It is no wonder that the few who rise above their class cannot live with the shame of having distinguished themselves. They can neither be who they are nor stay where they are: many will marry outside their social circle; most will leave the neighbourhood for good. That is how class society operates: “In turning people against each other, the class system of authority and judgement-making goes itself into hiding; the system is left unchallenged as people enthralled by the enigmas of its power battle one another for respect.”

In an unequal society that professes equality for all, shame rears its head at every turn; for the poor and working classes in particular substance use becomes a ready consolation. Indeed, South Africa - with the second highest Gini coefficient for income inequality - also has one of the highest alcohol consumptions in the world.

This individualisation of trauma is typical of medical model thinking, but its unfortunate consequence is that our society is disinclined to regard the victims of structural violence as being the victims of trauma. Accordingly, the empathy we ordinarily show survivors of (individual) traumas is withheld from those who are victims of social trauma. It is no wonder, then, that we think nothing of confining offenders with the most traumatic social histories to the most traumatising places on earth.

Returning, then, to Scheler’s philosophy, his translators prefer the French ressentiment over the English ‘resentment’. This is because Scheler himself has in mind something much deeper than ‘mere’ resentment. In his view, ressentiment has several elements. First, a human being experiences some injury and an associated negative emotion. Second, he or she is unable to express this emotion directly, usually on account of occupying a lower position in a given status hierarchy. Third, the negative emotion is consequently repressed. Lastly, under the direction of a repressed desire for revenge that proceeds “via rancor, envy, and impulse to detract all the ways to spite”, the subject falls prey to ‘value delusions’, demeaning those value that are objectively superior, while valorising others that are objectively inferior.

That is why the influence of the middle-class ressentiment should not be underestimated. There is, of course, a substantial gap between the ivory tower and the street - but it is equally true that what happens on university campuses filters into public spaces. I mention this because research conducted in the middle of the twentieth century showed how followers of facist movements were most likely to come from the lower strata of the middle classes who, because their strivings for self-improvement were continuously blocked, were most susceptible to developing feelings of ressentiment.

One can see the same happening in national politics as quasi-facist movements swim ever closer to the political mainstream. With the degree of cooperation between the two spheres increasing all the time - and with social inequality showing few signs of abating - it is only a matter of time before impotent rage - ressentiment - gets channelled into the creation of anti-democratic political movements.