Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

292 THE SENSE OF JUSTICE AND THE IDEA OF EQUALITY
was equality of opportunity. This has been attributed to the discrepancy
in educational opportunity during the socialization process in the home.
This, however, represents only one factor. For various studies have
shown that even those working-class children in Britain and on the
Continent whose examination results entitled them to attend a better
type of school often failed to take advantage of the opportunity. Upon
investigation, it was shown that many times it was fear of envy in
less-gifted contemporaries, or of envy in those adults in the child's
environment who themselves had never gone to grammar schooll which
was barring his way to a school offering greater possibilities of social
mobility. 21
For in a community or group of people there is no method of social
control so loathsomely insidious as that which ensures that no one shall
break away from the lower group in order to advance and to 'improve'
himself. This observation has been made again and again not only in the
case of British schoolchildren, but also in that of a number of minority
groups in the United States. The inhibition upon progress by social envy
within the group that is discriminated against is frequently more
marked-and also more verifiable-than the exclusive tendency of the
higher group, into which entry would be possible for individuals.
'Social justice' -private patients but no private schools
In a book on the British middle class, written after the Second World
War, during the time of the Labour Government, the two authors
consider the motivational complex of 'social justice,' of levelling down
to achieve greater 'equality,' and, without any circumlocution, they call
the real motive 'envy.' While some of the socialist government's measures
had brought about evident and appreciable equality, there could be
little agreement, at least during the early postwar years, as to whether
there had been any real redistribution of income as compared with
before the war.
This greater equality can be looked on in various ways-as an insurance
against revolution, for example. It has been achieved, as has often been
21 See, e.g., B. M. Young and P. Willmott, Family and Kinship in East London,
London, 1957, pp. 146 ff.