Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

108 ENVY AS SEEN BY THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
prefers that particular group to other possible ones. He can then most
easily compensate for his partial loss of individuality occasioned by
membership of the group, or mitigate the pain of that loss, by taking an
active part in depriving other members of their individuality.
It is malicious glee in the torment of the newcomer who has yet to
adapt himself to the group, Schadenfreude in the sanctions applied to a
non-conforming member, that automatically makes of everyone of its
members a watch-dog and a whipper-in. The kind of group is immaterial:
it could be a parliamentary political party, a school class, a
boarding school, a platoon of recruits, a group of office workers, a group
of industrial workers, an age group in a primitive society, prisoners, or
simply a sibling group within a family.
Despite some influential social theories, it may be that man experiences
his membership of a group not as fulfilment but as diminution.
Thus membership of the group would be for man a compromise with his
true being, not the culmination of his existence but its curtailment. This
is a necessary experience for nearly everyone if he is to acquire certain
values such as economic security, the acceptance of his children into
society, etc. But even in the most 'socially minded' man there is a residue
of stubborn, proud individualism, the core of his existence as a human
being which fills him with Schadenfreude when he is able to help impose
upon others the same loss of individuality that he himself has painfully
experienced.
Power and conformity
From this we derive a hypothesis of a process of social control that can be
decisive in the establishment of a new power structure. This book is not
primarily concerned with forms of domination, power and force; yet the
sociology of power and domination should not overlook the factor of
envy, since it is always the wish of those who subject themselves to power
that others, still able to evade that power, should also subordinate
themselves and conform to it. Phenomena such as the totalitarian state
and modern dictatorship cannot be fully understood if the social relations
between those who have, and those who have not yet conformed,
are overlooked. Let us take a typical case:
A new centre of power has come into being. It may be merely a routine