouvrier et l’état capitaliste (1880), The Religion of Capital (1887), La langue française avant et après la Révolution (1888), Le Communisme et l’évolution économique (1892), Les luttes de classes en flandre (1894), The Evolution of Property from Savagery to Civilization (1895), and Idealism and Materialism in the Conception of History (1895), Marx’s Materialism and Kant’s Idealism (1900), Les trusts americains, leur action economique, sociale, politique (1906), and The Economic Determinism of K. Marx (1907) and Personal Memories of Karl Marx and Personal Memories of Frederick Engels. In addition, Lafargue, together with Laura, translated many important works of Marx and Engels, such as The Communist Manifesto, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy into French, which made an important contribution to the spread of Marxism in France, and was called by Lenin one of the most gifted and profound disseminators of the ideas of Marxism.