Envy: The Corrosive Moral Rot at the Heart of Socialism

Commentary

Envy is the animating spirit of socialism. It is a spiritual drug that induces people to resent those who have more wealth than they do, even though the possessors of that wealth have never done a single thing to harm those who envy them.

That resentment often metastasizes into outright hatred that consumes those who come under its influence. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn once said, “Our envy of others devours us most of all.”

Hating the rich might have been understandable in Europe back in the Middle Ages, when those with wealth were the hereditary monarchs and nobles whose monopoly of political power included ownership of vast amounts of land and resources.

In a capitalist (now semi-capitalist) society such as the United States today, the reality is substantially different. Capitalism’s megafortunes do not stem from their owners being a hereditary, politically privileged class; rather, they are earned in the marketplace.

I concede that too many Americans get rich from cronyism, and would welcome a reduction of that repugnant abuse of government power, but today’s megafortunes result from visionary entrepreneurs generating fortunes from providing what millions of consumers value.

A disturbing phenomenon is the consuming envy that many Americans express toward billionaires—an envy that is repackaged as a virtue by demagogic politicians. As Thomas Sowell put it, “Envy was once considered to be one of the seven deadly sins before it became one of the most admired virtues under its new name, ‘social justice.’”

When we hear people on the left fantasizing about sending billionaires to the guillotine, and realize that they mean it, it is a sober reminder that we are flirting with savagery.

The anti-billionaire mob is caught up in horrible economic ignorance. They are tragically unaware of the basic structure of a market economy, in which exchanges are voluntary. Such exchanges are mutually beneficial—“positive sum,” to use an academic term. The way an individual entrepreneur becomes a billionaire is by creating at least a billion dollars’ worth of value for a huge number of his or her fellow citizens.

Thus, to envy and hate a billionaire is to despise someone for having provided so much value for others. What madness it is to demonize those who have done the most to economically enrich their society as enemies of society? This brings to mind Malcolm X’s statement that “envy blinds men and makes it impossible for them to think clearly.”

Socialism, which preaches economic equality, is at war with nature and reality. Nature constantly produces a spectacular and wondrous variety. She endows each human being with a unique combination of qualities, talents, attributes, skills, personality, etc. If nature is allowed to take its course—that is, if people are free to develop their talents, pursue their goals, maximize their potential, and achieve excellence—society will be richly benefited.

Some will excel in athletic prowess or artistic creativity, which softcore socialists here in the United States (unlike hardcore socialists such as China’s Mao Zedong) will tolerate. But what today’s American socialists simply cannot accept are individuals who excel in the ability to provide goods and services to others to such an extent that they earn large fortunes—the very fortunes that are the evidence that they have excelled in supplying their fellow men and women with goods and services that enhance their standards of living.

Envy despises individual uniqueness and excellence, and socialists seek to obliterate them. Socialists regard it as a moral abomination that some individuals become so much richer than others by providing things that, in many cases, are more important to a customer’s well-being than, say, the entertainment provided by exceptional athletes or artists, or the utopian visions of a hypothetically egalitarian society.

Thus, socialists punish and hammer down society’s wealth creators for the “crime” of creating wealth for others. This is the dynamic encapsulated in Margaret Thatcher’s insight that “the spirit of envy can destroy; it can never build.”

The inescapable problem facing socialist governments is that nobody has figured out how to “level up”—how to make individuals more talented, more intelligent, more industrious, and more productive. All they can do is to “level down”—to hamper, to suppress, and to confiscate the wealth of those who were guilty of excelling economically. This economically destructive feature of socialism points to a crucial inconsistency in the basic theory of socialism: The socialist theory of all members of a society being equal is exploded by the real-world implementation of socialism.

As George Orwell described it in his brilliant parable “Animal Farm,” “All [humans] are equal, but some are more equal than others.” In theory, socialism extols equality; in practice, it is elitist to the core, with political leaders wielding extraordinary powers to confiscate the wealth, exercise despotic control, and degrade the lives of the rich, successful, and productive members of society—those who have excelled.

Another example of envy and its accompanying leveling-down mentality is evident in the recent proposal to shut down the programs that serve young, gifted children in New York City schools. As one who studied the education of gifted children as one of my two courses of graduate work at Oxford, I can attest that gifted children need the special accommodations of programs designed with their particular needs in mind every bit as much as kids at the opposite end of the learning spectrum need special remedial instruction.

Indeed, thousands of teachers would tell you that the optimal education system would be one in which each pupil has an individual curriculum tailored to his or her individual aptitudes and learning process. Human beings are individual, not fungible like lumps of inert metal. In education, as in other fields, the socialist dogma “one size fits all” is a gross fallacy, a monstrous lie about what practices are compatible with human nature.

Shutting down a program tailored to gifted children appeals to the envy of those who are not so gifted. That is incredibly short-sighted and self-defeating. If schools can unlock the full potential of these gifted individuals, it is true that they are highly likely to advance to careers with handsome financial rewards.

But how will those fortunes be earned? Again, it will be by the service that they render to and the value that they create for others. Whether the students become doctors, healing those who lacked the intelligence to become doctors themselves, or become engineers who design the physical and digital infrastructure and devices that enrich our lives or in thousands of other intellectually advanced ways profit and prosper in exchange for providing high-value goods and services for others, programs to maximize the development of gifted children’s potential will accrue to the overall well-being of society.

Value-creation will be enhanced, and since non-gifted people far outnumber the gifted minority, most of that value will be consumed by the non-gifted. Everyone should be grateful for human excellence rather than envy it and try to obliterate it.

I give the last word to Napoleon, who said, “Envy is a declaration of inferiority.” Come, my fellow Americans; rise above envy. Don’t wrap yourself in inferiority by resenting excellence and achievement. Instead, respect, applaud, and be grateful for individual excellence. There is no social greatness without individual greatness.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.