UC Berkeley offering course titled, 'The Right to Be Lazy: Shifts in Marxist Thought' — and for credit

The University of California, Berkeley, is offering a course this semester titled, "The Right to be Lazy: Shifts in Marxist Thought."

The one-credit history class is part of the school's DeCal program, which are "legitimate university classes run by students" and are pass-fail graded by faculty sponsors who oversee them.

What is 'The Right to Be Lazy' course about?

"Growing out of the workers' movement at the turn of the 20th century (but always including an anti-work strain) Marxism became a framework of analysis and language of struggle for multiple rebellious groups," the course description reads. "Marx's ideas were taken up by revolutionaries around the globe from the anticolonial militants in Africa and Latin America to those blockading the streets of Paris in 1968 and Italy in the 1970s ... By studying these struggles and the creative responses to conditions they faced, we will try to better understand what it means to be anticapitalist, what are the basic categories of capital, and questions of the revolutionary subject."

What did others have to say about the course?

"Each of us has the right to be lazy, but none of us has the right to the rewards of someone else's hard work," Capitalism.com founder and CEO Ryan Daniel Moran told Campus Reform. "Anticapitalist ideas are rooted in entitlement, which is one of the dangers of today's society. I hope the students at Berkeley are taught the ineffectiveness of Marx's ideas; if you want to create change, it starts with you."

The outlet also got a take from the Berkeley College Republicans: "We do not oppose teaching divergent subjects in DeCal classes at UC Berkeley. However, nobody can dispute the fact that if a DeCal class with a right-leaning curriculum was ever proposed, it would be promptly rejected. Colleges should be dedicated to promoting intellectual diversity, and an important part of that is giving adequate space to conservative views, even if they are unpopular with the larger campus community."

The school's academic Senate, which approves DeCal courses, didn't return a request for comment on "The Right to Be Lazy" class, Campus Reform said.