Thorstein Veblen
Review author to: 'Pamphlets socialistes: Le droit à la paresse; 
La religion du capital; L'appétit vendu; Pie IX au paradis'. 
Par PAUL LAFARGUE. Paris: V. Giard & E. Brière, 1900. 12 mo. pp. 164.
The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 8, No. 2. (Mar., 1900), p. 287-288.
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These discourses, reprinted here in collected form from widely separate 
dates, are held in the light and easy vein characteristic of M. [288] 
Lafargue when he aims to be entertaining. The first two are well-known 
pieces, of a satirical purpose; the two latter are of the same class, 
though newer and less well known. The whole is excellent in its kind, 
with an excellence characteristic of the propagandist literature of which 
it is an exceptionally effective sample. As commonly happens in the case 
of the socialistic satire from the continent of Europe, the jests are too 
broad, of too maudlin a complexion to appeal with full effect to English, 
and particularly to American readers. This is particularly true of the 
later ones of these pamphlets of M. Lafargue's. The satire is 
overstrained to such a degree as to defeat its own purpose.
T. V.