Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

ARTHUR KOESTLER 333
social injustice. ' She felt herself to be guilty, and, she tells us, it was only
by degrees that she and Sartre were able to start enjoying and appreciating
the pleasant things of life, such as expensive restaurants. Their
uneasiness over this indirect exploitation of the masses grew ever less
intense.
But Simone de Beauvoir failed to solve the problem of how much
social injustice a successful socialist author may indulge in. i\.ll things
considered, my way of deciding whether or not I should permit myself
certain "concessions," and deny myself others, was entirely arbitrary. It
seems to me impossible to set up any logical principle for one's behaviour
in such matters. ,3
Arthur Koestler
In an autobiographical account Arthur Koestler has recorded an experience
analogous to those of Woodrow Wyatt and Simone de Beauvoir. He,
like so many others, became a communist because of his indignation that
other (richer) people did not experience the same sense of guilt about
their inequality that tormented him whenever he spent something on
himself:
Well aware of the family crisis, and torn by pity for my father [he was an
inventor whose plans were always going wrong] . . . I suffered a pang of
guilt whenever they bought me books or toys. This continued later on, when
every suit I bought for myself meant so much less to send home. Simultaneously,
I developed a strong dislike of the obviously rich; not because they
could afford to buy things (envy plays a much smaller part in social conflict
than is generally assumed) but because they were able to do so without a
guilty conscience. Thus I projected a personal predicament onto the structure
of society at large.
Most unfortunately (so far as the readability of modern social criticism
is concerned), very few of those authors to whom socialism has
come to represent the solution have attained the insight of which
Koestler showed himself capable. 4
3 S. de Beauvoir, La Force des choses. Paris, 1963, pp. 135 f.
4 A. Koestler, in The God That Failed. ed. R. Crossman, New York, 1949, p. 18.