CLASS WARFARE: ENVY IS ITS ROOT
While I am all for equality of opportunity, I believe the trend to create equality of outcome has envy at its root problem. In envy, St. Thomas Aquinas says, “We grieve over a man’s good, in so far as it surpasses ours.” In other words, we sulk when others succeed. Envy is sort of a malicious joy. Over the years I have seen too much envy in political life.
Today’s culture is obsessed with pseudo-egalitarianism and has made it a utopian ideal. Many academics and others seeking government grants and regulations disguise their envy with socially accepted compassion for the oppressed and support for the marginalized. Proponents of pseudo-egalitarianism postulate all social problems would disappear in a society of absolute equals. We see their representatives in Congress passing laws attempting to build this Utopia.
Such Utopias never have nor could exist. Unable to adjust to the real world, these misguided idealists want our society to be socially re-engineered to fit their imaginary one. From liberty, equality and fraternity of the French Revolution to taxing the “malefactors of wealth,” as FDR called the producers of society, envy is at the root of their political slogans. Such ancient refrains for robbing Peter to pay Paul, in my opinion, amount to an insidious appeal of envy in politics.
In C.S. Lewis classic, Screwtape Letters, Screwtape tells us that egalitarian claims, apart from civil rights, are typically, “made only by those who feel themselves to be in some way inferior.”
“The delightful novelty of the present situation is that you can sanction it— make it respectable and even laudable— by the incantatory use of the word democratic.” The quote is taken from a scene is in Hell at the annual dinner of the Tempters’ Training College for young devils. C.S. Lewis, “Screwtape Proposes a Toast”
C.S. Lewis feared the impact of a democratic egalitarianism that seeks, “to propitiate evil passions to appease envy” by eliminating standards in schools and treating all students alike. Since ability and intelligence will always place some students above others, no leveling endeavors can effectively eliminate them. In the 1940’s C.S. Lewis foresaw that today’s schools would major in self-esteem and self-realization end up banning displays of the Ten Commandments rather than majoring in self-disciple and complying with the Divine Law.
This post and my next several rely heavily on the helpful work of Gerard Reed whose exploration of CS Lewis works on vice and virtue inspired my focus on the prevalence of seven deadly sins in today’s politics.
Class warfare is an appropriate posting for a week in which we witnessed the Obama administration demanding the resignation of Shirley Sherrod without so much as an administrative hearing. It has been instructive to follow this particular event and how it has been covered by various news outlets. The Wall Street Journal published an editorial by Senator Jim Webb titled Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege and subtitled America still owes a debt to its black citizens, but government programs to help all ‘people of color’ are unfair. They should end.I agree with most of his editorial. We need to return America to a land of opportunity where one’s accomplishments are achieved by hard work, study, and a bit of luck along the way. Race based programs, and in particular government selected race based winners are ineffectual at best, and insidious at their worst. They go against the notions equal opportunity, fairness for all, and as Jim Webb states, should end.
Interesting post, Michael, but I have to say, somewhat teasingly with my (comradely!) science hat on, and in the interests of truth (veritas), that complex societal and human phenomena are rarely uni-causal. It may be that some pressure toward greater social equality is in part dependent on base human motives such as envy. But not only does this claim invite the cheap retort that aggressive capitalism is then equally ‘obviously’ solely or mainly driven by greed and the lust for power, it also, unscientifically, ignores the massive data sets which strongly suggest that wide disparities in income, and other social and economic goods, correlate positively with a wide variety of personal and societal ills, and promote neither human flourishing nor the common good (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2010). Though contested by some, such data need at least to be considered, however unwelcome they may be to certain political persuasions. And ‘facts is facts’ as Dr Gradgrind might uneloquently have said!And with my (fraternal) Catholic hat on I should remind us all of the great and consistent theme in Catholic social teaching, from Leo’s seminal Rerum Novarum to Benedict’s Caritas in Veritate, which stresses the need to balance ‘private property’, ‘freedom’, or ‘de-regulation’, those shibboleths of near bankrupt modernity, with the social virtues of justice, compassion and charity (caritas). But against all this, as Augustine might say, it is probably the case that all of our secular societal and economic arrangements, democracy and post-modern capitalism included, are imperfect and inadequate due in large part to our fallen natures, and I doubt that St Thomas would disagree! Utopias are indeed not a substitute for Civitatis Dei.But surely, neither unbridled freedom nor naive difference-denying-equality should be our terminal goals, but truth, goodness, beauty and right relationality, and the rest will follow (Matthew 6:33).
To my MIT Matt pal and Doctor Hampson,Thank you for your comments from both sides of the Atlantic. Matt brings up contemporary efforts in the media and Congress to play the race and class cards.Doctor Hampson gives some credence to his fellow Brit (C.S. Lewis) but wisely grounds me deeper in Catholic doctrine (Rerum Novarum, Caritas in Veritate, St.Augustine) with balance being a key concept. Peter perhaps in the future you will take us through GK’s distribution doctrines and Hilaire Belloc’s Servile State?Thank you both for your comment!
Responding to Peter Hampson, with respect, while complex phenomena may not be uni-causal, the entitlement phenomenon is not complex, and it is uni-causal. It is a free rider problem, and its cause is simple.Its cause is the fundamental misconception that a representative government should guarantee economic rights, rather than simply structuring political and civil participation and providing a system of justice to permit orderly conflict resolution. Workers such as myself freely trade our labor for the capital that we receive in salary, at a price that we agree to accept. Society has no more right to compel our capital for the maintenance of another man than it has to compel our labor to the same end. Would you accept a forced assignment, personally, to provide in-home medical care for the aged or infirm? If not, you should not accept the forced assignment of your capital to fund the labor of another to be directed to that compulsory task, when you ought to be free to direct your capital, the product of the free exchange of your own labor, to your maintenance of your own health and promotion of your own priorities.
Readers,Let’s hear it for Jeremy’s response to Peter, particularly, Society has no more right to compel our capital for the maintenance of another man than it has to compel our labor to the same end.Do you agree with Jeremy or Peter?
I too read the Jim Webb piece in the WSJ, and was both surprised (given his party affiliation) and delighted with the sensibility of his position.
Ive been reading through this Blog for a little while now but I havent posted before because I felt my views might not fit well here. But finally, thanks to Peter Hampsons and others comments, I am heartened to see that the theme of balance has been raised. In a world of Dualities (left right, conservative liberal, hot cold, life death) we need realize that one side cannot exist without the other. Like Socrates argued, “all things that have opposites stem from their opposites”. One is not right, the other is not wrong. We must take the two sides, the antitheses’ of each other, and together strive for the synthesis: a Trinity. The Trinity is peace.
Thanks for sharing your comments and do send my best regards to Peter. Let me know if our dualities persist in my work with wounded warriors. Mikr