Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

PROHIBITIONS ON LUXURY 261
universal envious pressure selecting for its target, more or less at random,
now this, now that sign of inequality in fellow citizens or tribesmen.
Luxury as such has never existed, and never will exist, but only
envy of consumer behaviour that is branded as luxury. The actual yield,
for instance, produced by luxury taxes, irrespective of the state of
development of the economy, is almost invariably very small and often
insignificant by comparison with the yield from those taxes that are paid
by all, or by the majority, without regard for contingent 'luxury. ,6
Prohibitions on luxury
The Roman Lex Didia (143 B.C.) laid down for the whole ofItaly that not
only the givers of extravagant meals, but also their guests, should be
punished. Sumptuary laws were often applied to some choice morsel
that had only just appeared on the market, such as shrews or mussels. If
St. Louis eschewed gorgeous robes all the time he was crusading, this
may have been because of (unconscious) fear of divine envy (the less
finely I dress, the more likely I am to return). In 1190 Philip Augustus
and Richard Creur de Lion tried to restrict the extravagant wearing of fur
by Crusaders. In the Netherlands, Charles V forbade the wearing of
clothes embroidered with gold or silver, as well as of long pointed shoes,
after the Church had inveighed against these things.
But sumptuary laws were enacted not only by kings and emperors:
6 J. M. Vincent, article on 'Sumptuary Legislation,' Encyclopedia of the Social
Sciences. Also, John Martin Vincent, 'European Blue Laws,' Annual Report of the
American Historical Association for the Year 1897, Washington, 1898, pp. 357-72.
P. Kraemer, Le Luxe et les lois sumptuaries au moyen age, Paris, 1920. J. Schwarten,
'Verordnungen gegen Luxus und Kleiderpracht in Hamburg,' Zeitschrift fur Kulturgeschichte,
New Series, Vol. VI, 1899, pp. 67-102, 170-90. F. E. Baldwin, 'Sumptuary
Legislation and Personal Regulation in England,' Studies in Historical and
Political Science, 44th series, No.1, Baltimore, 1926. W. Roscher, Prinzipien der
politischen Olwnomie, 13th ed., 1877. F. Marbach, Luxus und Luxussteuer; Bern,
1948.
In the Journal of Law and Economics, Vol. 2, 1959, pp. 120-3, there is a sarcastic
demand for the foundation of a society for sumptuary legislation-the 'Sumptuary
Manifesto,' in which the intellectual and emotional origins of the 'new' economy of
John K. Galbraith and others are shown up in a scathing satire.