Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

ENVY'S TARGETS PRIOR TO REVOLUTION 397
America-where the revolutionaries paradoxically directed the envy of
the mob against those institutions and persons which, though they may
have given rise to envy, were at the same time a prerequisite for any
economic development: export-import merchants, foreign concerns or
compatriots in slightly better circumstances as the result of certain
services rendered, etc. The French sociologist Rene Maunier has already
stressed the envy-motive, on the one hand in opponents of 'colonialism'
and on the other in anti-colonial revolutionary movements. Maunier, as a
member of the French Academie des Sciences d'Outre-mer, considered
these questions in his great work on the sociology of colonies. 2
His book relates mainly to Algeria. About thirty years after the first
appearance of his work, an account in the Neue Zurcher Zeitung of the
revolution that had since taken place in Algeria contains an observation
which clearly implies the envy-motive:
If the wealthy foreign society in Algeria collapses, this ought to give a
dim feeling of satisfaction, rather than of dissatisfaction, to many classes of
Mohammedans-even though it might mean a slight lowering in their
standard of living [invariably the real criterion for the envy-motive!] because
their former employers will leave .the country and close their businesses.
Yet they cannot live at a much lower level than before without
actually starving. The new employer, in the shape of the state, will, however,
be capable-with the help of gifts of American grain, for exampleof
maintaining, or perhaps here and there of improving, the miserable
standard at which the great mass of Algerians would have been living in any
case. But the state as new employer will not in all probability be capable of
producing the same surpluses and profits out of the country as private
enterprise succeeded in doing. 3
Envy's targets prior to revolution
It is my own impression that, since the Second World War, direct social
envy of the middle class has been more in evidence in England than in
2 R. Maunier, The Sociology of Colonies. An Introduction to the Study of Race
Contact, 2 vols. (International Library of Sociology), London, 1949. (The first French
edition appeared in Paris in 1932.) The passages mentioned in the text will be found on
pp. 343-7, Vol. 1, English edition.
3 'Algerien im zweiten J ahr seiner Revolution. Der Weg der Zerstorung, , Neue Zurcher
Zeitung, December 14,1963.