A great irony with the notion of meritocracy is that it is
now used in a way contrary to its original, critical, intention.
In an unusual move, British sociologist and Labour Party activist
Michael Young adapted his 1955 Ph.D. thesis into a dystopian novel set
in 2034. His intention was to satirize educational tracking: at the
time, British students were tested and divided into three different
types of schools based on early testing (e.g., grammar schools for the
classics, technical schools for the sciences, and modern schools for
everyone else). The book is written as a sociological essay by a
fictional Michael Young of the future who describes
the consequences of such a system including the rise of a meritocratic
elite and the decline of the lower classes. The system seemingly works
for a while, but as the narrator writes, it is increasingly challenged
by discontent from the Populist Movement.
The unrest arises from the lessening of social mobility as “the top
of today are breeding the top of tomorrow to a greater extent than at
any time in the past. The elite is on the way to becoming hereditary;
the principles of heredity and merit are coming together” (Young, 2002:
166). (And where it does not, black markets provide for the trading of
“smart” children from the lower-classes for the dowried “dumb” children
of the elite).
Despite the protests of the Populists (dissident technicians led by a
faction of “bizarre” elite women), the fictional Young is confident that
meritocracy will prevail. This confidence is misplaced by an editor’s
note at the end of the book noting that Young (fictional) had been
killed in social unrest.
The real Young wrote this satire so as to caricature and critique a
society shifting from a class-bound nepotistic order to one in which “I
+ E = M”, that is, “Intelligence combined with Effort equals Merit”
(Littler, 2013: 57). Alan Fox, a socialist writer, similarly used the
term as critique. Fox (1956: 13) argued against social inequality, which
remains even when “the gifted, the smart, the energetic, the ambitious
and the ruthless are carefully sifted out and helped towards their
destined positions of dominance.” Increasing access to opportunity by
way of meritocratic education did not further social equality; rather,
it is one of “bigger and better ‘sieves’ (‘equality of opportunity’) to
help the clever boys get to the top and then pile rewards on them when
they get there.”
Despite Young’s intention, meritocracy lost its satirical connotation
and was instead associated with “equality of opportunity.” Decades
later, Young (2001) confessed that “I have been sadly disappointed” that
the notion was favorably spoken of in the United States and appeared in
the speeches of Tony Blair at home. “The book was a satire meant to be a
warning…” Young lamented that “meritocracy” had become the means by
which the ruling class reproduced itself while depriving the working
class “of those who would have been their natural leaders, the able
spokesmen and spokeswomen from the working class who continued to
identify with the class from which they came.” Those left behind “easily
become demoralised by being looked down on so woundingly by people who
have done well for themselves.” That is, “It is hard indeed in a society
that makes so much of merit to be judged as having none. No underclass
has ever been left as morally naked as that.” In Young’s view, the new
underclass was worse off than even their predecessors as the meritocrats
can “be insufferably smug, much more so than the people who knew they
had achieved advancement not on their own merit but because they were,
as somebody’s son or daughter, the beneficiaries of nepotism.”
Fox A (1956) Class and equality. Socialist Commentary,
11–13.
Littler J (2013) Meritocracy as plutocracy: the marketising of
‘equality’ within neoliberalism. New Formations, 52–72,
Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.3898/NewF.80/81.03.2013 (accessed
21 January 2015).
Young M (2001) Comment: Down with meritocracy politics. The
Guardian, Available from: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment
(accessed 21 January 2015).
Young M (2002) The rise of meritocracy. New Brunswick:
Transaction Publishers.
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