Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

BOGUS EQUALITY AND CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION 295
As far as the elimination of envy is concerned, it is irrelevant whether
a person rents a pleasant house on the free market because he is better off
than the other man, or whether it is allocated to him because he belongs
to the right political group. In the latter case he appears in a rather worse
light, because impotence in the face of a political authority is experienced
as much more oppressive than is impotence in the face of another
man's money. For it is, after all, possible to win the football pools, but
you cannot win the ru1ing party's favour overnight. In addition, political
parties often have no interest whatever in providing equal welfare for all.
They do not want to see a 'dilution of the power derived from their
authority to allocate a limited number of houses, offices, etc.
A jocular suggestion in an American paper on the problem of equality
was that, for social living to be completely just, all the tenants of a
building should, as a matter of course, 'move house' at least once a year,
those on the top floor moving down to the ground floor, those on the first
floor moving up to the fifth, and so on, until, after a few years, everyone
would have experienced all the advantages and disadvantages of the
building.
Bogus equality and conspicuous consumption
According to Scheler, envy only leads to resentment, which is all the
greater 'where the values or possessions involved are, by their I!flture,
unprocurable, and when these also lie within that sphere where comparison
between ourselves and others is possible. ,24
In 1954 the same conclusion was reached by David M. Potter, the
American historian, on the basis of developments in his own country. He
used the term 'invidious proximity.' Hatred, envy and resentment appear
increasingly in the United States, and, paradoxically enough, in
proportion to the degree in which the individual classes are able to
observe each other at times of leisure-for instance, at sports, or while
travelling (everyone has a car, and almost everyone could have a motorboat);
or, again, in proportion to the degree in which every household
gadget, every article of clothing and every status symbol is within
everyone's reach-at least on the instalment plan-because it is here,
within the framework of a democratic and broadly egalitarian sphere of
24 M. Scheler, op. cit., p. 45.