[Tijeras_Slim]

Thanks for the answer. Antipathy towards achievement is relatively constant throughout human history. Perhaps amongst the upper class it is most contemptible for it is not about material envy so much as relative intangibles such as "breeding" or the like. But it is found all across the social and economic spectrum.
In the inner cities, black kids are mocked for "acting white" if they get good grades, in the country some folks say "he's too big for his britches", and there is the allegory about crabs in a pot. When one tries to get out, the others pull him back down.
As for an ending wisecrack, someone once told me "Success is like a fart, you can only stand the smell of your own."

[danielmryan]

You filled in an important blank by bringing in the lower class. Every upper class person knows intuitively that they have to "bond" with the lower classes or else they'll be kicked out of their top slot. You just identified one such value-bond: contempt for success.

Strange as this may sound, this might be a real service. Not everyone has the desire to succeed, and few have the desire to really excel. A good gripe fest tends to spare the feelings of those who don't, and the uppers agreeing sends the message that there's more than envy motivating the gripes.

Robert Heinlein once said that the true character of a society is always found in the behaviour of the people in the slums. This is because the lowers tend to use the real behavior of the uppers as a sort of guide to what they themselves can get away with: this shows in both opinions and actions.

On this point, I should add that the difference between an upper class worthy of the name and the "bourgeois" tends to show up in their attitude towards those duties. A true upperclassman validates the gripings out of the goodness of their heart, whereas the bourgeois type regards it as an 'investment' to be collected on by pinching those gripers whenever earnings need to be driven up...by calling them lazy. This is the more abstract equivalent of the stereotypical pinch-faced dowager marking the level of the liquor bottles with an "X" on the bottles' outside.