Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

252 POLITICS AND THE APPEASEMENT OF ENVY
justice, does not want a miner to compare himself with a fitter, a farm
labourer with a boilermaker. Both men, he writes, 'have equal reason to
compare themselves with clerks or businessmen or Members of Parliament.
,24 Indeed, 'the poorest pensioner is entitled to a sense of relative
deprivation based on the inequality between himself and the richest
man.' Runciman believes that 'the poorest appear to be entitled to a
greater magnitude of relative deprivation than the evidence shows them
to feel. ' For instance, surveys in Britain have shown people to care much
less for steeply progressive income taxes than present tax laws assume. 25
Runciman, finding less envy than expected, argues that his model of a
socially just society would not require people to be more disposed to
envy.26 This I doubt. It is an ominous sign that egalitarians now wish
people to develop a keener sense of envious mortification than they
normally have lest they cease to care for reforms. As we have shown from
the start, concepts such as relative deprivation, though useful in some
types of empirical research, have helped to repress the facts regarding
envy. Our book tries to show what life would ultimately be like in a
society of 'uninhibited reference group choice. '
24 W. G. Runciman, Relative Deprivation and Social Justice, London and Berkeley,
1966, pp. 270 ff.
2S Op. cit., pp. 90 ff.
26 Op. cit., p. 280.