Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

304 THE SENSE OF JUSTICE AND THE IDEA OF EQUALITY
to smell out suspected wrongdoing in the course of something that is
regularly done by virtually all its citizens-filing an income-tax return-if,
that is, practically the whole population is presented as a
potential victim to the envious man, this can only mean that envy is of
exaggerated importance to the government. The envious man knows
that, by denouncing his colleague or neighbour, he can involve him in
time-consuming, nerve-racking difficulties, and furthermore that the
authorities will be more inclined to believe the envious informer than the
victim asserting his innocence.
It can hardly be supposed that the best and most just form of society is
that in which achievement of justice is based upon a maximum of
activated mutual envy, though it must also be doubted whether there
could be any effective social controls among people totally incapable of
envy.
2. A society that denies the envious its respect is not necessarily
unjust. Neither the legislature nor the judiciary should allow themselves
to be influenced by the point of view of ostensible envy, but should be
blind-the very thing which the envious never can be.
The 'de-envified' society
Nearly all utopias in which ultimate and universal peace and contentment
reign, as well as all markedly 'practical' progressive programmes for a
harmonious humanity, assume that it is somehow possible to 'de-envify'
human beings. If only all were well housed and fed, in good health and
educated to at least minor university level, all conflict, prejudice and
crime attributable to envy-motives would disappear. 31
This belief derives partly from the mistake of considering only what
provokes envy, and regarding the envious man as a normal person who
would, presumably, cease to envy once the envied object had disappeared.
An attempt, therefore, is made to remove envy's targets, or to
raise all the envious to a level where there is nothing left for them to envy.
But since envy is usually able to create its own targets, and is in no way
dependent on the degree of inequality, such a solution is vain.
31 In the years preceding the French Revolution, a number of authors broadcast
Rousseau's equalizing ideas, under pretext of the need to create a society devoid of
envy. Cf. the account by the Russian V. P. Volgin, Die Gesellschafts-theorien der
FranzosischenAujkliirung, Berlin, 1965, pp. 322ff.