Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

258 IN PRAISE OF POVERTY
High incomes 'socially just' in the socialist society of scarcity,
'unjust' in the affluent society of 'capitalism'
For several years now, both in America and in European countries,
certain young people have adopted a strange attitude of defiance. A short
conversation is enough to detect in them a persistent, smouldering
feeling: their own society, or Western society in general, does not suit
them. They feel ill at ease because it is comfortable; and this is because
not everyone is equally well or badly off, and because others are too well
off. There are some, in fact, who are very badly off but seldom, as it
happens, the person I have been talking to. His father may even be rich,
and this only makes matters worse. It is the Weltschmerz of the egalitarian
temperament caught up in a reality which takes some account of their
problem, but not enough. Often they may be too well off to be able to
take themselves as an example, asking me rather to compare the lot of
certain unfortunate people with the luxury of some highly paid individual.
But seldom, if ever, are the Kennedys mentioned, or trade union
leaders, successful authors, film stars, or the instant celebrities of show
business. Exception is frequently taken to the incomes of famous doctors,
business executives and industrialists. When challenged to name
any society in this world which would suit them and assuage their
conscience, they will invariably reply: 'There isn't one, but things might
be better in Red China, in the Soviet Union or in Cuba than they are in
the United States or West Germany. '
When I have then cited economic facts from the Soviet Union, these
have generally been accepted unprotestingly as true; the fact, for instance,
that in Russia in 1960 the differential between maximum and
minimum incomes was something like 40: 1, whereas this ratio in Western
countries such as West Germany, Switzerland, the United States and
England was more like 10: 1, and further that the maximum income tax
in Russia, however high the salary, was 13 per cent. 4
4 On income structure in the Soviet Union see A. Inkeles, Social Change in Soviet
Russia, Cambridge (Mass.), 1968. Also Rudolf Becker, 'Lohnsystem und Lohnpolitik,'
Osteuropa-Handbuch. Sowgetunion. Vas WirtschaJtssystem, ed. Werner
Markert, Cologne-Oraz, 1965, p. 412. Recent information on the social stratification
of Soviet society in accordance with income is to be found in the volume edited by
Boris Meissner for the Deutsche Oesellschaft fur Osteuropakunde, SowjetgesellschaJt
im Wandel. Russlands Weg zur IndustriegesellschaJt, Stuttgart, 1966, pp. 110 ff., 147 f.