Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

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IN PRAISE OF POVERTY
The oppressed of all periods are the heroes of those who understand
freedom in terms of economics. When, in 1895, the Marxist Karl Kautsky
was looking for the precursors of modern socialism, he lit on the Cathari,
though he had no clear idea of what they were. Later on, in 1906, his fellow
Marxist, Milorad Popovich, construed the struggle of the Bogomils, of
which he had solid historical knowledge, as a class struggle. The following
year, the Italian socialist and modernist, Gioacchino Volpe, portrayed the
Italian heretics as representatives of the lowest classes; and in 1911-14 his
pupils, Luigi Zanoni and Antonino de Stefano, took the socialist thesis to its
extreme by dubbing Catharism a revolutionary movement, under the imperfect
disguise of religion. 14
The ubiquity of envy in human relations, the consideration of it even
when objectively it is perhaps not especially acute in others, is one of the
fundamental constituent factors of social reality. Because envy, the envy
of others, is always by nature an unassuageable, negative, unproductive
feeling, most successful cultures throughout history have devised inhibitions
on envy.
Thus neo-Marxists today explain not only religion but all proverbs
critical of envy as designed by the elite to keep the underprivileged in
permanent subjection. Whether this was ever so, or whether less fortunate
people coined proverbs as a sort of balm to render life tolerable, is
impossible to decide now. Nor does it really matter. Whatever is thought
of the comforts and humaneness of modern life compared with the past,
this present civilization of ours rests on a minimum of envy-containment,
which should not be considered expendable now that still more
complex problems devolve upon man. Whoever attacks and undermines
the 'achieving society' by dramatizing the differences between its successful
members and their opposites should think twice. So long as envy
and envy-avoidance are in balance, and so long as on the whole only such
envy finds expression and recognition as is legitimate and functional
within the framework of a given culture and its technology, neither the
society's efficiency and adaptability nor the scope of its more ingenious
members is restricted. Both individuals and families are to some extent
protected against the pathologically envious man. The official morality
of the group keeps him within bounds, and threatens with exile or other
14 Arno Borst, Die Katharer, Stuttgart, 1953, p. 44.