Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

306 THE SENSE OF JUSTICE AND THE IDEA OF EQUALITY
marriages. Only the new feeling of being equals of the ruling class could
have caused such intensity of resentment among the insurgents. 32
Scheler further develops this insight of a pent-up sense of impotence
and a new feeling of real equality into a theory of revolutionary thirst for
revenge and resentment. He maintains that
the greater the difference between the legal status, whether political-constitutional
or established by custom and public standing of social groups on
the one hand and their factual power situation on the other, the greater the
build-up of this emotional dynamite. And this depends, not on the existence
of either one of the two factors, but on the difference between them. In a
democracy that was not only political but also social and tending towards
equality of possession, social resentment, at any rate, would be small. But it
would also be-and indeed, was-small in, for example, a social caste
order such as existed in India, or in a rigidly structured class order.
Therefore, the greatest amount of resentment must exist in a society where,
as in our own [Germany in 1919], almost equal political and other rights,
together with openly recognized, formal, social equality, go hand in hand
with enormous differences in factual power, factual possession and factual
education: where everyone has the 'right' to compare himself with everyone
else, yet 'factually cannot so compare himself. ' Here-quite apart from any
individual character and experience-the actual structure of society cannot
fail to ensure a tremendous build-up of resentment within the society. 33
We should not, however, attempt to find in Scheler's theory the recipe
for a society truly free of envy and resentment. For, as this study has
already and repeatedly shown, only the smallest, the most minimal, of
factual differences are required to give rise to increasingly intensive
feelings of envy and hatred. Scheler is, indeed, aware of this when he
points out how the vindictive man goes out in search of imaginary injury.
In this respect Alexis de Tocqueville was wholly right in predicting of
America that the equality laid down in the original political blueprint,
the concept of equality, would prove to be increasingly incapable of
fulfilment, increasingly less satisfying and less equitable, the closer
American society drew to equality in all spheres of life.
32 M. Scheler, Gessammelte Werke, Vol. 3, p. 42.
33 Ibid., p. 43.