"By fixing men's minds, not upon the discharge of social obligations, which restricts their energy, because it defines the goal to which it should be directed, but upon the exercise of the right to pursue their own self-interest, it offers unlimited scope for the acquisition of riches... To the strong it promises unfettered freedom... to the weak the hope that they too one day may be strong. Before the eyes of both it suspends a golden prize... the enchanting vision of infinite expansion. It assures men that there are no ends other than their ends, no law other than their desires, no limit... Thus it makes the individual the centre of his own universe, and dissolves moral principles into a choice of expediences. And it... relieves... the necessity of discriminating between... enterprise and avarice, energy and unscrupulous greed, property which is legitimate and property which is theft, the just enjoyment of the fruits of labour and the idle parasitism of birth or fortune... and suggests that excess or defect, waste or superfluity, require no conscious effort of the social will to avert them, but are corrected almost automatically by the mechanical play of economic forces."
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https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Acquisitive_Society
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The Acquisitive Society
The Acquisitive Society was written by R. H. Tawney and published in 1920. Tawney herein criticizes the selfish individualism of modern industrial societies. He argues that capitalism corrupts via the promotion of economic self-interest, leading to aimless production in response to greed and insatiable acquisitiveness, and hence to perversions of industrialism. He attests further that, by extension, nationalism leads to the perversion of imperialism and to a necessarily failed balance of power s
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