Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

264
IN PRAISE OF POVERTY
superior to others because of it. The present-day person who extracts that
poisonous feeling of superiority out of a shirt is the man who puts on a silk
shirt which he has bought hoping to make other people envy him .... 8
This definition of the term 'luxury,' and the suspicion upon which it is
based, are still encountered today. But how does the critic know who
wants to make others envious, and whether he is, in fact, envied? It
would seem probable that the critic is deducing these conclusions from
what he has learnt by introspection.
For surely only someone who was deeply envious could take this view
of lUXury? How might it be possible to decide whether a man is buying an
expensive car because he regards it as the best trouble-free investment
for the next eight years, or whether it is because he wishes to make others
envious? Even in America over the years I have met people who would
avoid buying a certain make of car, although this would have been the
sensible thing to do, only because they were convinced that others would
see it as an attempt to make them envious. An exactly similar inhibition
is found in American parents when they do not want to send their child to
a private school, in spite of its evident superiority and willingness to
grant a scholarship.
Unnecessary, fatuous, ostentatious and frivolous spending, in most of
its forms and occasions, is just as objectionable to me as to any professional
critic of luxury. But I also recognize the great difficulty of
establishing absolute criteria. What seems luxury to one man will
appear to another the only sensible choice on grounds of the object's
quality and durability. Where one man might prefer to buy the very best
piano, the other will choose to go, once in his life, on a world cruise. As
soon as citizens permit an authority to enact sumptuary laws, the door is
wide open to every kind of chicanery and envious restriction.
'Conspicuous consumption'
But the question of what is the real attitude towards luxury is much more
complex. Generally speaking, even the most impassioned democrats and
egalitarians of today are little worried by certain manifestations of
luxury. Between 1961 and 1963, in the United States, for example,
academic and newspaper critics of the affluent society could be observed
drawing in their claws as soon as President Kennedy and his wife
8 A. Tilgher, Homo Faber, Chicago, 1964, pp. 218 f.