Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

SOCIALISM AND ENVY 297
is in any case very extravagant of resources. A society's civilizing power
of achievement is dependent on that society's skill in domesticating and
canalizing envy. It is not to be promoted by inflaming envy with a
vain-although politically highly profitable, even if short-lived-gesture
of appeasement in the name of absolute equality, under the erroneous
impression that this will bring about the envy-free society ofthe
pure in heart.
One of the most disquieting problems today is that out of indolence so
many people either pretend to be or believe themselves unable to distinguish
between legitimate indignation-envy (in Raiga's sense of the
term) and ordinary, vulgar envy. If one considers the way in which
governments and other bodies have reacted during the past twenty years
to envious acts of aggression, one might think that it is enough to show
resentment and envy in order to justify any kind of action or demand.
Envy is used as an instrument of legitimization, and it is no longer
incumbent on the envious person, group or movement to prove that its
envy is righteous indignation at real injustice.
The dividing line between vulgar envy and justifiable indignationenvy,
so vital for an ordered social and national life, has been blurred by
an increasingly fervent egalitarianism, the misunderstanding and exaggeration
of the idea of equality. Further, a dimension of time was lost.
'Justice' must be attained this very minute: its postponement until
tomorrow or the next day is now considered inconceivable.
If, however, in a relaxing social situation, everyone believes himself to
be on an equal footing with everyone else and.if, furthermore, the idea
that a higher status or standard of living must be acquired by work, and
earned, falls into disuse, if, that is, the idea of equality becomes
identified with complete immediacy, it will no longer be possible to
distinguish between the two forms of envy. Thus every privilege, every
superiority of rank, every difference in property and prosperity and
every authority, no matter how legitimately elected, is basically open to
attack from the street whenever people, their faces distorted with envy
and hatred, gather to protest against it.
Socialism and envy
If a study of envy must, to a certain degree, concern itself with socialism,
this should not be misunderstood as an attempt to associate a