‘Politics of Resentment’ Is Sign of Desperate Left : Democrats’ Attempt to Foster Feelings of Envy Are Mean and Self-Destructive

When people on the left get nasty, they reduce the motives of conservatives to greed. That’s why Ivan Boesky is for the left the best weapon since Joe McCarthy. Boesky praised greed in front of a prestigious business school. Pure delight for leftists! A man from Wall Street said exactly what the left has said for 140 years!

The left delights in shouting “greed!” because greed is the single vice for which citizens have the most contempt. To reduce all the motives of businessmen, Reaganauts and capitalists to greed is to set them up for sheer contempt.

And yet contempt leads the left into two temptations. It tempts the left to underestimate opponents, only to find itself humiliated by them. (Ronald Reagan in two elections beat them in 93 of 100 states.) And it tempts the left into “the politics of resentment”--what Nietzsche called ressentiment : the bitter, restless uncoiling of the snake of envy in the stomach.

Ressentiment is the envy that lower-class laborers, field hands and the lumpenproletariat are thought to feel for the wealthy, the bourgeoisie and any who think themselves superior. Such resentment expresses itself in getting even, in bringing down, in leveling.

So when we hear, as we are hearing often these days, that the Democratic presidential candidates are beginning to try to stir feelings of “resentment” in Iowa--against Wall Street, against bankers, against Eastern money, against the Establishment--we are hearing a desperate left.

When the left loses its sense of generosity, its tolerance, its “liberality of soul,” it becomes a shrunken, twisted thing. When all that people see in their antagonists is greed, the snake of envy turns over in their stomachs and ejects bile into their innards.

To tell the citizens of Iowa that all their ills are due to evil men on Wall Street, and that bliss will arrive when such evil ones have been brought down, is not only a lie; it is a mean, hypocritical and self-destructive tactic.

The major reason this American Republic has lasted into its 211th year is that it has until now successfully defeated envy. As the Framers knew, no other vice had been so destructive of republics. Nearly every earlier republic had destroyed itself, usually within a generation or two, through division.

So prevalent is envy in human affairs that under its other name, covetousness , the Good Lord forbade it six times in the 10th Commandment.

Though both are social sins, envy cuts deeper than hatred. Hatred (like bigotry) is easily discerned and quickly opposed. Hatred is hot and visible; envy is as sneaky and cold as a snake. Hatred announces itself in bold and hostile placards. Envy slithers in intestines.

Yet envy seeks something far more systemic then hatred seeks. Hatred lashes out. Envy wishes to pull down and raise up, to turn the social order upside down.

The American Republic has defeated envy for more than 200 years through economic growth. When every person has the opportunity to improve his condition, each is less likely to compare himself with Jones. Instead, each compares where he is today with where he wants to be tomorrow. His interest is to cooperate with others.

When each person is improving his condition, each takes his own measure, not his neighbor’s. For not everyone wants the same thing, not all take the same approach, not all set similar priorities.

So it is not a good thing to see Democrats in Iowa promoting envy. And it is stupid to think that in a capitalist system the main motive for action is greed. Greed is an ancient vice that had more meaning under pre-capitalist regimes, when the chief way to gain was to take from others and when all that one could do with wealth was to spend it on palaces and parties or to hoard it up.

Wealth nowadays comes chiefly from invention and innovation, and through the creation of new goods or services, not through piracy or conquest. And today the best way to preserve and to increase wealth is to invest it wisely, not to spend it lavishly.

No doubt there are greedy persons still, as Boesky demonstrated. But nowadays greed wreaks havoc in the system and is self-destructive.

Neither of these two vices is attractive. The Republic depends on the defeat of both. Envy embitters the soul and unravels community. Greed explodes the self, like a cow that eats too much.

Democrats who cherish liberality of soul do not appeal to either vice.