Socialism does not merely manipulate the envy of its followers; it theorizes the universal moral legitimacy of envy as a counterfeit of justice. (Flickr)
Our world is the freest and most prosperous that has ever existed, billions have been plucked out of secular misery by modest advances of freedom in production and trade, while more men live today under regimes of extensive freedom than ever before in history, but with few exceptions, in developed or backward countries, most men are anxious to surrender their freedom in exchange for equality and security, although they have overwhelming evidence that the only equality they would obtain, were they to achieve it, would be that of misery in which the only certainty is that they would be forced to worship the chains of their own slavery.
And it is not out of ignorance, they know the reality but they deny it, bent on the egalitarian ideal of socialism with a vicious passion which they justify to themselves by beliefs which, proclaiming themselves rationalistic, modern and scientific since the nineteenth century, are nothing but rationalizations of the most primitive superstition. The passion under whose rule those who irrationally adhere to socialism act is none other than envy, from which are born resentments to which they give themselves up with such firm denial as to deceive themselves as to their motives. Socialism does not merely manipulate the envy of its followers; it theorizes the universal moral legitimacy of envy as a counterfeit of justice.
There is no naivety there, some of its greatest intellectuals openly admitted envy as a hidden passion behind adherence to egalitarian policies, Bertrand Russell, one of the foremost intellectuals of British socialism explained:
“Envy is the basis of democracy. Heraclitus says that all the citizens of Ephesus should have been hanged for having said, “There can be none among us who is first.” The democratic sentiment of the Greek states, almost in its entirety, must have been inspired by this passion. And the same may be said of modern democracy. It is true that there is an idealistic theory according to which democracy is the best form of government, and I, for one, believe the theory to be true. But there is no branch of practical politics where theories have sufficient force to effect great changes; when this happens, the theories that justify it are always the disguise of passion. And the passion that has reinforced democratic theories is indisputably the passion of envy.”
No human is free of envy, its basis is so instinctive that we share it with other primates, it is impossible not to feel it, but it is possible to identify it as a moral vice, condemn it and subject it to individual and social control. Envy is atavistic, it was the key to the unity of purpose of primitive human groups, with and through its condemnation and control, man evolved from those tiny miserable groups to large-scale society, in which he nevertheless preserves the atavistic egalitarian yearning as an envious superstition to believe that when another stands out and surpasses the rest, something has been unjustly taken from him.
To maintain that anyone who surpasses us in results, or in abilities would have stolen from us, demands a mysterious mechanism by which that invisible “theft” can be explained, was easy while belief in sorcery prevailed - a magical means that requires no explanation or evidence - but in cultures that have overcome such superstition, the legitimization of envy demands other superstitions that justify the envious to accuse the envied of being more, unjustifiably, at the expense of those who envy him. That belief in socialist theory serves the contemporary envier the purpose that belief in sorcery served in primitive cultures, explains socialism as a superstitious and antisocial rationalization of an atavism.
He who acts under the influence of a powerful feeling, so powerful that we call it passion, is not free, as would not be a mentally ill person, or one who acts under the effect of certain drugs. His judgment is under the influence of a passion that clouds him and impels him to act differently from how he would act free of such influence, it is a moral disease, not a psychological or neuronal disease, and that is what we call vice. Vice is what overcomes the will, dominates and replaces it, although the will can dominate passion, feeling and even instinct, when vice overcomes it, the absence of will is imposed to control a drive that becomes addiction, and envy is an addictive vice.
Most vices affect exclusively the vicious person or his immediate circle, some do not even prevent him from being productive and socially useful, but envy is a truly antisocial vice because he who has fallen into it will be willing to pursue and endure any damage to his person and his property in exchange for enjoying the evil of others, as long as it is the evil of the one or ones he envies.
Those who have succumbed to the vicious passion of envy have lost their inner freedom and in the absence of good judgment are driven to act passionately against the freedom of others, and even of themselves, in social order. What can satisfy envy but to destroy the envied good? And what else but totalitarian arbitrariness would grant that to millions of envious people? Since the envious person does not need to have power himself, but that the arbitrariness he defends should fall on those he envies, and to achieve this he will endure any harm to himself, any culture in which the social condemnation of envy does not prevent the majority from surrendering their freedom to this vice, will see the freedom of each and every one destroyed, step by step, in societies impoverished and finally subjected to totalitarianism by the effects of this vice in legislation and government.
This article was originally published in Spanish in the Panam Post.
