Talk:Class envy

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Where does this term come from? The article as it stands doesn't reference any source or investigative tradition. (Such as anthropology, sociology, or whatever.) Is the term from a particular discipline? (If so, how widely accepted within that discipline is it, and how central is it?) From political rhetoric? (If so, whose rhetoric?) Without some useful context, it's just a highly value-laded but meaningless article. Tannin

"Some people claim that the primary cause of the discontent of the poor is the generation of envy towards the rich by some third force. These proponents of the idea of class envy describe class relations primarily interms of voluntary cultural beliefs. The term's culturalist response to class antagonism denies the possibility of a genuine basis for class conflict."

Can someone explain to me what this means? "Some third force...culturalist response". What does this mean? This is either nonsense, or can be written in plain English, if it is not nonsense, I don't know, because I have no idea what it is talking about. Please rewrite in English if you think it needs to be there. -- Lancemurdoch 06:30, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Regarding class envy, I have always heard this term employed in terms of the working class and/or poor envying the rich. Remember, envy means not just resentment of another, but desire to have what another has. In the case of the poor and working class, it is difficult to impossible to get what the rich have. In terms of the rich, it is very easy for them to "have" what the working class have - all they have to do is get a job, and not live off rents or profits. Under the entry for "class envy", I think that material has no place. It's possible it might have a place elsewhere, but not here, since everyone knows what direction the envy in the common parlance of class envy goes. -- Lancemurdoch 06:40, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

"Class envy," far as I can tell, is just a rhetorical cliché used to discount political arguments that attack social inequity as being merely a manifestation of envy. "Class envy" isn't a concept of any historic substance, like, say, "class consciousness" or "free market." My 2¢--delete this entry.

Contents

[edit] NPOV

Replaced the very POV paragraph:

Some cliches expressing envy towards the rich include:

  • that the rich "won life's lottery".
  • referring to low income people as 'working people' and not stating that higher income people also work.
  • that the rich "were born with a silver spoon in their mouthes" - that wealth is inherited rather than attained through effort.
  • referring to all business people as robber-barons.

with the less POV paragraph:

Those who believe in the existance of class envy argue that statments like the rich "won life's lottery" or that the rich "were born with a silver spoon in their mouthes" are examples of class envy. They also argue against referring to low income people as 'working people' because they that higher income people also work. They also reject referring to all business people as robber-barons.

Saul Taylor 14:31, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Despite my paragraph above, someone re-inserted the "rich envy the poor" section and commented - "The wealthy can't shed their privilidge (sic) like a fur coat. Proletarian status isn't easy to pick up." This is a strange analogy, it reminds me of St. Francis of Assisi when he...sheds his fur coat and gives up his privilege to attain the status of the workers and poor. And it was as easy as taking off his fur coat and renouncing his inheritance. Beyond this, the "rich envy the workers/poor" section is as large as the "workers/poor envy the rich" section, even though I have never heard the term class envy used except in the context of the workers/poor envying the rich. I have removed it again. Someone nominated this page for deletion, which seems to be a good idea. It's poorly written, it makes no sense, anything that makes sense belongs elsewhere, and this is apart from people making POV complaints. -- Lancemurdoch 04:23, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Francis was a toff all his life. His father had courtiers chase him around Italy watching out for him. He may have renounced his class, but his class certainly didn't renounce him. Also consider the Church's toleration of Francis, but its extirpation as heresy any movement of the poor demanding the same things. I support deletion over either version of the page, but should it exist, it should include a section on the wealthy's envy of the poor. For a concrete example of the rich's envy of the poor, and how wealth and class can't be cast off, there's a British song out there called "Common people." -- User:Fifelfoo

[edit] From VfD

  • "Class envy" isn't a developed concept, like, say, "class consciousness" or "free market." It just means "envy." If you want to get expansive, it is a rhetorical cliché used to discount political arguments that attack social inequity as being merely a manifestation of envy. Might be mentioned in a description of political rhetoric, or in a dictionary under "envy," but it's not a theory or a "phenomenon" or a "sociological practice." It's misleading to give this it's own article, as if it were one of those things. Delete. BTfromLA 09:13, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)
    • Keep, though it might need some modifications to make more NPOV. Anthony DiPierro 09:22, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)
    • Keep Jack 09:34, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)
    • Delete. I think the problem with this page is more that it makes no sense than that it is POV. Here is how this page started out yesterday "Class envy is a phenomenon where one class envies conditions of another. Some people claim that the primary cause of the discontent of the poor is the generation of envy towards the rich by some third force. These proponents of the idea of class envy describe class relations primarily interms of voluntary cultural beliefs. The term's culturalist response to class antagonism denies the possibility of a genuine basis for class conflict." What is a culturalist response to class antagonism? Merriam Webster's dictionary doesn't even have the word culturalist in it. This whole article seems to be four syllable made-up words strung together that ultimately make no sense. I get no idea what this idea called class envy is - anything that seems to be actually saying something instead of being postmodern gobbledygook seems more fit for Class warfare or Class struggle bercause it is describing class antagonism, not "class envy". Does anyone reading this feel they have a better idea of what class envy is than before they read it? I certainly didn't. And I spent a bit of time just reading the words and trying to figure out if they meant anything. Also yesterday there was a section as large as the workers envying the rich on the rich envying the workers, which I took out as well. 99% of the time I hear about class envy, it is the workers supposedly envying the rich, the idea of an equal-sized part on the opposite is to me ridiculous. I have been radically revising this article, and it still makes little sense. -- Lancemurdoch 19:50, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)
    • Keep. It was POV when I came to it, and tried to break down some of the neo-conisms without turning my contribution into a POVed critique. The fact that the term has no standing in social science, and is an undefined polemic term means it needs to go. However, SimonP's alterations fix the article. Due to the article's use by the Tory's and Wall Street Journal its useful to have Simon's explanation, which I found much clearer than the previous versions. --User:Fifelfoo

[edit] Justifications of changes

I made some fairly large changes to the article.

  • I reconstituted it into an article on the polemical phrase class envy. There is no political science or sociological idea of class envy. This is understandable as anyone who would supports the idea of envy would also not believe in social class as an important notion.
  • I reworded almost everything to cut some of the excessively polysyllabic verbosity.
  • I tried to cut some of the sweeping statements such as "Those who accuse the poor of class envy claim that the wealthy are justified in their current position, and that any claim that the wealthy did not achieve the position through effort is envy."
  • I also cut out the list of expressions describing the wealthy, as I find their connection to the issue at hand to be tenuous at best.

-SimonP 07:04, Jan 12, 2004 (UTC)

{VfD} Keep. Just may suggesst that some of Capitalism's concepts be included. Otherwise it seems good (just glanced @ it though) JDR

[edit] "Argument" just a simple assertion

"The simplest counter-argument is that one's feelings are irrelevant in discussions of politics, and 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. "

How is the above an argument? It seems to be a simple assertion. And does anyone really believe that "feelings" are irrelevant in discussions of politics? That seems like an absurd claim.

--Mc6809e 20:53, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

"In other words, arguments based solely on the perceived emotional state of the opposing side should not be credited by any clear thinking individual (if one is envious, that has no bearing on whether one is right or wrong)."

This is another silly assertion. Emotional state can interfere with the very "clear thinking" the author advocates. If this emotional state is indeed corrupting judgement, then that should be pointed out.

Furthermore, there is plenty of historical precedence for considering "envy" a vice and morally wrong. Simple claiming that it "has no bearing on whether one is right or wrong" is again a simple assertion and not an argument.

That entire paragraph is a poor one and should be omitted.

--Mc6809e 21:05, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

In Wikipedia, we do not remove arguments simply because one reader doesn't like them. Having settled that, let me explain what the argument you consider so "poor" is actually trying to say: The point is that "class envy" is an ad hominem fallacy. An assertion should be judged on its own merits, not on the merits of the person making the assertion - in other words, if a complete lunatic says that 2+2=4, you can't say that he is wrong simply because he's a lunatic. If you want to prove him wrong, you've got to prove that 2+2 does not equal 4 (good luck with that!). Similarly, if a person is "envious" or "emotional" or doesn't have "clear thinking", that doesn't prove anything about what he is saying. If you disagree with him, you have to prove that his arguments are wrong, not that he is "emotional". An emotional man can still make perfectly valid arguments. In fact, most people are emotional when they discuss matters that are very important to them. -- Mihnea Tudoreanu 11:23, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] A First World notion

As far as I know, "class envy" is essentially a First World notion. In societies with a tiny number of rich and a huge number of poor (as opposed to a tiny number of super-rich and a huge number of merely rich), the class struggle is not described as "class envy". Leninism explains this quite well. Imperialism bribes its own working class with superprofits extracted from the Third World, turning that class into an aristocracy of labour that is not exploited. The conflict between that class and the domestic bourgeoisie will be relatively tame, something like "class envy", since the class interests of both classes are similar (crucially, they're both in favour of imperialism). In a Third World country, the disparities are much sharper and the competing classes are not allied, so the class struggle is a bitter one. No one would dare to characterise as "class envy" the struggle of workers who go to bed hungry at night. Shorne 05:40, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Nice comment Shorne, though its also arguable from outside of Lenin (and the labour aristocracy argument also arises outside of Lenin too). Unfortunately this misshapen phrase "class envy" is apparently in use by a couple of US newspapers and the UK Tories. Previous attempts to discuss instances of ruling or middle class appropriation of lower class culture faltered when the article went through a Votes for Deletion. (Louis XIV's court life, /pastoral/ plays etc., rap as middle class fashion). I think it would be great to point out that outright class war, concieved of as such by all involved, still exists, Korean strikes etc., to point out that this article has limited scope. Fifelfoo 22:15, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV

Has this actually been cleaned up for neutral point of view? Maybe it's neutral tone of voice, but it seems the composite author is presenting a fairly Marxist academic worldview, which is a fringe veiwpoint, in a seemingly rational tone in order to make it appear perfectly normal. I don't ask for a rightwing diatribe against class warfare, after all politics is about interest groups so it makes sense that classes would fight against each other in those areas where their interests diverge. But, we could at least put forward a pro-market view that production of new wealth is more important than reallocation of existing wealth.

Have you had a full-frontal? That's just as NPOV as the view you're critiqueing. Neither Marxism nor pro-market view points are NPOV. Fifelfoo 06:45, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Myth of the dole bludger?

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.

Myth? I know plenty of them.