The word selfishness is widely known as a trademarked fighting word, synonymous with immorality. Leftist ideologues liberally use it to club defenders of capitalism over their ruggedly individualistic heads.
However, the same ideologues never decry selfishness when it is practiced by a group, either assuming that selfishness by definition cannot be collective, or that by being collective, selfishness gets an upgrade to a higher moral status, as if things perpetrated by the community cannot be immoral. And yet, not only has group selfishness not always existed on all levels of society-from warring gangs and clans to warring nations- but selfishness exerted by pressure groups often is the basest, the most irrational an the most immoral form of selfishness. While selfishness of an individual can either be rational or irrational, depending on whether it is based on reason or raw emotions, group selfishness is always irrational, because crowd psychology is mostly driven by primeval collectivist instinct.
oleg atbashian