Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

330 THE EMINENT IN THE SOCIETY OF EQUALS
income high enough to raise him above not only the manual worker but
also many fellow intellectuals.
The autobiographical records of two authors-Beatrice Webb and
Simone de Beauvoir-both politically committed to the left, reveal the
kind of intellectual and emotional structures that serve to restore the
balance of the egalitarian personality.
In her diaries, Beatrice Webb recounts the heated disputes in the
Labour Party before World War II when it was on the point of taking
office, and its leaders were about to receive ministers' salaries. There
had been a demand that the Labour Cabinet should reduce all ministerial
salaries to £1,000 a year. While Mrs. Webb could understand that a
salary of £5 ,000 would seem enormous to the ordinary Labour member,
she argues with the skill of a capitalist chairman of a board of directors
that, after deduction of income tax, in addition to the necessary expenditure,
the Labour minister was likely to be out of pocket. She opines
that a man's just reward should be calculated over his whole career, not
just over a few peak years, and mentions the financial sacrifioes made by
many Labour leaders before they became ministers with concomitant
salaries; she does not even omit the argument according to which a
retiring minister may find it very difficult to resume his former career
where he had terminated it on receiving his appointment.
At this juncture, Beatrice Webb is faced with the ethical situation of
those members of a Labour Government already in possession of an
assured income, which they continue to receive during their term of
office.
First there are the trade union officials, of whom she writes somewhat
contemptuously. Not only would their period in the political limelight
settle them more securely than ever in their old jobs, but they would be
able to save much of their salary, and after a few years in office might be
'small rentiers' for the rest of their lives. Next, Beatrice Webb applies this
difficult question of conscience to the case of her husband, and similarly
well-to-do intellectuals.
Another class of persons who are unexpectedly benefited by official
salaries are persons who already live on unearned income, Trevelyan,
Buxton, and, to a lesser extent, ourselves, men who will not spend substantially
more than they are doing as unpaid public servants. We may spend,