Capitalism: Religion of Envy
Channel: Sam Vaknin's Musings
Date: 20/01/2022

Capitalism is founded on destructive envy and driven by it.

"Many people, and especially intellectuals, passionately loathe capitalism. In a society based on caste and status, the individual can ascribe adverse fate to conditions beyond his control. In ... capitalism ... everybody's station in life depends on his doing ... (what makes a man rich is) not the evaluation of his contribution from any 'absolute' principle of justice but the evaluation on the part of his fellow men who exclusively apply the yardstick of their personal wants, desires and ends ... Everybody knows very well that there are people like himself who succeeded where he himself failed. Everybody knows that many of those he envies are self-made men who started from the same point from which he himself started. Everybody is aware of his own defeat. In order to console himself and to restore his self- assertion, such a man is in search of a scapegoat. He tries to persuade himself that he failed through no fault of his own. He was too decent to resort to the base tricks to which his successful rivals owe their ascendancy. The nefarious social order does not accord the prizes to the most meritorious men; it crowns the dishonest, unscrupulous scoundrel, the swindler, the exploiter, the 'rugged individualist'."
Ludwig van Mises's "The Anti-Capitalist Mentality"

Envy - a pathological manifestation of destructive aggressiveness - is distinct from jealousy.

The New Oxford Dictionary of English defines envy as:

"A feeling of discontented or resentful longing aroused by someone else's possessions, qualities, or luck ... Mortification and ill-will occasioned by the contemplation of another's superior advantages."

Pathological envy - the fourth deadly sin - is engendered by the realization of some lack, deficiency, or inadequacy in oneself. The envious begrudge others their success, brilliance, happiness, beauty, good fortune, or wealth. 

Envy provokes misery, humiliation, and impotent rage.

The envious cope with their pernicious emotions in five ways:

1.     They attack the perceived source of frustration in an attempt to destroy it, or "reduce it" to their "size". Such destructive impulses often assume the disguise of championing social causes, fighting injustice, touting reform, or promoting an ideology.

2.     They seek to subsume the object of envy by imitating it. In extreme cases, they strive to get rich quick through criminal scams, or corruption. They endeavor to out-smart the system and shortcut their way to fortune and celebrity.

3.     They resort to self-deprecation. They idealize the successful, the rich, the mighty, and the lucky and attribute to them super-human, almost divine, qualities. At the same time, they humble themselves. Indeed, most of this strain of the envious end up disenchanted and bitter, driving the objects of their own erstwhile devotion and adulation to destruction and decrepitude.

4.     They experience cognitive dissonance. These people devalue the source of their frustration and envy by finding faults in everything they most desire and in everyone they envy.

5.     They avoid the envied person and thus the agonizing pangs of envy.