In pursuit for my own publication purposes, I have discovered some ideological components of left-wing rapaciousness that generally stay–deservedly–b/t the covers of some standard sociology texts.
(1) “Relative Deprivation”: The notion that whatever you have that I don’t have I desire because you have it and I don’t, and therefore I believe that I don’t have it because you have taken it from me, and so that means that in justice (as in “social justice”) I deserve that it should be taken from you and given to me.
Sociologists who write “RD” analysis, which includes academic feminists (Faye Crosby is the main maven) as well as avowedly marxist and marxoid propagandists, take the justice claims of RD quite seriously, i.e., uncritically.
(2) Anthropological studies of envy by way of study of the cultural occurrence of “fear of the evil eye.” This fear is the projected fear of the well-off onto the not-so-well-off (RD we might say in reverse), and this fear of expropriation. The “evil eye” has a firmly-established history in anthropological studies, and as far as I know was first applied sociologically by German sociologist Helmut Shoeck, who argued that envy is the main thing which marxism/socialism are designed to prevent. It is prevented by making sure that everyone is “equal” by being made equally poverty-stricken.
My own wrinkle, not discovered so far in studies of envy in either field, is the voyeurism inherent in the “evil eye” syndrome. Can people blind from birth be envious? I don’t know; maybe.
In any case, feminism’s envy and resentment are right out there in plain sight. They are pathetic people, and as one early (1950s) sociological article on envy pointed out, medieval representations of envy are pictures of people with elongated skinny necks. They are people who can never get enough nourishment, and consequently are continually hungry. Envy as one deadly sin is thus a version of another, namely gluttony: eating, i.e., desiring possessions the appetite for which is never sated.
Much of the anger of lefties is the unappeasable rage of the envious. as shown by
(3) French literary critic and philosopher, Rene Girard (who may still be alive). He invented the notion of “mimetic” (i.e., imitative) desire”: a major theme in all French fiction from De Sade to Sartre. People who only desire what someone else desires, because it is the latter’s desire that makes the desired object desireable. That means that the other’s desire puts him in the position of a rival for possession.
All of this comes back to relative deprivation again. The “relatively deprived” exist mentally in a world of scarcity, where the pies are always small, and anyone who gets a piece does so at someone else’s expense.
Feminists make a point of saying that the power and prestige that males possess they possess because females don’t possess it. And so: the logic is impeccable–the only way to get what males possess that feminists desire is to take it from males.
And, oh: did I mention that feminists are psychologically enclaved to males?
