The Right To Be Greedy: Theses On The Practical Necessity Of Demanding Everything
Encyclopedia
The Right To Be Greedy: Theses On The Practical Necessity Of Demanding Everything is a book published in 1974 by an American situationist collective called "For Ourselves: Council for Generalized Self-Management". Post-left anarchist Bob Black
describes it in its preface as an "audacious attempt to synthesize a collectivist social vision of left-wing origin with an individualistic (for lack of a better word) ethic usually articulated on the right."
Its authors say "The positive conception of egoism, the perspective of communist egoism
, is the very heart and unity of our theoretical and practical coherence." It is highly influenced by the work of Max Stirner
. A reprinting of the work in the eighties was done by Loompanics
Unlimited with the involvement of Bob Black
who also wrote the preface to it.
Bob Black
Bob Black is an American anarchist. He is the author of The Abolition of Work and Other Essays, Beneath the Underground, Friendly Fire, Anarchy After Leftism, and numerous political essays.-Writing:Some of his work from the early 1980s includes...
describes it in its preface as an "audacious attempt to synthesize a collectivist social vision of left-wing origin with an individualistic (for lack of a better word) ethic usually articulated on the right."
Its authors say "The positive conception of egoism, the perspective of communist egoism
Egotism
Egotism is "characterized by an exaggerated estimate of one's intellect, ability, importance, appearance, wit, or other valued personal characteristics" – the drive to maintain and enhance favorable views of oneself....
, is the very heart and unity of our theoretical and practical coherence." It is highly influenced by the work of Max Stirner
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
. A reprinting of the work in the eighties was done by Loompanics
Loompanics
Loompanics Unlimited was an American book seller and publisher specializing in nonfiction on generally unconventional or controversial topics, with a philosophy considered tending to a mixture of libertarian and left wing ideals, although Loompanics carried books expressing other political...
Unlimited with the involvement of Bob Black
Bob Black
Bob Black is an American anarchist. He is the author of The Abolition of Work and Other Essays, Beneath the Underground, Friendly Fire, Anarchy After Leftism, and numerous political essays.-Writing:Some of his work from the early 1980s includes...
who also wrote the preface to it.
Quotes
- "Greed in its fullest sense is the only possible basis of communist society."
- "The present forms of greed lose out, in the end, because they turn out to be not greedy enough."
- "The activity of simultaneous appropriation by each individual of all the rest, or of the appropriation of society by all at once inter-appropriation (realized inter-subjectivity, or co-property) - itself constitutes the totality of social production."
- "The perspective of communist egoism is the perspective of that selfishness which desires nothing so much as other selves, of that egoism which wants nothing so much as other egos; of that greed which is greedy to love - love being the “total appropriation” of man by man."
- "Communist egoism" names the synthesis of individualism and collectivism, just as communist society names the actual, material, sensuous solution to the historical contradiction of the "particular" and the "general" interest, a contradiction engendered especially in the cleavage of society against itself into classes."