Three volumes of La part maudite by Georges Bataille (actually The Accursed Lot, History of Eroticism and Sovereignty) are devoted to the analysis of what he refers to as the “paradox of utility”: if to be useful means to serve some higher purpose, then only the useless can act here as the highest, as the ultimate goal of utility. The study that made up the first volume of the trilogy - the only one published during Bataille's lifetime (1949) - approaches the resolution of this issue from an economic point of view, namely by showing that it is not the limitations of need, lack, but quite the opposite - the problem of "luxury", the endless waste is the theme for humanity. a fundamental challenge that determines both the prospects for its historicity and the forms of its relevance. In a follow-up to the first volume of the trilogy Histories of Eroticism and Sovereignty, Bataille explores the same paradox of utility from an anthropological and an ethical perspective respectively.