Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

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IN PRAISE OF POVERTY
civic authorities in Italy and Central Europe were also addicts of the
sport. Independent cities such as Basel, Bern and Zurich had regulations
governing funerals, baptisms, weddings, banquets and the way people
dressed. Sometimes a city would prescribe the quality of cloth, or the
width of ribbons, to be used in clothing.
Again there is an obvious connection between European sumptuary
laws and fear of divine envy, though Christians, indeed, should not have
been troubled by the latter: for fifty years the earthquakes of the early
sixteenth century were to serve as an admonition, as justification for the
statutory limitation on luxury. From this it may be seen to what extent
sumptuary legislation is at bottom a substitute for the magical propitiation
of nature and spirits among primitives. I suspect that those who
scorn the affluent society are partly governed by these same archaic
emotional complexes.
Certain mystical agitators incline one to suspect a connection between
sumptuary legislation and an early form of fanatical religious egalitarianism.
Thus Hans Bohm an der Tauber (1476) demanded that no one
should have more than his neighbour, and in 1521 Eberlin von Giinzburg
pressed for severe legislative restrictions on consumption; doctors, too,
were to practise without payment, and taxation must be progressive.
By and large, it was not until the end of the eighteenth century that the
rage for legislative restriction of luxury and consumption began to die
down in Europe and America, making way for the inception of an
expanding and economically healthier free-market economy.
The connection between Voltaire's belief in progress and his conception
of lUXury is indicative of the change. Voltaire cited Colbert to prove
his own view that, with skilful manipulation, luxury could enrich a state.
Voltaire's theory of luxury derives no doubt from certain Englishmen,'
for instance, Petty, North and Mandeville, but also from men such as
Pierre Bayle. A century later, the notion that the luxury of the few meant
work for the many was to serve a Bavarian king as a political pretext for
his extravagances. In the case of Voltaire, luxury might be defined
simply as 'the rich man's expenditure.' On the other hand, and quite
rightly, Voltaire expressly pointed out that the term 'luxury' was purely
relative. In 1738 he wrote: 'What is luxury? This is a word which we use
with as little thought as we do when we speak of there being different
climates in East and West. In reality the sun neither rises nor sets. The