Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

298 THE SENSE OF JUSTICE AND THE IDEA OF EQUALITY
somewhat questionable aspect of human existence with a social movement
in order to inculpate the latter. The connection is unavoidable for
several reasons.
The various forms of socialism have always recruited a large proportion,
if not the majority, of their important supporters and theoreticians
from among those people who were deeply troubled by the problem of
envy in society. These were mostly people in good, if not excellent,
circumstances, who suffered from the idea that they gave cause for envy.
Their concern was directed equally towards those who were envied like
themselves and towards those who were envious. How acute this problem
was to many socialists and communists is amply illustrated by their
writings, especially their diaries, correspondence and autobiographies.
The impulse given to socialism by this viewpoint is primarily towards
a form of society in which there will be neither envied nor envious.
Unfortunately, few socialists were properly aware either of the origin of
envy or of its extent, and they failed, furthermore, to appreciate that
many of the remedies they proposed and applied would only serve to
intensify envy.
How little the intellectual bent on achieving an egalitarian society
really knows about the means of achieving that end is shown by an entry
in Beatrice Webb's diary. Her husband, Sidney, had admitted to her that
he would have preferred to see the Labour Party defeated in the latest
elections, mainly because the party had no plan whatsoever for dealing
with the unemployment problem. The proposed curtailment of unemployment
benefit wopld, he believed, bring about the ruin of the
party. Following these notes on the actual political situation, Beatrice
Webb reflects on socialism's crucial question, the realization of a society
of equals, of which she concedes the difficulties:
What I am beginning to doubt is the 'inevitability of gradualness,' or
even the practicability of gradualness, in the transition from a capitalist to
an equalitarian civilization. Anyway, no leader, in our country, has thought
out how to make the transition, without upsetting the apple-cart. Sidney
says, 'it will make itself,' without an acknowledged plan accepted by one
party in the state, and denounced by the other. We shall slip into the
equalitarian state as we did into political democracy-by each party,
whether nominally Socialist or anti-Socialist, taking steps in the direction
of curtailing the tribute or rent and interest and increasing the amount and