Paris Demetriades
August is here, the quintessential month of holidays and rest. The “dead” month, as it’s come to be called, when the city slows down dramatically, and a large share of workers take the days they are entitled to, or can afford, for rest and recuperation. For a necessary and profoundly human break from the frenzied rhythms of daily life, in an era where the eight-hour workday and basic labor rights have withered into a quaint, romantic anecdote from another time.
Not everything applies to everyone, of course. At the peak of capitalism, the personal condition is far too personal to allow for sweeping, absolute generalizations. Yet it’s self-evident that certain trends have prevailed, shaping the lives of most people around us.
Speaking of capitalism and labor, the mind instinctively drifts to the infamous “Right to Be Lazy” and the small book of the same name by French journalist and political writer Paul Lafargue. A man who, aside from being Karl Marx’s son-in-law, having married his daughter Laura, became known above all for this incendiary yet emblematic, as it is often described, book on what truly holds value in a person’s life.
All of us, wrote Paul Lafargue with a 'bella ciao' spirit in his book first published back in 1883, have the right to dispose of our time as we wish, rather than becoming its prisoners. The right to work, he noted, should not be the ultimate goal. That’s a misunderstanding. The true goal, he argued provocatively, should be the right to laziness.
A clearly provocative claim that threw society of the time into deep discomfort and fierce debate. After all, he was Marx’s own son-in-law, and this worldview clashed head-on with the fundamental slogans of the labor movements and the proletariat of that era, whose primary objective was precisely the right to work.
It’s a claim that, without a doubt, still works as a provocation today. Because despite the technological Armageddon that has unfolded since, one could fairly say that labor issues remain in a strikingly similar state.
I, too, believe that the right to disconnect should not be considered provocative, revolutionary, or awkward in any way. Whatever we may be dealing with, whatever our work may be, whether we are well-compensated or not, whether we enjoy what we do or not, whether we are employers and freelancers or employees, we must be able to disconnect for a reasonable period of time.
I read somewhere recently that some companies have instituted mandatory blocks on work emails during vacation days so that employees can truly breathe and return to work genuinely refreshed and recharged. The nature of every job differs, and personal circumstances, as mentioned earlier, are significant, sometimes decisive, but rejuvenation and recharge, literally and metaphorically, should be non-negotiable. There is nothing more human.
