Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

268 IN PRAISE OF POVERTY
(although it is still far from attainable in practice, even for those who
have the money).
Is there then any luxury article, any pleasure, any property regardless
of size, or any form of existence which, in principle, social change,
technical progress or political shift is unable to legitimize and protect
against envy? We would be hard put to it to name one.
What we call culture in the narrower sense-Le., high culturearises
only where envy has been successfully diverted away from the
'alien' character of the elite minority. Spengler has stated it bluntly:
There is one other thing that belongs of necessity to a ripe culture. That is
property, the thought of which causes delirious outbursts of envy and hatred
from the vulgar-minded. Property, that is, in the original sense: old and
permanent possession, inherited from fore-fathers or acquired over long
years by the heavy and devoted work of the owner. . .. 9
For spending as such, for dissipation, for parvenu ostentation and
extravagance, Spengler shows nothing but contempt, but he makes a
distinction that is often overlooked:
This must be said again and again, and particularly in these days when
'national' revolutionaries in Germany rave like mendicant friars about
universal poverty and squalor-in delightful agreement with the Marxists,
who declare the possession of any sort of wealth to be criminal and immoral
and war upon everything that has this superiority in things of high culture
and any who surpass others in the ability to acquire, maintain, and worthily
use property, and that from envy of such ability, which they themselves
completely lack. High culture is inseparably bound up with luxury and
wealth. Luxury, that matter-of-course environment of things of culture that
belongs spiritually to one's personality, is a premise of all creative periods. 10
The cult of poverty
If we consider the cult of poverty in antiquity and in the Middle Ages,
the German youth movement between 1900 and 1930, and Marxist
movements and their disciples, drawn from both working and middle
9 Oswald Spengler, HourojDecision, London, 1934, p. 97.
lOOp. cit., pp. 101-2.