Sorry, I'm just exploring these concepts myself so I'm getting a little caught up in my own thoughts here as I write.

What I'm getting at is that selfishness is just a word. The thing it describes is acting on your desires at the expense of another, exploitation. Exploitation is a necessary part of survival until you've reached a higher form - homeostasis, stability, a collective of individuals acting in total voluntary cooperation and guided by a shared sense of purpose.

But until then, you have to exploit someone to survive. Try to work with people who share your material interests - the proletariat - to ensure you're exploiting the right others - the bourgeoisie - until there are no others, just one us. That is our sole imperative as communists. And while "selfishness" is a crude way to define all of this, it is a lot easier to convince someone to reframe the way they view their self-interest than it is to convince them to act against it.

If someone believes their self-interest lies with a particular ideology, the first step isn't to argue about whether they should follow their self-interest - that will only trigger defensive behavior. You need to convince them that their self-interest can better be served with a different ideology. Once you've got them on Marxism then you can do the hard work of educating them, but you need to get them on the hook first.

And I apologize for writing another essay. I'm working on getting this more concise.