Unfortunately interminably inane, and that's not a criticism I levy lightly nor happily. It's hard to not feel as if Lafargue's rhetoric is all a second-hand regurgitation of his father-in-law's that doesn't quite understand the greater synthesis of its ideas and so doesn't quite reach any real culmination. But nothing if not an admirable writing experiment, and it's worth noting that his other essays in the NYRB edition of this text are, imho, much better.