Class envy

Class envy is a pejorative term sometimes used to describe criticisms of the rich and powerful by the poor and less powerful.

Criticism of excessive wealth and the wealthy has been a staple of political discourse for generations and many believe that societal imbalances in wealth should be reduced or done away with. A common rebuttal to these arguments is that the antagonism that the poor feel towards the wealthy is not based upon any repression or unfairness, but rather upon envy. This argument states that the poorer members of society attack the rich and their privileges because they are envious of the wealth and success the upper classes enjoy.

The simplest counter-argument is that "class envy" is an ad hominem fallacy. In other words, that even assuming class envy truly exists, it does not detract from the validity of the ideas put forward by those who harbor this emotion. Arguments based solely on the perceived emotional state of the opposing side should not be credited by any clear thinking individual (even if one is envious, that has no bearing on whether one is right or wrong).

Another counter-argument, often invoked by Marxists, is that class is determined as a social relationship, where the worker creates wealth, and the capitalist is simply a parasite who expropriates surplus value from the workers who work for him. While the capitalist focuses on the issue of wealth, the left-wing worker focuses on the issue of capital, which is created by the worker's labor and expropriated by the capitalist, and on the issue of capitalist profits.

The debate over wealth is often a political one, with left-wing groups denigrating the wealthy and right-wing groups accusing the Left of class envy. The term class envy is used by many conservative institutions such as the Wall Street Journal and the British Conservative Party. The term is not generally directed at the poor themselves, but rather at groups that are viewed as trying to encourage or take advantage of class envy such as liberal media outlets or leftist political parties.

Use of the word envy in the phrase class envy instead of a word like resentment, or jealousy is what working class activists feel is pejorative about this phrase, since envy means not only resentment, but also desire to attain the advantage held by the resented party. In other words class envy means the working class group accused of class envy not only resent the ruling class, which most working class activists would concede, but that they desire to be in a ruling class over a working class. What this idea neglects is that it is possible that a worker doesn't want to get rid of his working class status within capitalism, but wants to get rid of capitalism itself as a system, just as economic systems like slavery and feudalism were gotten rid of. If all workers had an equal relationship to the means of production in this view, there would be nothing to be envious of.

Elements of "class envy" phenomena can be said to exist in many cultures - for example, the persistent Australian myth of the "dole bludger," one who avoids work and lives on the wealth of others. Another Australian example would be the "tall poppy syndrome" where a successful individual is discredited by their social group as success is believed to come from dishonesty.

Despite these possible examples of class envy it is still a term strictly used in polemical discourse, not in academic or analytical works. Unlike similar notions such as class consciousness there is no theoretical underpinning ot the idea of class envy. In large part this has to do with the fact that those who advocate it also criticize the very notion of class.

The term class warfare is often used in a similar manner by similar groups to class envy, but it is even more dramatic.