Lipton’s Journal/December 29, 1954/69

“Vested interest” is enormously more powerful than we think. It is society’s substitute for the soul, and the abstract man who lives totally in society has no identity, no “I” other than his vested interest. Which in its extreme case is an explanation of the totalitarian personality. It is vested interest which allows us to dismiss other people, to say of them that they are Negroes, Jews, homosexuals, anal-compulsives, hysterics, hicks, city slickers, etc. etc. etc. In effect by putting a label on a person we commit assassination, we cease to allow them existence in our minds. The echo of the word “liquidate” is “to petrifact,” and that is what the Stalinist does.

He can kill by categories because the categories have become lifeless to him, no more than concepts.