Harvey C. Mansfield, "Self-Interest Rightly Understood," Political Theory, vol. 23 (1995), No. 1, pp. 48-66.

Excerpt:

The collapse of communism is an occasion to rethink our bourgeois liberalism, which has surprised everyone, favorable or not, with its success. In particular it is time to have another look at self-interest. For communism is said to have collapsed because it did not work, which was said to mean that it did not accord with the self-interestedness in human nature. In the historical or cultural view pervasive in our time that denies the universality of self-interest, every regime is seen in its own time and therefore as adequate to its own time. The forces that cause it cannot fail to support it. In that view every regime “works” because it cannot be judged except by its own standards. It can live by its wishes regardless of truth.

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