OK sports fans, something light, humorous and painfully apparent to many, but not acknowledged. This is from "The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality" by none other than Ludwig Von Mises, one sharp cookie."4. The resentment of Frustrated Ambition
Now we can try to understand why people loathe capitalism.
In a society based on caste and status, the individual can ascribe adverse fate to conditions beyond his own control. He is a slave because the superhuman powers that determine all becoming hand assigned him this rank. It is not his doing, and there is no reason for him to be ashamed of his humbleness. His wife cannot find fault with his station. If she were to tell him: "Why are you not a duke? If you were a duke, I would be a duchess," he would reply: "If I had been born the son of a duke, I would not have married you, a slave girl, but the daughter of another duke; that you are not a duchess is exclusively your own fault; why were you not more clever in the choice of your parents?"
It is quite another thing under capitalism. Here everybody's station in life depends on his own doing. Everbody whose ambitions have not been fully gratified knows very well that he has missed chances, that he has been tried and found wanting by his fellow man. If his wife upbraids him: "Why do you make only eighty dollars a week? If you were as smart as you former pal, Paul, you would be a foreman and I would enjoy a better life," he becomes conscious of his own inferiority and feels humiliated.
The much talked about sternness of capitalism consistes in the fact that it handles everybody according to his contribution to the well being of his fellow men. The sway of the principle, to each according to his accomplishments, does not allow of any excuse for personal shortcomings. Everybody knows very well that there are people like himself who succeeded where he himself failed. Everybody knows that many of those whom he envies are self-made men who started from the same point from which he himself started. And, much worse, he knows that all other people know it too. He reads in the eyes of his wife and his children the silent reproach: "Why have you not been smarter?" He sees how people admire those who have been more successful than he and look with contempt or with pity on his failure.
What makes many feel unhappy under capitalism is the fact that capitalism grants to each the opportunity to attain the most desireable positions which, of course, can only be attained by a few. Whatever a man may have gained for himself, it is mostly a mere fraction of what his ambitions has impelled him to win. There are always before his eyes people who have succeeded where he has failed. There are fellows who have outstripped him and against whom he nurtures, in his subconsciousness, inferiority complexes. Such is the attitude of the tramp against the man with a regular job, the factory hand against the foreman, the executive against the vice-president, the vice-president against the company's president, the man who is worth three hundred thousand dollars against the millionaire and so on. Everbody's self-reliance and moral equilibrium are undermined by the spectacle of theose who have given proof of greater of greater abilities and capacities. Everybody is aware of his own defeat and insufficiency.
The long line of German authors who radically rejectred the "Western" ideas of the Enlightment and the social philosophy of rationalism, utilitarianism, and laissez faire as well as the policies advanced by these schools of thought was opened by Justus Moser. One of the novel principles which aroused Moser's anger was the demand that the promotion of army officers and civil service servants should depend on on personal merit and ability and not on the incumbant's ancestry and noble lineage, his age and length of service. Life in a society in which success would exclusively depend on personal merit would, says Moser, simply be unbearable. As human nature is, everybody is prone to overrate his own worth and and deserts. If a man's station in life is conditioned by factors other than his inherent excellence, those who remain at the bottom of the ladder can acquiesce in this outcome and, knowing their own worth, still preserve their dignity and self-respect. But it is different if merit alone decides. Then the unsuccessful feel themselves insulted and humiliated. Hate and enmity against all those who superseded them must result. *
The price and market system of capitalism is such a society in which merit and achievements determine a man's success or failure. Whatever one may think of Moser's bias against the merit principle, one must admit that he was right in describing one of its psychological consequences. He had an insight into the feelings of those who had been tried and found wanting.
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 is at least as brilliant, efficient and industrious as those who outshine him. Unfortunately this nefarious social order of ours does not accord the prizes to the most meritorious men; it crowns the dishonest unscrupulous scoundrel, the swindler, the exploiter, the "rugged individualist." What made himself fail was his honesty. He was too decent to resort to the base tricks to which his successful rivals owe their ascendancy. As conditions are under capitalism, a man is forced to choose between virtue and poverty on the one hand and, and vice and riches on the other. He, himself, thank God, chose the former alternative and rejected the latter.
This search for a scapegoat is an attitude of people living under the social order which treats everybody according to his contribution to the well-being of his fellow men and where thus everybody is the founder of his own fortune. In such a society each member whose ambitions have not been fully satisfied resents the fortune of all those who suceeded better. The fool releases these feelings in slander and defamation. The more sophisticated do not indulge in personal calumny. They subliminate their hatred into a philosophy, the philosophy of anti-capitalism, in order to render inaudible the inner voice that tells them their failure is entirely their own fault. Their fanaticism in defending their critique of capitalism is precisely due to the fact that they are fighting their own awareness of its falsity.
The suffering from frustrated ambition is peculiar to people living in a society of equality under the law. It is not caused by equality under the law, but by the fact that in a society of equality under the law the inequality of men with regard to intellectual abilities, will power and application becomes visible. The gulf between what a man is and achieves and what he thinks of his own abilities and acheivements is pitilessy revealed. Daydreams of a "fair" world which would treat him according to his "real worth" are refuge of all those plauged by a lack of self-knowledge."
*Moser, No Promotion According to Merit, first published 1772.
Ahh, so it appears that human nature is a force to be recognized. Are people envious? Yes, they are. Are people prideful? Yes, they are.
How many of those who endorse Communism/Socialism/Liberalism/Greenism see themselves in the above?
