Envy and Social Justice
Envy is a near-universal element of the human condition. For centuries, it has been the subject of philosophical contemplation, moral teaching, and cultural proscriptions. It is therefore striking that the last major interdisciplinary study of the subject — Helmut Schoeck's Envy: A Theory of Social Behaviour — was released almost 60 years ago.
Writing in that seemingly antediluvian time, Schoeck noted how the rich teachings on envy in pre-scientific and philosophical literature all but disappeared once the social-science revolution of the mid-20th century took root. By the time his book was published in 1966, the largest compendia of social psychology and human behavior omitted envy while still including treatments of other long-recognized human vices, such as aggression. As Schoeck observed: "Practically never has envy as an hypothesis been raised in order to be refuted or subjected to criticism; instead, it has been ignored, as too embarrassing."
According to Schoeck's definition (which he borrowed from Grimm's German Dictionary), envy
expresses that vindictive and inwardly tormenting frame of mind, the displeasure with which one perceives the prosperity and the advantages of others, begrudges them these things and in addition wishes one were able to destroy or to possess them oneself: synonymous with malevolence, ill-will, the evil eye.
Envy is not the same as admiration, and has no healthy or salutary effects on the envious. Rather, as has been well understood for millennia, envy quickly curdles into destructive jealousy and resentment. Salieri's purported envy of Mozart's genius, for instance, supplies the story line for the film Amadeus. In the film, Salieri is driven to wicked extremes by his envy of Mozart's superior talent and proportionate recognition. While many of us have not reached the same depths, we all know envy in smaller ways: Who hasn't felt the pang of envious desire when a colleague is promoted or given a raise?
When envy is allowed to become a motivating force in politics, the results can be highly destructive. This is why envy finds moral proscriptions and, especially in primitive cultures, boundaries or sanctions. It also explains the existence of sumptuary laws — laws prohibiting ostentatious displays of wealth — which stretch back to antiquity: They were designed in part to avoid provoking envy.
Social scientists' silence on envy is no mere oversight. Today, envy is the silent partner of radical egalitarianism, and is ubiquitously leveraged in the promotion of "social justice." Social scientists by and large are committed to such egalitarianism, and therefore either ignore envy as a significant social force or seek to cast it as morally defensible. As Schoeck wrote:
The aversion of the radical left-wing writer to any consideration of the problem of envy is comprehensible. This is a sphere that must be made taboo, and he must do all in his power to repress cognition of envy in his contemporaries. Otherwise he might lose the support of serious-minded people, who, while sharing his views for sentimental reasons, and even following him in his demands for a policy and a political ethic dependent upon common envy's being regarded as an absolute, yet are aware how little esteemed envy is and how little it is capable of legitimizing itself openly in most Western societies even today.
The acceptance of envy, either active or implicit, is ultimately used to pursue an unachievable end: equity, or the complete equality of material conditions. The need to harness a destructive vice to obtain an impracticable end is no accident: Contravention of reality always requires corrupt means. To keep its corrosive tendencies at bay, Americans must learn to recognize envy for what it is and be wary of any political project that embraces it as a primary tool.
THE NEGLECT OF ENVY
Social scientists and theorists may justify their neglect of envy by labeling it a sub-rational human emotion, and as such insusceptible to rational study. An unofficial slogan of the quantitatively oriented political-science department at the University of California, Berkeley, where one of us was embedded for a time, ran "you can't study what you can't measure." Ignore for the moment the defects of this impoverished view of knowledge. Sticking with this conventional approach, could one ever "measure" envy statistically? What dataset could be used?
This objection may sound sensible until it becomes apparent that social science is awash in quantitative studies that purportedly demonstrate the existence and defects of other amorphous and sub-rational human traits. Modern social psychology, for instance, features a "moral foundations" methodology organized around six antinomies from which quantitative data and measurements are derived, chiefly through surveys: care/harm, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, sanctity/degradation, and liberty/oppression.
This quantitative inventiveness is often deployed in the study of racism and its many social-justice variants. As recently as the late 1950s and early '60s, it was easy to demonstrate racist sentiment through simple opinion surveys, which reported highly prejudicial attitudes toward minorities among many Americans. In the wake of legal changes outlawing open discrimination, overt expressions of racism in America went largely extinct. Nearly all supposed disparities brought to light by disparate-impact statistics dissolve when properly qualified — as, for example, when credit scores are kept constant when aggregating mortgage-application approvals by race.
Yet quantitative social science has become highly proficient in finding data proving that "implicit," "unconscious," or "structural" racism is rampant. The methodology behind most such studies is the academic equivalent of the three-card-monte scam: They assume the result and reverse-engineer a methodology, based on indemonstrable or wholly ideological premises, to generate statistics "proving" the inquiry. A survey might, for instance, code a favorable response to the statement, "individuals should be hired according to merit" as "implicitly racist," and therefore proof of "unconscious" or "structural" racism. In other words, we are presented with supposedly empirical findings based on contested premises — tautology disguised as statistics.
This kind of ideologically motivated inquiry occurs on a massive scale today. A recent meta-analysis employing word searches of the most familiar terms of social-justice discourse in abstracts of 175 million academic articles published from 1970 to 2020 found that the relative frequency of "racism" and closely related terms such as "white supremacy" increased 150%. Use of the terms "transphobia" or "transphobic," unknown in scholarly literature before 1990, have increased 4000% since then, with nearly all of that increase occurring since 2010. One exception is worth noting: The frequency of the term "anti-Semitism" in academic literature has declined since 2000 — perhaps the only form of anti-minority prejudice that has not seen a steep increase in attention.
One might think that the same kind of methodological inventiveness that conjures empirical tests for racism could be equally adept in devising similar tests for envy, resentment, and other traits once universally understood to be anti-social. But commitment to, or dominant consensus around, an egalitarianism that defines equity as the predicate for punitive taxation and massive redistribution will necessarily avoid any subjects that might controvert this agenda.
THE NORDIC CASE STUDY
One indirect way of appreciating progressives' need to ignore or downplay envy is to dwell briefly on the one form of envy the left embraces openly — what we call "Scandinavia envy." Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, who openly advocates socialism, has said, "I think we should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn what they have accomplished for their working people." Sanders and similar enthusiasts for Nordic welfare states are apparently unaware that Sweden and Norway have a larger number of billionaires relative to their total populations than the United States.
But a much larger gulf between perception and reality is worth noting. For starters, the Nordic nations — and in fact, most of Europe — have much more regressive tax systems overall than the United States. As a significant new study in the mainstream economic literature reports: "[W]hile taxes paid are lower in the United States than in Europe for most pretax income groups, the taxation profile is unambiguously more progressive in the United States" (emphasis added).
This study, titled "Why Is Europe More Equal Than the United States?" was published in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics in 2022. It employed extensive statistical analyses of income trends from 1980 to 2017 in the United States and 26 European nations, ultimately finding that income inequality has risen in Europe as well as the United States since 1980, though not as much in Europe as in America. The authors, however, were unable to produce convincing evidence accounting for the causes of this difference.
Although the study's authors appear to be conventional social-science liberals, and thus likely expected their work to bolster the popular left's narrative, their findings instead debunked many leftist views about the nature and causes of income differences in the United States and Europe — views central to the progressive agenda of punitive taxation and redistribution.
According to the left's narrative, Reagan-era tax cuts have been a chief propellant of expanding income differences in the United States, whereas Europe's more generous welfare states blunt the after-tax differences in income distributions. As the study noted, most surveys — including those conducted by authoritative bodies like the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development — conclude "that the lower posttax income inequality levels of European countries are mostly due to redistribution." But the 2022 study rejects higher European income taxes and transfers as the primary drivers of Europe's relative resistance to rising inequality.
These facts are overcome for Nordic enviers by the belief that the European universal cradle-to-grave social contract delivers greater equality than exists in America. And yet this, too, turns out to be wrong. The study's most startling finding is that, "after accounting for indirect taxes and in-kind transfers, the US redistributes a greater share of national income to low-income groups than any European country." Translation: The United States has a larger, more generous welfare state in the aggregate than Europe.
What's more, the study concludes: "[W]e do not find any evidence that redistribution has mitigated the rise of pretax income inequality more in Europe than in the United States....If anything, taxes and transfers reduce inequality more in the United States than in Europe."
This is only the first of several diversions from left-wing orthodoxy in the study. Consider four others. First, the authors noted that some of the largest changes in income inequality in Europe occurred in Eastern Europe "following the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the transition of Eastern European countries to market economies." Second, they acknowledged that it is not clear that Europe's nationally run universal health programs are more progressive in aggregate terms than health care in the United States. Third, the authors displayed a rare openness to the common-sense view that incentives matter, writing: "Transfers at the bottom of the distribution can also change incentives to work or acquire skills." Finally, the authors questioned whether it is accurate to claim that the United States is less equal than Europe, since the most common statistical measures used to compare the two are defective.
These extraordinary findings make two essential points clear. The first is that envy can greatly distort our perception of reality. The second is that some social scientists, and the ideologues allied with them, manifest a stubborn unwillingness to reckon with the empirical likelihood that their fundamental presuppositions are deeply flawed. The study will probably neither be replicated nor contested. Most likely it will be ignored, because the same ideological commitments that lead to the massive selection bias of social-science research on social-justice issues will preclude open reflection on its findings.
ENVY REDEFINED
On the rare occasions that social science takes up envy directly, it is often to rehabilitate the vice as a positive good. These attempts to salvage envy as a usable social force do so by distinguishing between benign and malicious envy, thus rejecting the "unitary" approach to the subject that characterizes envy as inherently malicious.
A 2021 article in the Review of Philosophy and Psychology, for instance, rejected the general sanction of envy as "reprehensible" and called instead for a "nuanced" understanding of the concept. "Sometimes," its authors remarked, "envy may have instrumental value in promoting prudentially and morally good outcomes." This may occur when the envier wants to reduce the envied to the same lower level as the envier. If this envy manifests as, say, shaming people into reducing overconsumption, it helps people reduce financial strain and benefits the environment.
The authors argued that this use of envy could aid "utilitarian approaches to public policy," concluding that "perhaps moderate levels of dysfunctional benign envy at the individual level may nonetheless be productive at the societal level." You can see once again the three-card-monte dynamic in action: Let's not engage in broad "value judgments" about envy, but let's embrace its "utility" in service of other baselessly assumed values.
Similarly, some evolutionary psychologists have sought to neutralize envy by classifying it as a component of adaptive behavior. Considering envy a necessary trait of evolution qualifies, if not negates, any moral sanction against it.
A 2018 longitudinal survey of 18,000 people by the German Institute for Labor Economics reported findings that make it difficult to confirm that a benign form of envy exists. First, envy is a powerful predictor of worse mental health and future well-being. Second, envy does not appear to be a useful motivator. In fact, greater envy is associated with slower — not higher — growth of psychological well-being. Finally, the survey finds the young are especially susceptible to envy, but that levels of envy fall as people grow older, possibly because the normal progression of maturity and experience erode rather than reinforce envy's benign effects.
Other surveys reveal disquieting findings about envy and its relation to support for income or wealth redistribution. John Rawls goes to great length in his Theory of Justice to marginalize envy as a factor in his elaborate scheme of egalitarian leveling, grounding it instead in "fairness." Indeed, fairness is the chief argument of egalitarian calls for higher income taxes and wealth taxes. But a 2017 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study involving 6,000 participants in the United States, the United Kingdom, India, and Israel found that envy was a much larger predictor of support for redistribution than concern for fairness.
Even more significant was the finding that one's dispositional envy predicted greater support for a scheme that punished the rich even if it meant reducing total resources transferred to the poor. For the social scientists who argue for a benign form of envy, a replication of the study that adjusted its methodology to employ the benign/malicious distinction found that while malicious envy correlated with support for redistribution, benign envy did not.
The implication for politicians who employ envy to support redistribution is clear: They are appealing to a base and destructive human motive to achieve their ends, be they to establish a more egalitarian society or simply to win reelection.
EQUALITY, EQUITY, AND ENVY
"Equality," Harry Jaffa observed, "is the well-nigh irresistible principle of authority in the modern world." The classical understanding of equality, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, is rooted in nature, and focuses exclusively on the demonstrable fact that no human beings were created so superior as to be the natural rulers over other human beings. This truth provides the foundation for justice in the American regime.
Yet there is a different, more modern notion of equality. Equity — an end state of nearly uniform material conditions — serves as the predicate for punitive taxation of the rich and a generous welfare state, if not much larger programs of redistribution. Many social scientists take this program of equity for an obvious good, to be worked toward despite the clear social drawbacks of its motivating force.
The distance between the classical idea of equality and the new conception of equality as equity is vast. This is evident in the fact that the term justice today is usually paired with a modifier, most commonly social. (Apparently old-fashioned, unadorned justice is insufficient to current political passions.) The best-known explanation of the contemporary orientation toward equity is Rawls's dense and abstract rendering of "justice as fairness," in which "fairness" is defined so as to circumscribe income differences very narrowly, and hence reverse the burden of proof in justifying much more aggressive redistributionism. This work finds ready welcome among egalitarians who have adopted "fairness" as their slogan.
What is most relevant about the study of envy as it relates to equality is the near-universal understanding that trivial inequalities among those who are most nearly equals excite envy's most vicious and destructive manifestations. Indeed, the more equal the condition of the members of society, the more likely it is that the slightest distinctions in wealth, property, or success will arouse envy. As Alexis de Tocqueville noted:
When all conditions are unequal, there is no inequality great enough to offend the eye, whereas the smallest dissimilarity appears shocking in the midst of general uniformity; the sight of it becomes more intolerable as uniformity is more complete. It is therefore natural that the love of equality grows constantly with equality itself; in satisfying it, one develops it.
Schoeck offered a telling example of this phenomenon at work in polygamous societies, where social norms mandate equal time and access among multiple wives to a single husband:
If a wife enjoys only two to four hours in the day of a husband whom she shares with others, she guards these as jealously as a monogamous wife who can lay claim to her husband against other females for the whole twenty-four hours.
This pattern — whereby envy becomes more pronounced the less there is inequality of privilege, wealth, status, or any other good — appears to be ubiquitous throughout human societies. Producing more equality does not eliminate envy; rather, if left unchecked, the slightest inequalities under conditions of relative uniformity incite the greatest envy and, in turn, the greatest destruction.
CHRISTIANITY'S CURE FOR ENVY
As mentioned earlier, societies since the beginning of recorded time have strictly enforced norms designed to check the destructive elements of envy. In many primitive and ancient societies, the burden often fell on the "likely to be envied" to avoid ostentatious or even subtle displays of their relative success, wealth, or luck. This may have encouraged more well-off individuals to engage in altruistic behavior, or to simply hide their good fortune altogether.
In many societies, the manifestation of envy was understood to be accompanied by a kind of "black magic." Throughout history, this was often symbolically rendered as the "evil eye," by which the envious wreaks destruction on the envied. The concept of envy is tied so closely to this symbol that the Latin word for envy, invidere, is a compound of the word videre, meaning "to see" or "to look at," and the prefix "in," which adds the sense of keeping one's eye fixed on an object. The word "invidious" comes from the same Latin root and means inciting hatred or resentment.
Christianity, with its emphasis on human equality grounded in the doctrine that man is made in the image of God and in the promise of salvation for all who believe, offered a somewhat novel remedy for the destructive problem of envy. Rather than place the burden on the envied to avoid the conditions or circumstances that arouse envy in others, Christian doctrine characterized envy as one of the "seven deadly sins" that could only be overcome by a pure heart and a love of God, one's neighbor, and one's self. More specifically, Christian kindness and charity cures envy by placing the desire to help others above the need to compare oneself to others or to try and supersede them.
Indeed, the central tenet of envy — the belief that another's good fortune is undeserved and is thereby depriving the envious person of his own good fortune — is carefully circumscribed throughout Christian teaching. To take just one example, Jesus' teaching that "the last will be first, and the first last" arose in answer to the envy displayed by his apostles vying for places of honor in the Kingdom of Heaven.
It is worth reflecting on whether Christianity's successful attempt to place the burden of suppressing envy on the envious rather than the envied was a critical factor in the unparalleled prosperity that accompanied Christianity's dominance of Western civilization. Many ancient and primitive societies prior to the advent of Christianity, as well as primitive societies still existing in relatively modern times isolated from Christianity's influence, suppressed the kind of innovation, creativity, and work ethic that lead to material success in order to avoid envy's destructiveness. That Christianity removed that burden from those who, through their own ingenuity, innovation, and hard work, might be successful points to an important element of the material and technological revolutions that accompanied Western civilization.
THE END OF ENVY
What is especially concerning about the modern radical-egalitarian project is that envy appears to be, if not celebrated, then certainly leveraged for questionable ends. Knowing that every prior treatment of envy understood its inherently destructive qualities, it is worth pondering where the current embrace of envy is likely to take us.
Today's radical egalitarians pursue an unachievable goal: complete equality of outcome. Inasmuch as this is true, it should come as no surprise that progress toward this goal relies on a human capacity considered a vice for generations untold, the negative repercussions of which have been empirically identified. The problem with radical egalitarians' demands is that there can never be absolute equality, though the closer society comes to achieving that goal, the more envy is generated. Tocqueville anticipated the inevitable result:
This immortal hatred [envy], more and more afire, which animates democratic peoples against the slightest privileges, particularly favors the gradual concentration of all political rights in the hands of the sole representative of the state. The sovereign, being necessarily above all citizens and uncontested, does not excite the envy of any of them, and each believes he deprives his equals of all the prerogatives he concedes to it.
To avert this outcome, we must fight the radical-egalitarian project on two levels. Culturally, we must strive to recover an understanding of envy that shows it for what it is: a deadly wickedness. Politically, we must reaffirm, with our founding fathers, that human equality is truly found in human nature, rather than in human paychecks.
