The Right To Be Greedy: Theses On The Practical Necessity Of Demanding Everything

by For Ourselves!, Rhiza (Designer)

The Right To Be Theses On The Practical Necessity Of Demanding Everything is a book published in 1974 by an American collective called "For Council for Generalized Self-Management". describes it in its preface as an "audacious attempt to synthesize a collectivist of origin with an (for lack of a better word) ethic usually articulated on the right". Its authors say that "[t]he positive conception of egoism, the perspective of , is the very heart and unity of our theoretical and practical coherence". It is highly influenced by the work of . A reprinting of the work in the eighties was done by Unlimited with the involvement of Bob Black (yes, the same guy who acted like a fed and ratted out his anarchist friends) who also wrote the preface to it. Thanks, Wikipedia.

Genres: Theory

208 pages, Paperback

Published August 23, 2020

Reviews

[R. Reddebrek · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting failure. This text, which I initially thought was a Situationist text based on its writing style and tone, was instead an attempt to found a Marxist egoism. The two main influences are Marx and the Situationist International, and by influences I mean its footnotes make up over half of the book.

I would put this in a long list of works I've read under the theme "All other Marxists are wrong and counter revolutionary, here's the real Marxian vision as shown by my selective quoting from his collected works". It didn't work, the book disappeared until the 80s, when Anarchists started reading and reprinting it.

I think it works better as a standalone text with the large quotations in the endnotes removed, they're essentially just appeal to authority arguments while the thesi in the main text stand up for the most part and articulate their points well. Compared to Society of the Spectacle the closest comparison I can make Right to be Greedy is much easier to understand, the rejection of preformative anti-art of Debord was to its credit. It's a clear argument for a form of egoism as a philosophy and firmly rejects the leftist orthodoxy of its time.

Two points I would make is that it is clearly a text written in the 1970s so some of its choices of topics and criticism seem a bit dated, and the sections on councils are quite vague and lack the rigor of the other statements. We will have councils governing the new way of life, because we will have councils. This is another symptom of being written by a Situationist adjacent group in the 1970s wanting to reject leninism and maoism. Practically every dissident marxist off shoot of that period had rediscovered the potential of workers councils, but often hadn't paid much attention to them so they are presented as effectively magically institutions that'll overcome all potential challenges.