The Right to Be Greedy [1974]

For Ourselves. The Right to Be Greedy. Berkeley, CA and Palo Alto, CA: For Ourselves, n.d. [1974]. First edition, first printing. n.p.[56 p.];  21.5 x 18 cm.; yellow wrappers with text in black. Russ Little’s prison copy, with his name and cell number inside the front cover. Heavy underlining by Little throughout.

” In the early 1970’s, ‘pro situ’ groups (as they are known) formed in Britain, in New York city and especially in the San Francisco Bay Area. One of these groups, Negation, reformed as For Ourselves around 1973…For Ourselves was particularly beholden to the situationist Raoul Vaneigem whose celebration of the ‘radical subjectivity’  of ‘master without slaves’  figures prominently in the theses espoused in The Right to Be Greedy. All too soon the group collapsed, its members regressing into Marxism from which they had never really departed”‘ (Ford 173).

This edition contains a preface by Bob Black and a Situ Reading List. “This work consists of 126 numbered theses, divided into an Introduction and 11 topical sections; followed by 16 pages of ‘Postnotes’ — four pages containing 58 notes, mainly in the form of citations and 12 pages containing chiefly content notes and definitions of terms. The text sets down a general theory of (and an argument for) ‘communist egoism’ and details the relation between it and such things as regular (narrow) egoism, communist society, pleasure, sexuality, authority, morality, and revolution.” (Beni 68-69)

Russ Little was a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). Active between 1973 and 1975, the SLA was a left-wing revolutionary group (for some) and a domestic terrorist organization (for others). The group committed bank robberies, two murders, and various other acts of violence. It became notorious for the kidnapping of heiress Patty Hearst. For a biography of Little and more about his involvement with the SLA, see the PBS profile at  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/guerrilla/peopleevents/p_little.html

Full online version available at http://www.lust-for-life.org/Lust-For-Life/TheRightToBeGreedy/TheRightToBeGreedy-en.htm

Beni 68-69. Ford 173. Not in the trade. We locate 7 OCLC copies, though none of course with this meaningful and somewhat surprising association.