The Glory of Cleaning Toilets
Reviews
By Garth Miró
I thought about skipping the intro; they rarely interest me. And, in line with the title The Right to Be Lazy, I also thought doing so would be my prerogative. But I didn’t skip it. I read the whole book. I’m lazy even in my laziness, it seems.
This is the part of the review where I usually share my research: stuff I looked up about Paul Lafargue, the author, his background. However, my friend Ann Manov already did that research (much of which was first done by Lucy Sante and can be found in the introduction I nearly skipped). Since I failed so early on in the process, the perfectly lazy thing to do now would be to rip from her work.
In Ann’s article, she starts off by telling us that Paul Lafargue, the author of this pamphlet-length call to arms/roast, now reissued by NYRB Classics, was the son-in-law of a much more famous man, Karl Marx. Like other sons of famous men, Lafargue sat around and sniveled and met with his father-in-law’s famous friends until one of them pitied him enough to give him money. In this case, that friend was Friedrich Engels.
For thirty years, Lafargue let the dough roll in. Now, he did go to school. He even trained to become a doctor. But he didn’t use any of his training. As an intelligent man, he was more interested in leisure. And when he couldn’t live off other people’s money anymore, with the specter of work raising its ugly sweaty head, he and his wife decided it would be best to kill themselves. “The justice of a suicide pact.” No; let me check what Ann wrote. It was “a rational suicide pact.” No justice needed. That misquote was Neruda, and he was talking about eating. Lafargue, who ate and drank (and especially drank) to his heart’s content on other peoples’ tabs, was far less concerned with justice. He was more worried about seeming all-together mentally—that is, before sticking a needle of cyanide into himself and his wife.
It’s understandable. As a man who’s worked many shit jobs—construction, the knee-destroyer; those many pits of the Job Corps; the brutal humiliation ritual they call “sales”—I will say I can agree with the soundness of Lafargue’s thinking. If you have the courage, anything’s better than working.
Today, living in the far-flung future where technology only dreamed about in Lafargue’s time is a reality, The Right to Be Lazy points explicitly to the ridiculousness of our clamoring to work the hardest; to prove ourselves the best and most tireless. What happened to us? People who should be indulging to their heart’s content are instead fervently chanting “grind or die.” We get it tattooed on sinewy arms that push mowers and tap keyboards. Why are we even working at all? Weren’t robot servants supposed to have come along to relieve us by now?
Well, fuck. It seems we’ve made quite the huge mistake. Lafargue describes the capitalist class preaching the righteousness of abstinence, self-denial, jobs as we, the pious, good-natured employees of the underclass, promptly snuff all indulgence that might get in the way of our devotion to the Church of Work. And, by goddamn, we’ve become such strict perfect followers. We don’t even allow ourselves a sit at the end (currently there is no end, we’ll get to that) of a hard shift, to enjoy the inventions our work spits out. Instead, Lafargue argues, we view them as rivals, giving ourselves slipped discs and heart attacks and gonorrhea in our absurd murderous competition with these metal arms and legs and cocks. Are we stupid?
Yes. Lafargue knew such things were happening even in 1880. He derails the thought that such progress has given people, in his case the poor people of France, anything good. He mocks them for taking up their guns and demanding it in their Revolution. Progress? Up until that point, it had provided nothing but rising rents and interest rates. People had been forced from their quiet bored hearths in the country to the city for round-the-clock factory work just to keep up with all the progress.
This city work Lafargue describes was torture, greasy, tedious. Yet the superiors demanded it be seen as charitable. (Here I start getting flashbacks: morning sales meetings, morons smiling, frothing at the mouth to get on the phones.) They were giving them a gift! Work days unrestricted by any backwards labor laws; graciously, these bosses even allowed women and children to be included. We agreed, of course. The whole family could earn. We were dreaming of one day taking out a loan for progress’s newest gadgets. Lafargue quotes Villime, saying of this gift: “Convicts sentenced to hard labor only work ten hours a day, and slaves in the Antilles nine hours on average, while France with its Revolution . . . there were factories where the day was sixteen hours.”
Now the days never end. We’ve invented ourselves into being tracked and traced and perpetually on call. How lucky! Now we can truly prove how pious we are. The capitalists in their righteousness, worrying about our fervor, keep inventing new labor laws. But that hasn’t stopped us. We’re hooked. Our souls demand work, only more and more.
Lafargue argues that before, back on the emaciated farms, at least people knew their work meant nothing. There was no need to work harder than needed. The surplus would rot. Laborers had the luxury of understanding they were looked down upon. Therefore they could walk away spitefully when the day was done. Go home, forget. This was simple and righteous. They had no boss but God. When He sent them a drought, the tired people were relieved of work and duty.
Now we live forever in our relative comforts, and work forever, but no more are we allowed our righteous hatred. Our capitalist priests have made addendums. The holy texts changed because we weren’t working hard enough. God? He’s been replaced by the boss, and just in time. For a while there, we saw no higher calling in our menial tasks. These kind and totally sane bosses are now right there in the room with us to give our work meaning. With the implementation of “company culture,” the shift has become a smiling python, wrapping itself around our very essence. We’re not like other companies. Here, we’re family. Here, the family requires absolute devotion. Here, we demand great enthusiasm for cleaning toilets.
In fact, it’s not just cleaning toilets. It’s the glory of cleaning toilets. Now, lucky us, every job is important, every job is saving the world, so we must dedicate our souls. All companies have grown their own souls. They take positions—and always the correct positions—on every political happening. They end racism with their monthly subscriptions for factory-made razors and boxes of knockoff perfume. The great human suffering required to make all this happens elsewhere, and they will end that, too, certainly, just after they clear up sexism and racial inequity and wealth disparity and herpes and gout. Sure, none of these things have ever been solved by any political theory or revolution or human invention, but you must trust them, go along with their machine and grind yourself into dust. They have found a solution and will implement it . . . just as soon as they’ve earned enough for the quarter.
Yes, we can all sigh in relief that we’ve been given meaning again. Lafargue quotes Destutt de Tracy: “It is the poor nations where the people are comfortable; in rich nations, they are typically poor.” We are a rich nation, but have been blessed to work with the grounded meaning the poor once had.
Do you feel it?
I, for one, think our rich have themselves confused. In Lafargue’s day, they at least worked hard in their laziness. They were indulgers who trained in their ability to indulge! Today, we’ve all been led astray by rich who have too much time on their hands. They’ve lost the constitution to handle the amount of laziness and indulgence a truly leisurely modern life requires. We make all the goods, devote our whole lives to the companies, and what do the rich do? They quit drinking after one day! They apply a conscience to consumption! They diet and exercise. And they’ve become so bored they’ve let their minds wander into something as stupid as a crisis of meaning.
Something must be done. That we’ve even bought into this line of thinking, Lafargue asserts, proves our deepening insanity. He states that the only people who try and imbue hard manual labor with something poetic are lying or stupid. Even when we work so hard that our bosses graciously give us a gift, and allow us to rest and come in a bit later at 9:15 (or, ludicrously, 9:30), we refuse. The holiness of work was bred into our fathers, and our father’s fathers, and now we cannot even dream of doing such things. Lafargue observes that it has been this way for a very long time, noting that even his day’s revolutionaries could not demand a bourgeoisie lifestyle of consuming and indulging. Instead, they insisted that the rich also take up the religion of work.
And I believe it. Even now, I wonder: what am I doing? I immediately strayed from my good lazy path of copying Ann. Inserting all sorts of my own thoughts, feeling guilty because I might not be taking the job of reviewing this book seriously enough. This is not what I should be doing with my writing, and I apologize.
If I write anything here, it should be in service of one more try at revolution. This time, we must have whole swaths of the workforce quitting and walking out and laying back, soaking up whole lifetimes in empty daydreams, in TV-watching, in drugs and sex and all the most-high minded leisurely activities. Forget self-restriction for the fear of detriment to productivity. Lafargue was right when he said the working class must develop its own consumer tastes, just like the bourgeoisie did. Sure, we need money to live. But no more. Principled people are poor; principles have kept us back, so they’re out. Shirk all responsibility. Duck when the call for volunteering at work comes around. If you fail enough, quit enough, turn down enough opportunities, you will see great returns. You can even do drugs. (I’ve found that this approach is highly effective in my line of work.) This is when the real waste of life starts, the real leisure. And, in America, what could be better than to waste?
If time kills us all, then through laziness, we must kill time. We must become professionals at it, rather than work, which is on time’s side. We must drink and dive headfirst into our passions and sensuality. Cocaine is an old standby. It’s brutal cousin, meth, is fine as well. But both of these tend toward a possibility of boosting productivity. We must look to the downers instead. Xanax, Rohypnol—all the benzos, really. Ketamine has been promising as of late. But heroin is my personal love. (Though I cannot recommend it. It’s only for those absolutely committed to waste.) We’re already religious, so I have our prayer. We will recite it now: O laziness, we are sorry for working so hard that it has warped our minds and twisted out entrails. Take pity on us. O laziness, mother of all invention and art, be the balm to our sufferings.
Don’t worry about planning. Lafargue gives a good idea about what to do with the moralists, the priests and judges and bosses who’ve disguised themselves as masters over the world, after we’ve taken over. Since they taught everyone that work is good, that fasting and abstinence and the denial of sensuality is necessary, then they will get to do those jobs they so love. Exterminate bugs, work in old folk’s homes, clean grandpa’s shit and grandma’s old dry puss. Senators could be garbagemen; they’d be good at that. Middle managers could build nuthouses for themselves—we’d dole out their pills. Actors, well, they would be perfect for lancing boils on retired race horses or serving as the new human urinals. We should be proud to be stupid and let the rich benefit from those powerful, deep lessons that jobs imbue.
All of you reading this, I encourage you to simply sit back. I’ve read The Right to Be Lazy so you don’t have to (although maybe you should). Your job now is to fail. You won’t be finding any glory shining at the bottom of cleaned toilets, or at the other end of answered phones, or in the pages of a book about the eight most critical new marketable skills. No matter how many times the rich pitch the importance of work, you must resist. We’re not saving the world. That’s done. Now it’s our duty to become the new masters of passion and leisure. The rich don’t want it. When the true revolution finally comes, we’ll be doing a whole lot of nothing.
I’m already doing my part. This morning, I smoked a little bit of tar. It’s cheap. And nothing destroys a life so thoroughly and satisfyingly. Nothing makes a good worker so unusable and unproductive. It can even kill you. They want me to dream of glory? I’ll go the way of Lafargue instead. I’ll live off the tremendous state we’ve grown here, and then, when it’s time, see myself out. I just won’t be using cyanide.
Garth Miró is a writer based in New York City. He is the author of The Vacation, out now with Expat Press. His stories have appeared in Litro, Sundog Lit, XRAY, and Maudlin House among others. He currently works as a handyman.
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