The Social Justice Syllabus Project

Social Justice and Envy

Published Apr 24, 2013  printer-friendly

 

          1.      “More often, however, the gospel of social justice' aims at much more sordid sentiments: the dislike of people who are better off than oneself, or simply envy, that ‘most anti-social and evil of all passions’ as John Stuart Mill called it, that animosity toward great wealth which represents it as ‘scandal’ that some should enjoy riches while others have basic needs unsatisfied, and camouflage under the name of justice what has nothing to with justice” (F. A. Hayek, The Mirage of Social Justice, 1976, p. 98).

          2.      “The new conception of justice, greed, and envy is quite different. Justice in the new conception is directly equated with equality, especially social equality. Hence, justice is often called 'social justice,' and is used to signify a process of enforced equalization, the goal of which is to lessen the differences in material wealth between individuals. Greed becomes a totally irredeemable trait that is socially destructive and intolerable. Greed is what motivates people to resist social justice. Envy is considered a totally acceptable trait, on the other hand. It is expected that everyone will envy those more fortunate or successful than they are unless there is true social justice” (Steven E. Daskal,  “Greed, Envy, and Justice” http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/greed-envy-and-justice/

          3.       “The legal amulet employed consists of the distributive theory of social justice, the dogma devoted to effectuating entitlement in the satisfaction of envy. The distributive theory of social justice supplies the rationale 'explaining' why income and value should be redistributed among members of a community. It suffers from the same root fallacies as the doctrine of entitlement and it partakes of the identical mistakes as the current corruption of equality into egalitarianism” (Ridgway K. Foley Jr.,”Our Fair Share,” The Freeman March 4, 1984, http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/our-fair-share#axzz2RRPkBP4B).

         4.       “In a book on the British middle class, written after the Second World War, during the time of the Labor Government, the two authors consider the motivational complex of ‘social justice,’ of leveling down to achieve greater ‘equality,’ and, without any circumlocution, they call the real motive ‘envy.’” (H. Schoeck, Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior, 1969, p. 292).

          5.      “An obstacle to the clarification of this problem is Tournier’s occasional uncritical use of the term ‘social justice,’ which conceals from him that any inequality, however insignificant and unavoidable, can be an occasion for envy and its counterpart, the sense of social guilt” (H. Schoeck, Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior, 1969, pp. 318-19).

         6.      “A politically dangerous spiral begins at the point where economic policy is based on the assumption that the many can be well off only if the few are not better off; or if the income or the wealth of a polity is understood as a fixed quantity, so that ‘social justice’ can be practiced only through the sacrifice of the minority, in order that the rest should ‘feel better’ about things” (H. Schoeck, Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior, 1969, p. 369).

         7.      Why do only one-third of the Millennial Generation—8- to 29-year olds, born between 1982 and 2003—choose capitalism over socialism for our economic system? By the time most American students leave high school, they have often been instructed in Marxist theory, social justice, anti-capitalism, and class envy against the rich by public education" (W.  Young, “Marxist Justice and Western Civilization,” National Association of Scholars Sept. 22, 2011, http://www.nas.org/polArticles.cfm?doc_id=2192, accessed Dec. 4, 2011).

         8.      “The innocence of all this turns into something uglier when you come to consider the electoral aspects of classless egalitarianism. For, in a Britain without poverty who wants equality? Let us suppose – it is not a very large supposition – that our national standard of life rises to the point where the luxuries of 1956 are available to everybody. Would it be a hardship, or an injustice, if, while everybody had plenty, some people had more than plenty? If $3,000 a year [this is 1956], say, were the minimum income, would it be monstrous if some people had $30,000, or $300,000.The egalitarians apparently think it would be monstrous. Ask them why, and they reply with that noble bromide ‘social justice.’ But this is merely a politician’s periphrasis for ‘envy.’ Social justice is a semantic fraud from the same stable as People’s Democracy. It means that when everyone has plenty it is right to hate people who have more. Even though the most dim-witted citizen, whose mental endowments barely enable him to mark a football coupon, enjoys a motorcar standard of life, egalitarianism will tell him to revolt at the polls because his car is a Morris, and other people have Bentleys. But why should he care?” (C. Curran, “Review of 20th Century Socialism" in The Spectator, July 6, 1956, pp. 7-8, quoted in H. Schoeck’s Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior, 1969, pp. 364-65).

           9.      The real point is to pander to envy and resentment against people who make a lot of money. Envy is always referred to by its political alias, 'social justice.'” (T. Sowell, “Cheap Political Theater,” in The Dismantling of America, 2010 p. 37).

         10.   Envy used to be just a human failing, but today it is a major industry. Politicians, journalists and academics are all part of that industry, which some call ‘social justice” (T. Sowell, “Hard Times for Envy,” Capitalism Magazine Feb. 13, 2003, http://www.capitalismmagazine.com/culture/2380-hard-times-for-envy.html, accessed Dec. 4, 2011).

         11.   A system that offered to children from poor families an opportunity to advance by talent and industry alone was destroyed for the simple reason that it divided the successes from the failures. Of course, it is a tautology to say that tests divide successes from failures, and it can hardly be a requirement of justice to abolish that distinction. But the new concept of ‘social’ justice came to the rescue of the egalitarians, and enabled them to present their malice towards the successful as a bid for justice on behalf of the rest” (R. Scruton, The Uses of Pessimism : And the Danger of False Hope (2010) p. 96, Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition).

         12.   “What appears later on in society in the shape of Gemeingeist, esprit de corps, ‘group spirit’, etc., does not belie its derivation from what was originally envy. No one must want to put himself forward, every one must be the same and have the same. Social justice means that we deny ourselves many things so that others may have to do without them as well, or, what is the same thing, may not be able to ask for them. This demand for equality is the root of social conscience and the sense of duty. It reveals itself unexpectedly in the syphilitic’s dread of infecting other people, which psycho-analysis has taught us to understand. The dread exhibited by these poor wretches corresponds to their violent struggles against the unconscious wish to spread their infection on to other people; for why should they alone be infected and cut off from so much? why not other people as well? And the same germ is to be found in the pretty anecdote of the judgment of Solomon. If one woman’s child is dead, the other shall not have a live one either. The bereaved woman is recognized by this wish” (Sigmund Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego.  1922.  Chapter IX. The Herd Instinct, http://www.bartleby.com/290/9.html).

         13.    “There is also, however, another image, only too familiar, of social justice as a subtractive and inhibiting force which busies itself, for reasons ranging from asceticism to sheer envy, in taking away things from successful people and giving them to the unsuccessful (minus the considerable bureaucratic costs of doing so). ” (The Report the Commission on Social Justice,  Social Justice: Strategies for National Renewal, 1994, p. 19).

         14.    “Obama understands that angry people open to the gospel of envy and so-called social justice are easy to find in churches. Once identified they can be recruited and used to help inject the poison of socialism into the American body politic” (M. Vadum, quoted in P. Schlafly’s Now Higher Power: Obama’s War on Religious Freedom, 2012, p. 84).

         15.   “Yet the green-eyed monster deserves some historical due. Envy has been the midwife of social justice. Without people making comparisons between themselves and those more fortunate, the clamor for greater equality would never have arisen. One man's envy is another's sense of justice - which is why it has always been the political right that accuses the left of the deadly sin" (R. Reeves, “NS Essay - 'Envy was the midwife of social justice; now, it reduces the happiness of those who have little to complain about,'“The New Statesman, March 31, 2003, http://www.newstatesman.com/200303310016, accessed Dec. 17, 2011).

         16.   “The promotion of this envious feeling of inferiority is the dominant political tactic, at least to the present age. The demagogic promotion of envy, as with everything else that refers to this unpublishable feeling, is not carried out in public but under cover. A contemporary disguise of collective envy is what is called “social justice” (Gonzalo Fernandez de la Mora, Egalitarian Envy: The Political Foundations of Social Justice, 1987, p. 93).

         17.   “A first consequence of this ad hoc concept of justice is that those in positions of superiority are evil exploiters and those who feel their position is inferior are innocently exploited. . .  The second corollary is that the goods of the superior need to be expropriated and distributed among the inferior” (Gonzalo Fernandez de la Mora, Egalitarian Envy: The Political Foundations of Social Justice, 1987, p. 93).

         18.   “But what such political parties as the Marxists usually call “social justice” is the policy of inspiring the less productive to demand that the state carry out transfers of goods by expropriating those who produce more, humbling the superior to satisfy the inferior. This maneuver is no doubt a political use of envy. The generalization of such a practice very often makes it possible for the topic of social justice to become the pharisaic institutionalization of collective envy or a tacit concession to placate it" (Gonzalo Fernandez de la Mora, Egalitarian Envy: The Political Foundations of Social Justice, 1987, p. 95).

         19.   “However human, envy is certainly not one of the sources of discontent that a free society can eliminate. It is probably one of the essential conditions for the preservation of such a society that we do not countenance envy, not sanction its demands by camouflaging it as social justice, but treat it, in the words of John Stuart Mill, as 'the most anti-social and evil of all passions'” (F.A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, 2011/1960, p. 155-56).

         20. “Envy is subtle, isn't it.  Have you ever noticed the extent to which envy is disguised as social justice?  For years I have noticed that what is put forward as concern for the poor is frequently envy of the rich.  What is put forward as the attempt at lifting up many is secretly the attempt at pulling down a few” (V. Shepherd, “A Study in the Pathology of Envy,” http://www.victorshepherd.on.ca/Sermons/a_study_in_the_pathologyof_envy.htm, acceessed Sept 17, 2013).

         21.   "Earl Warren was the most political chief justice since John Jay. I remember hearing him say that he decided cases not on the basis of the Constitution but by asking, 'Is it fair?' That’s not his job, but ours — and, within narrow constitutional confines, the Congress’s. But my own Catholic Church, like many other institutions, is prey to materialists who seek to use the church’s authority to push their left-wing political agendas. They are best recognized by their religious avoidance of politically incorrect moral truths that the church actually teaches. For this crowd, Social Justice, a.k.a. 'fairness,' means little more than preaching envy. Rooted in 'Liberation Theology' and 'Marxism with a Christian Face' (read: with a sly wink), its aroma nonetheless intoxicates the mediocracy, which always seeks comfortable platitudes to mask its political agenda” (Christopher Manion, “The Rage for ‘Social Justice,’ Oct. 21, 2010, http://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/the-rage-for-social-justice/, accessed Sept. 19, 2013).

          22. “Social justice’ is the notion that everyone deserves an equal share of the wealth that exists in a nation--regardless of how productive he is. Justice, on this view, consists of seizing the wealth of the productive and giving it to the unproductive. This is the ideal preached and conscientiously put into practice by leftist dictators like Chavez.

But it is precisely this type of envy-driven philosophy that is responsible for the wretched conditions in Latin America. It is no mystery why a nation that shackles and loots its most productive citizens should be weighed down by poverty and stagnation.

President Bush should tell the people of Latin America to reject the immoral goal of ‘social justice’ and embrace the American principles of freedom and capitalism” (Y. Brook, “Bush and Chavez the Two Amigos,” March 20, 2007, http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=15131, accessed Dec. 3, 2011).


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