Envy: The Fuel of the Left

When I first got interested in politics I came to identify myself as a liberal but looking back I think I was always really a libertarian; I was only a liberal because I objected to conservatism's puritanical and imperialistic bent and hadn't yet discovered the beauty of free market libertarianism. Thankfully, my liberal phase passed me and for the past year or two I've been nothing but a libertarian. However, the more I read and the more I thought the stupider American liberalism and left-wing ideologies in general seemed to me. I found myself wondering what exactly it is that drives the left (or at least a good part of it); I found the answer in an excellent article by libertarian economist and conservative Christian theologian Gary North.

According to Gary North, the driving force of left-wing ideology is not compassion, justice, or any of the other noble purposes that they claim to represent; instead it is one of the Seven Deadly Sins: envy. Though they often used interchangeably, envy is not the same thing as jealousy. Jealousy means that you desire somebody else has and is not an entirely bad thing since it gives people an incentive to work harder and spend more money, in turn generating wealth and economic prosperity. Envy is similar to jealousy in that it includes a situation in which a person desires something that another person has, but it is different in that it is not entirely limited to this; envy also includes the belief that one will not or probably will not ever acquire what other people have and as a result the envious individual resents those that they envy. Envy is often conveyed in the belief that if one cannot have X, nobody else deserves it unless you and/or everybody else can have it too and those who have it are somehow bad and ought to have X taken from them or in some other way be forced to serve the envier or be taken down to his level.

Envy ties into left-wing politics through their egalitarian impulse. Egalitarianism is rooted in envy because it sees equality as a good in itself and would rather see the rich made poorer than the poor made richer. If you don't doubt that liberals see the world this way, look at how they frame the rhetoric of the estate tax. Liberal commentators like to describe the estate tax as the "Paris Hilton tax." I oppose the estate tax in principle but there are plenty of good practical reasons to favor it that are not rooted in envy, but when liberals frame it as the "Paris Hilton tax" they reveal their true nature; they do not support the estate tax mainly because it will be a good source of revenue, but because it is perceived as getting back at wealthy people by drawing negative connection with a woman who is generally seen as being a perfect example of a spoiled rich heiress. The same goes for the left's constant gripes about "income inequality." Inequality is a totally separate issue from poverty; as long as the standard of living for the poor and middle class is going up, why does it matter if rich people have so much more money? If the left were not envious they would focus on raising the living standards of the lower classes and would not speak a word about the rich. Indeed, even if income inequality correlated directly with a decreasing standard of living for poor people it would not be worth it to complain about even when fighting for policies that reduce it, even using government as a vehicle to do so. The simple question is; what is the good in itself? If your answer is raising the living standards of the middle class and poor then you aren't envious, but if you see income equality as a good in and of itself regardless of its affects on living standards then you are, and it is pretty clear to me that the left sees equality as a good all to its own.

These things being considered, it explains away the reasons that the left frames energy debates not in positive tones calling for more alternative energy, but in negative tones denouncing "Big Oil." It explains why Obama said that he would favor tax increases even if they hurt the economy just as long as they are "fair." It also explains why liberals who would have been out in the streets protesting the military draft in the 1960s have sometimes advocated either bringing it back or mandating some sort of "national service" that would require young people to dedicate a portion of their lives to working for the government in some capacity. While at first I was shocked that it was Rep. Charles Rangel (D-New York) and other liberals behind this idea rather than the neocons I would have expected, I am no longer. I think Judge Richard Posner sums up the attitude of those favoring mandating national service best when he says the following, "In a candid moment proponents of universal national service might respond that its real purpose is to take rich kids down a peg by forcing them to work for a year with minimal compensation." This fits exactly Gary North's definition of envy, so it should come as no surprise that it is left-wingers who have been some of the biggest champions of this seemingly right-wing authoritarian policy.

All these things being considered, envy still cannot explain totally why wealthy liberals continue to display an envious mentality. The actual reasons for this lie with a dichotomy between power and guilt. Politicians desire power so they exploit envy; this should be pretty obvious. The left-wing powerbrokers recruit intellectuals to instill a mentality of guilt in middle and upper class individuals that cripples them into working for the appeasement of the envious and even leads them to display envious tendencies themselves. This whole mentality is now self-perpetuating because the liberals of the past have passed it on down to their children, students (considering that liberals now dominate academia), and any other person who may be in reach of their propaganda, creating the liberals of the present that will in turn lead to the liberals of the future. It all makes perfectly logical sense when everything is taken into consideration.

The connection between the left and envy starts from the earliest days of its socialist past. While some naïve individuals have attempted to link Christian compassion with left-wing politics, the founding fathers of left-wing politics would have laughed at this. When Karl Marx famously remarked that, "religion is the opiate of the masses," what he meant was that the Western Christian view of envy as a deadly sin was preventing the proletariat from rebelling against the capitalists. Even as the left moderated to include visions falling far short of total Marxism, many left-wing intellectuals continued to be sympathetic to envy as a vehicle of ideology. Though he described envy as a leading cause of unhappiness, British philosopher and democratic socialist Bertrand Russell said that envy was positive in the sense that it was a vehicle for left-wing social change (Russell 1930, p. 90-91). This is the tradition that the left works within, not "peace, justice, and understanding."

Now, allow me to clarify a few points. I do not intend to make a point against all my ideological opponents nor criticize government intervention in the economy. While it is true that I am a devotee of free markets and an enemy of intervention, there are plenty of reasons to support policies that intervene in the economy other than envy. Nonetheless, a simple moderate policy of intervention and provision of welfare would prove adequate and would not require an extensive left-wing policy of economic egalitarianism, indeed, the main thing that I set out to critique was the negative, egalitarian orientation of many on the left. In the same vein, I bear no ill feelings toward liberals, socialists, and other left-wingers; I hate only what they believe and I seek to point out their faults so that they may change and to point a factoid out to non-leftists everywhere. I would only hope that conservatives and libertarians will continue to point out the envious orientation of the left and in turn work toward the eventual total discrediting of left-wing ideals.

SOURCES

Gary North, "Envy And Poverty," LewRockwell.com

Elana Levin, "Repealing the Paris Hilton Tax?" DMI Blog

B.S.E, "Social Injustice is rising," California Liberal

James Pethokoukis, "Obama: Higher Taxes Bad For Growth," US News & World Report

Gary L. Yates, "Mandatory National Service," California Wellness Foundation

CNN, "Rangel Introduces Draft Bill"

Rob Johnston, "Edwards Supports National Service," Everyone Serves

Richard Posner, "Universal National Service," Becker-Posner Blog

Karl Marx, "Introduction: Critique Of Right-Hegelianism," Marxists.org

Bertrand Russell, "The Conquest of Happiness," New York: H. Liverwright