Journal of Business Ethics

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-020-04727-7

ORIGINAL PAPER

The Illusion of Merit and the Demons of Economic Meritocracy: Which

are the Legitimate Expectations of the Market?
Luigino Bruni1 · Paolo Santori1 

Received: 10 April 2020 / Accepted: 28 December 2020

© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. part of Springer Nature 2021

Abstract
Meritocracy is gaining momentum in public discourse, being close to the determinants of people’s demand of social justice
(equality of opportunity, social mobility). Conversely, in Academia meritocracy is the object of harsh critiques. The meri-
tocratic rhetoric brings people to overlook the factors which contributed to their success (unequal starting conditions, luck)
over their individual actions, legitimating socioeconomic inequalities. Recently, it has been argued that market-driven socie-
ties foster the problems related to meritocracy. The concept of merit, conceived as the value of the individual contribution
to the common good of society, is absorbed by market value. While we share the concerns on meritocracy, we question the
idea that those are necessarily connected to the market sphere. To prove that, our paper digs in the theological roots of the
concept of merit to better understand meritocracy. We inquire Pelagius–Augustine debate on human merit and salvation,
and its influence on Rawls’s critique of meritocracy. We base on the “Augustinian” Rawls our argument that market is not a
meritocratic domain, but that in market there is space for merit conceived as ‘legitimate expectations.’ Our aim is to prove
that merit can find some space in market societies without incurring in the problems of meritocracy.

Keywords  Merit · Market · Augustine · Pelagius · Rawls · Hayek

“The ideas in the minds of men Introduction and thesis

correspond to the word merit,
shall, as everyone knows, be
infinitely different: they change
the subject, grade, purpose,
measuring not only between
nations and peoples, but likewise
between classes and classes of the
same city” (Melchiorre Gioja, Del
Merito e Delle Ricompense).
“Success is an ugly thing. Men are
deceived by its false resemblances
to merit.... They confound the
brilliance of the firmament with
the star-shaped footprints of a
duck in the mud” (Victor Hugo,
Les Misérables).
* Paolo Santori
p.santori1@lumsa.it
Luigino Bruni
l.bruni@lumsa.it
1
Department of Law, Economy, Politics and Modern
Languages, LUMSA University, Marcantonio Colonna
street, 19, 00192 Roma, RM, Italy
The debate on meritocracy is ongoing and alive today. In
general, meritocracy refers to the assignment of positions of
power to people selected according to their individual mer-
its. The discourse of meritocracy has expanded to address
other spheres of social life, from education to health and
from family to the market. This is because the promises
of equality of opportunity, recognition, and social justice
inscribed in merit fit well with people’s basic moral under-
standings. While meritocracy finds support in public opinion
(Bell 1972, 2012; Herrnstein and Murray 1994), from the
pioneering work of Michael Young—The Rise of Meritoc-
racy (1958)—there has been a rising current of criticism in
the academic domain (Vlastos 1975; Chapman 1986; Hayes
2013; Bloodworth 2016; Appiah 2018; Scaggs 2018; Marko-
vits 2019; Sandel 2020). Critiques of meritocracy converge
on one point: the meritocratic discourse legitimates socio-
economic inequalities and contrasts redistribution (Arrow
et  al. 2000; Alesina and Angeletos 2005; Charité et  al.
2015; Frank 2016; Heiserman and Simpson 2017; Laird
2017; Weinzierl 2017; Alesina et al. 2018, Piketty 2020).
In Piketty’s words, “the discourse of meritocracy and

13
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entrepreneurship often seems to serve primarily as a way
for the winners in today’s economy to justify any level of
inequality whatsoever while peremptorily blaming the los-
ers for lacking talent, virtue and diligence” (Piketty 2020,
2). As the other side of the coin, people who are affected
by the socioeconomic inequalities produced by meritocra-
cies see these inequalities as necessary and legitimate (Jost
et al. 2003; Bénabou and Tirole 2006; Piff et al. 2018), what
recently Jo Littler (2017) named ‘the meritocratic deficit.’
Recently, it emerged another common understanding: the
problems of meritocracy are mostly related to the concept
of merit. As Amartya Sen well-argued (2000), “the idea of
meritocracy has many merits, but clarity is not among them.
The lack of clarity may relate […] that the concept of merit
is deeply contingent on our views of a good society” (5). It is
not surprising, then, reading the titles of the last publications
of the matter: The Mirage of Merit by Thornton (2013), The
Merit of Meritocracy by Son Hing et al. (2016), The Merit
Myth by Carnevale et al. (2020), The Tiranny of Merit by
Sandel (2020).
While we agree on the critique of meritocracy, and on
the necessity to better understand the notion of merit, we
question some outcomes of this discourse. Recently, San-
del argued that merit and meritocracy are inexorability tied
due to the perverse equivalence, widespread in market soci-
ety, between moral value—the extent to which people have
contributed to the common good of society—and market
value—economic success measured by money: “being good
at making money measures neither our merit nor the value
of our contribution” (Sandel 2020, 140). Therefore, if one
wants to avoid the problem related to merit and meritoc-
racy, one should start acknowledging that “certain features
of free-market liberalism and welfare state liberalism open
the way to meritocratic understandings of success” (Sandel
2020, 134). We are cautious about this statement. Sandel’s
argument, in fact, seems to imply that virtues and genuine
relations (Bruni and Sugden 2008) can be cultivated and
flourish only outside the marketplace, an argument he holds
also in previous works (Sandel 2012, 2013). According to
him, the citizens of society should discuss democratically
about what can be included under the catch-all notion of
merit, relating it to the contribution to the common good
of society (Sandel 2020, 208). If so, he argues, the market
sphere cannot but be excluded.
We took a different stance. While agreeing that meritoc-
racy is not a market virtue, and that thinking that market
rewards merit is an illusion, we argue that, as there is room
for virtues in market sphere (Bruni and Sugden 2013), there
is also a place for merit. Of course, a very different notion
of merit from the ones connected to meritocracy.
Therefore, we need to clarify what we mean by merit.
Considering Sen’s remark we will discuss the features
of the concept of merit before addressing the concept of
13
L. Bruni, P. Santori
meritocracy. Philosopher Carl Schmitt (1985) wrote that “all
significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are
secularized theological concepts” (36). We took Schmitt’s
idea seriously, and we applied it to merit. Our starting point
is the notion of merit as conceived in the debate between
Augustine (354–430 A.D.) and Pelagius (ca. 354–ca.
420/440 A.D.), which marked an important milestone in
the history of Christianity. Pelagius emphasized the role of
human merit in attaining eternal beatitude, while Augustine
stressed, in contrast, the role of God’s gratuitous grace in
bestowing salvation. In short, the debate was polarized by
the logic of merit in Pelagius’s thinking and the logic of gift
in Augustine’s. We show how Pelagius adopted a merito-
cratic logic resembling very closely economic–retributive
logic, that is, the do ut des typical of commercial transac-
tions. Through Pelagius we will see how many critiques
today moved to meritocracy are inscribed in the very notion
of merit. Moreover, we will show how Pelagius’s choice for
the logic of merit brings him to refuse wealth and riches as
the object of meritorious actions for Christians. Augustine,
starting from the logic of gift, radically revisited the logic
of merit in indicating a good use of riches and wealth as the
object of merit for the Christian community. This difference
between the logic and the object of merit is of the utmost
importance to disentangle meritocracy and markets.1
To prove our point, we deal with an author who was
highly influenced by this theological debate, i.e., John
Rawls. In his senior thesis, the young Rawls studied the
Augustine–Pelagius controversy, taking elements from the
Augustinian perspective and applying them to political and
economic theory (Rawls 2010; Nelson 2019). Not surpris-
ingly, Rawls was among the harshest critics of merit and
1
  The Pelagius/Augustine debate, in fact, has had a great impact on
the history of Western thought. The logic of merit has always been
widespread because it was often linked to the concepts of virtue and
reward. The Greek and Roman philosophers made significant use of
the concept of merit and its cognates, as did non-Western religions
such as Buddhism, Confucianism, and Judaism (it would be enough
to consider the book of Job, centered on a critique of the “illusion”
of merit). We chose Pelagius and Augustine because they are strictly
connected to the economic developments of meritocratic discourse.
A key period in the interconnectedness of theology and the economy
is the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Controriforma in the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries. A millennium later, the revival of
meritocracy was also a revival of Augustine’s polemic against Pela-
gius (Luther was an Augustinian monk), and the original spirit of
capitalism was in reality generated by a radical critique of the the-
ology of merit that Luther expressed. Paradoxically, even though it
was initially rejected, this aspect has become the cornerstone of a
new meritocratic, capitalistic logic that exists at the heart of the very
countries built on the ancient anti-meritocratic protestant ethics. The
idea of Augustinian salvation for sola gratia rather than based on
merit was at the center of the Protestant Reformation; however, this
notion eventually produced market societies that realized the exact
opposite approach.
The Illusion of Merit and the Demons of Economic Meritocracy: Which are the Legitimate…
meritocracy. While he rejected the idea that merit should
rule social and economic institutions, Rawls left room open
for another form of merit in society, renaming it legitimate
expectations. He maintained this understanding also as far as
the economic sphere (markets and economic institutions) is
concerned. Sandel (2020) saw a failure in this part of Rawls’s
theory: Rawls is guilty of having excluded the logic of merit
from the economic domain in a first instance, and then bring
it again through the idea of legitimate expectations. Con-
versely, we think that legitimate expectations might be a
way to bring the instance of social justice annexed in the
logic of merit in the market society avoiding the worrisome
consequences of meritocratic discourse. Therefore, drawing
on Rawls, we asked what legitimate expectations for market
could look like.
The paper is structured as follows. The next section pro-
poses deals with Pelagius’s notion of merit, retracing in his
thought many features which are tied to meritocracy. Then,
we will describe Augustine–Pelagius debate distinguishing
between the logic and the object of merit. Subsequently, the
analysis focuses on Rawls’s interpretations of the Pelagius/
Augustine debate, his critique to merit and meritocracy, his
idea of legitimate expectations, and the comparison with
Hayek’s own critique to merit. Finally, we will propose our
own reading on merit in markets through the idea of legiti-
mate expectations and deliberative democracy.
The Logic of Merit in Pelagius
We start far back in history in our historical–methodological
reconstruction. Pelagius, in fact, is a key figure for undress-
ing the old issue of merit, via Augustine and his influence
in Modernity (via Luther and Reformation).
By logic of merit we intend the main features of this con-
cept, including the background from which merit usually
emerges and its development among the social classes. We
show that meritocracy is intimately attached to the logic of
merit. We left momentarily behind the object of merit and
the discourse about richness, which we will consider through
Augustine’s lenses in the next section.
We will mostly refer to an important text written by Pela-
gius, which today is available mostly thanks to the recon-
struction of the fragments left, that is, his commentary to
St. Paul’s epistles (Expositiones XIII epistularum Pauli; De
Bruyn 1993). The text was composed between 406 and 409
A.D., before the polemics with Augustine (De Bruyn 1993).
This renders the Expositiones a valid source to understand
the core of Pelagius’s teachings, free of any of the political
or theological polemics that later occurred (Matteoli 2011).
Moreover, the confrontation which St. Paul, who taught the
doctrine of salvation through faith and grace, renders Pela-
gius’s ideas on salvation by merits easily distinguishable.
The very core of the logic of merit as expressed by Pela-
gius is double-faced. Merit is forward-looking, a moral credit
that we acquire by performing a good deed or action that
deserves a reward—in Pelagius’s thinking, God’s reward,
and backward-looking, that is, the reason why people occu-
pied high positions in a particular social group—for Pelagius
the neo-Roman Christian aristocracy. We analyzed these two
features separately even if in reality they can hardly be sepa-
rated, i.e., merit and meritocracy go hand in hand.
In his commentary on Paul’s letter, Pelagius distinguished
three ages of the world—before the Original Sin, after the
Original Sin, and after Christ (tempus christianitatis). Each
age corresponds to a different kind of law—natural law,
mosaic law, and then Christ’s law. Pelagius believed that
before Christ, in the times of the natural and then mosaic
law, the human being, knowing and adhering to the law,
could perform good deeds and obtain salvation for his merits
(Matteoli 2011, 29…48). Analyzing Paul’s statement “Natu-
ralis quae legis sunt faciunt” (Matteoli 2011, 44), where
legis stands for the mosaic law, Pelagius commented: “Sive:
De his dicit qui naturaliter iusti fuerunt ante legem. Sive:
Qui etiam nunc boni aliquid operantur” (“Paul is referring
either to those who were righteous before the law or to those
who even now are doing some good” (Pelagius in Bray 1998,
68). As Matteoli (2011) rightly commented in agreement
with De Bruyn (1993), the last words “Those who even now
do some good” imply the possibility for humanity, out of
faith in Christ and the knowledge of mosaic law, to perform
good deeds and works just by adhering to the natural law, in
other words, by following their nature. Blending Pelagius’s
words, “Nature produces a law in their hearts through the
witness of their conscience” (Pelagius in Bray 1998, 69).
Hence, merit as a moral credit that needs to be rewarded
by God became the cornerstone of Pelagius doctrine: “The
whole of Christian life as it is stretched out between baptism
and judgment is one in which Christians […] always exercis-
ing that freedom of choice which has been made effectual by
grace, they obey the precept of the gospel and so merit the
rewards of the final kingdom in heaven” (Evans 2010, 119).
What the first feature reveals clearly is the similarity between
the logic of merit and the realm of economy: rewards and
credit both denote a contractual relation between man and
God that resembles an economic–retributive logic, a contract
between two parties.
Who, for Pelagius, can aspire to the kingdom in heaven?
Who can merit the final reward? According to Pelagius,
few can be meritorious in front of God. In the first two
ages, the ages of natural and mosaic law, these few cor-
responded to the Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob), capa-
ble of saving themselves with their own efforts and deeds.
Pelagius managed to remain in the mainstream of Chris-
tian doctrine—after Christ one cannot save oneself without
the faith in Christ given by God’s grace—while emptying
13

the Christological event of uniqueness because salvation
on merit alone was possible even before, as shown by the
Patriarchs: “we are meant to imitate Abraham’s example as
if he were our father, just as we imitate the examples of the
saints” (Pelagius in Bray 1998, 128). In this way, while he
paid tribute to the memory of the patriarchs, he reduced the
Christological event to another example to follow. Grace
becomes, for Pelagius, an intellectual enlightenment, “an
external, non-coercive grace of knowledge such as the Deca-
logue or the example of Christ” (McGrath 2005, 94), which
allows human beings to merit faith, avoid sin, and gain eter-
nal life as reward. Augustine could not disagree more. What
interests us here, however, is Pelagius’s emphasis on the elit-
ist and aristocratic nature of the circle of meritoriousness.
This theological sensibility became reality in Pelagius’s
preaching in Rome.
The extent to which Pelagius’s political aims influenced
his theological teachings, and vice versa, is known (Brown
1968, 1970). Pelagius aspired to create a new Christian
aristocracy, converting the ancient Roman aristocracy built
upon stoic doctrine. Pelagius’s aims encountered those of
part of the Roman élite: “the late fourth century,” in fact,
“saw a proliferation, even a confusion, of the ways in which
a group could display its status” (Brown 1968, 96). The logic
of merit displays its intimate connection with meritocracy,
that is, to be an element that separates the few meritorious
from the many non-meritorious, or, in other words, to be an
instrument for the élite to legitimately claim their status:
“Behind the counsel of perfection of Pelagius, we can sense
the high demand of noblesse oblige and the iron disciple
of a patrician household. The ideal Christian of Pelagian
literature was a prudens, carefully reared in the divine law,
to be different from the ‘ignorant crowd’” (Brown 1968, 97).
Meritocracy transferred this logic of merit in the political
sphere, whereas the oligarchs (the few in power) want to be
conceived of as aristocracy, the “excellent, deserving” few in
power. Their need to be recognized by the “ignorant crowd”
showed the backward look of merit. The same applied for
the economic domain, whereas the inequalities were legiti-
mized by the deserving status of the few meritorious owners
of big fortunes.
Another important element of the logic of merit is being
an antidote to the danger of moral laxity. Pelagius, like the
Donatists before him, employed the logic of merit to oppose
a theological culture of moral laziness at the time repre-
sented, among many others, by the Manichean (McGrath
2005; Banner 2009). The presence of a Bad God next to a
Good God in a perpetual struggle, which was the core of
the Manichean doctrine, was connected to the idea that sin
is not produce by human actions but by something else that
inhabits humanity. This, in turn, eliminates accountability
or personal responsibility for the individual’s actions (sins
included) and leads to moral laziness. Pelagius and Pelagians
13
L. Bruni, P. Santori
strongly reacted to this undesirable outcome: “The Pelagians
were determined, that is to say, not to locate evil or its source
in an ontology […] Rather, they maintained resolutely that
nature was good—including human nature. Sin and evil did
not, then, arise from this nature as if it is belonged to it,
but was rather a question of this nature misuse” (Banner
2009, 32). The possibility to “deserve” salvation through
works, then, became for Pelagius the main road to affirm
the possibility of a Christian morality made of good works
and deeds. After all, “if Christ loved sinners so much, how
much more will he now preserve the righteous!” (Pelagius
in Bray 1998, 132).
Moral laziness is not the only issue from the background
that the logic of merit was called to address. Equally impor-
tant, it was the attempt to fight the logic of inheritances. In
the eighteenth century, this meant the attempt of bourgeois
classes to fight the aristocratic, feudal privileges. In the fifth
century, for Pelagius this meant to fight the theological idea
of the transmission of sin and its effect in corrupting human
nature. According to many commentators—Augustine above
all—this was the very core of Paul’s letter to the Romans,
in which it is preached that Adam’s sin affected humanity
as a mark that corrupts human nature transmitted from par-
ents to children. Notwithstanding the disagreement of some
commentators who saw Pelagius in continuity with this tra-
dition (Dempsey 1937), Pelagius argued that Adam’s sin cre-
ated a bad model that attracted people to deviate from good
deeds and works: “while Pelagius conceded that Adam’s sin
had disastrous consequences for his posterity, he insisted
that these arose by imitation, rather than by propagation”
(McGrath 2005, 94). Still, he affirmed that human nature was
not “marked,” as Paul’s commentators believed. Sin “lives as
a guest and as one thing in another, not as one single thing,
in other words, as an accidental quality, not a natural one”
(Pelagius in De Bruyn 1993, 103–104). People maintain
their free will to perform good deeds and works, to merit
salvation, choosing the right model to follow. Pelagius, in
fact, believed to have correctly interpreted Pauline doctrine
such that he frames the Christological event into schema:
“Sicut exemplo inoboedientiae Adae peccaverunt multi, ita
et Christi oboedientia iustificantur multi” (As many people
sinned because of Adam’s example of disobedience, so many
people are justified by Christ’s obedience. Pelagius in Mat-
teoli 2011, 78). Christ is the good model that man can freely
choose in order to obtain salvation: “if we have been saved
by Christ’s death, how much more shall we glory in his life
if we imitate it” (Pelagius in Bray 1998, 133).
Associated with the fight for inheritances emerges also
the importance of “models” in the logic of merit. Today the
successful meritorious, those who occupy the highest posi-
tion in the socioeconomic sphere, are depicted as models that
non-meritorious people should follow. The paradoxical fact
is that exactly the non-meritorious who create, legitimize,
The Illusion of Merit and the Demons of Economic Meritocracy: Which are the Legitimate…

and recognize these models. This is the last feature of the Consider if in such a way any other result be gained
logic of merit we want to describe thorough Pelagius: merit than that the grace of God is given in some way or
fits especially well with the basic moral understanding of other, according to our merit, and so grace is no more
most people being non-meritorious. The appeal of meritoc- grace. For on this principle it is rendered as debt, it is
racy is not manifested in Pelagius’s thought but rather in a not given gratuitously; for it is due to the believer that
popular diffusion of his doctrine: his faith itself should be increased by the Lord, and
that the increased faith should be the wages of the faith
It can, however, be shown that a third interpretation
begun; nor is it observed when this is said, that this
of the concept existed in the earlier medieval period,
wage is assigned to believers, not of grace, but of debt.
apparently corresponding to a form of popular Pelagi-
And I do not at all see why the whole should not be
anism. Iustitia Dei is here taken to refer to the divine
attributed to man,—as he who could originate for him-
attribute by which God rewards humans according to
self what he had not previously, can himself increase
their just deserts. God, acting in accordance with this
what he had originated,—except that it is impossible
conception of righteousness, will reward those who act
to withstand the most manifest divine testimony by
justly and punish those who act unjustly—thereby jus-
which faith, whence piety takes its beginning, is shown
tifying the godly, and punishing the ungodly. This cor-
also to be the gift of God […] Man, […] yet desiring
responds to what might be called a “popular catholic”
himself to have the merit of believing, compounds as it
understanding of justification, according to which jus-
were with God to claim a portion of faith for himself.
tification is understood to be dependent upon human
(Augustine 2007, 500).
efforts to emulate the example which is set them in
Christ. (McGrath 2005, 73). Augustine employed economic terms to describe the logic
of merit, such as “wages” and “debt.” If Pelagius and Pela-
The acceptance of this idea of God’s justice among the
gians were right, God is “compounded” to give a portion of
popular Catholic classes reveals that the illusion of merit is
faith and grace to man as if in a contract stipulated by two
hidden in its nature. While it was born as a discourse for the
parties. Augustine counterpoised the logic of gift, that is,
few—the Patriarchs, saints, Roman aristocracy—Pelagius’s
the gratuitous donation of God’s grace, which restores the
doctrine seduced the many through its promise of a just and
corrupted humanity. Man is not capable of performing good
fair schema to assign rewards and punishments. This eco-
works and deeds by himself “because the inherited of Adam
nomic–retributive logic of merit was imbued in the Bibli-
impaired both our vision and our potency” (Milbank 2003,
cal and Christian tradition from its very beginning, but it
8). Man needs divine action to have his will restored so that
has also always been contrasted by a radical critique of the
every meritorious act has to be reconsidered within the first,
meritocratic nature of the relation between God and human-
gratuitous act of God.
ity. Augustine was among the most efficacious critics. What
Pelagius envisaged three ages, each self-standing and
other logic did he propose, and how did this affect his view
just, the Christological Age characterized by Christ’s grace.
on merit?
Augustine counterpoises four ages—he adds a fourth, the
eschatological era of the kingdom in heaven—essentially
related one to the other (Valero 1982; Matteoli 2011). This is
because he wanted to avoid any reading of Christ’s sacrifice
The Object of Merit in Augustine
as a “price” paid for the Original Sin. Rather, Augustine
affirmed that the logic of gift and grace was essential in all
Having shown the features of the logic of merit related to
the four ages: “We must not therefore divide the times, as
Pelagius and its closeness to the meritocracy, we now turn to
Pelagius and his disciples do, who say that men first lived
the object of merit analyzing Augustine’s critique. Whereas
righteously by nature, then under the law, thirdly under
Pelagius, adopting a meritocratic logic, ended up with a
grace—by nature meaning all the long time from Adam
radical critique of riches, Augustine, emphasizing the logic
before the giving of the law […] By disputation of this sort,
of gift above that of merit, ended up with a very different
they attempt to exclude the ancient saints from the grace of
position.
the Mediator, as if the man Christ Jesus were not the Media-
Augustine wrote many works against Pelagius and Pela-
tor between God and those men” (Augustine 2007, 248).
gians. In the first book of A Treatise on the Predestination
There has never been, according to the bishop of Hippone,
of the Saints, he refused the logic of merit not only in the
an age in which the logic of merit was dominant in respect
doctrine of salvation—I deserve to be rewarded by God with
to the logic of gift.
eternal life—but also in the doctrine of predestination—I
Nonetheless, the logic of merit found some space in
deserve God’s grace, through which humanity obtains eter-
Augustine’s theology. As McGrath well-summed, “while
nal life:

13

merit before justification is indeed denied, its reality and
necessity after justification are equally strongly affirmed
[…] Augustine understands merit as a gift from God to the
justified sinner […] Eternal life is indeed the reward for
merit—but merit itself is a gift from God” (McGrath 2005,
44). The famous adagio of Augustine’s epistle 194, “When
God crowns our merits, he crowns nothing but his own gifts”
(Augustine in McGrath 2005, 44), expressed the idea that the
logic of merit has to be reconsidered within the logic of gift.
Enough of our attempts to reconstruct Augustine’s cri-
tique of Pelagius. The logic of gift and grace and how this
interacts with human free will are topics that require much
fuller analysis. Here we are interested in one of the conse-
quences of Augustine’s partial refusal of the logic of merit,
that is, his analysis on riches. This will reveal an appar-
ent paradox. While Pelagius’s logic of merit, very close to
the economic language of contract, exchange, and credit,
brought him to classify the possession of riches as sinful,
Augustine’s choice for the logic of gift, opposite to any
economic analysis, will bring him to identify a good and
meritorious relation to riches. The paradox can be solved if
we distinguish the logic of merit from the object of merit.
As we stated in the previous section, merit is a moral credit
which distinguishes the meritorious from the non-merito-
rious. However, nothing has been said about the content/
object of meritorious works and deeds. How did Pelagius
and Augustine deal with the object of merit?
A significant episode occurred in Rome between 404 and
405 A.D. Two young Christian spouses from the aristocracy,
Valerio Piniano and Melania the Younger, had a great herit-
age. Attracted by an ascetic life, they began to dispose of
their enormous wealth to live a life in poverty, in Sicily, then
in Jerusalem, to imitate the poor life of the first Christians.
They freed 8000 slaves and sold off their properties. But the
slaves protested and revolted over this choice because they
found themselves without any protection during a period of
great political uncertainty, and many of the lands ended up
abandoned (see Brown 2012, 291…298). This episode con-
tributed to the debate on poverty and wealth, which involved
many theologians between the fourth and fifth centuries.
Pelagius and Augustine took opposite sides on the matter.
Thanks to Peter Brown’s fundamental work Through the
Eye of a Needle (2012), we know that Augustine was very
interested in the political events happening in the cities of
Hippo and Chartage after the sack of Rome (410 D.C.).
There, a populus made up by merchants, artisans, manu-
facturers, and beggars protested against the rich and Church
hierarchy. The bishop of Hippo was very interested in the
unity and peace of the Christian people such that this “pas-
sion for unity imposed a reticence on him in his dealings
with the rich” (Brown 2012 348). Augustine understood that
the rich were necessary for the management of power and
good government.
13
L. Bruni, P. Santori
This political motive was intertwined with a theologi-
cal one. Riches were among the many goods God freely
bestowed upon humanity. Hence, wealth in itself is good but
is subject, like all goods, to corruption. With Augustine, the
attribute of “evil” was moved from riches to the passions
aroused by riches. Avarice, greed, lust—all these passions
related to riches are bad, not riches in themselves. Hence,
rich families could have had good relationships with their
own estates and properties. This corresponds to a good use
of wealth, framed in the logic of gift:
So what next? Let them be rich in good works… This
is not something you do behind closed doors. Either
it is done, and is visible to all, or is not done… Let
them be rich in good works, let them give readily, let
them share (I Timothy 6:18)…If rich people are like
that, they need have no worries; when the Last Day
comes, they also will be found in the Ark. (Augustine
in Brown 2013, 352).
In Augustine’s thinking, the logic of merit is imbued
in that of gift-giving. As God freely donates every good,
above all the grace through which good works can be accom-
plished, so humanity can meritoriously dispose of these
goods. As far as riches are concerned, the object of merit
lies in almsgiving, sharing with the poor—“give readily”—
and so on. Augustine’s position left open a big space in
which, many centuries later, Aquinas, among many others,
will admit a moderate gain of “trading for the upkeep of his
household, or for the assistance of the needy: or again, a man
may take to trade for some public advantage, for instance,
lest his country lack the necessaries of life” (S. Th., II-II, q.
77, a. 4, corp.). Pace Sandel, here we find ancient examples
of how merit can be related to economic sphere without
being overlapped to meritocracy.
Pelagius and his followers developed, also because of an
influence of stoic philosophy, a radical, negative vision of
wealth, which took root particularly in the Roman élite. As
a consequence of the Pelagian theology of salvation linked
to meritorious works, the rich people had to renounce all
their possessions in order to obtain salvation. Not surpris-
ingly, Melania and Pinianus were highly influenced by the
theologian Rufinus from Nola, whose positions were very
close to those of the Pelagians. A famous treatise on riches
(De Divitiis), attributed to Pelagius, circulated among the
noble families of Rome. The theses expressed were radical
and unequivocal: “It is not in vain, then, that the Lord uses
every opportunity to criticize and condemn riches, knowing,
as he does, that greed for riches is the seedbed of all crimes
[…] Nor it was without due cause that he as good as closed
the entrance to the heavenly kingdom to rich men” (Pela-
gius in Bradstock 2008 27). It is the voluntary renunciation
of wealth only that can save people. And then it is added,
clearly in controversy with Augustine: “I do not want you
The Illusion of Merit and the Demons of Economic Meritocracy: Which are the Legitimate…
to defend your avarice on the pretext of compassion or with
the excuse of helping the poor” (Pelagius in Bradstock 2002,
23). He also attempted an analysis of the morphology and
origin of wealth, arriving at very strong conclusions: riches
“can hardly be acquired without some injustice” (Pelagius
in Bradstock 2002, 17). For Pelagius, it is precisely the logic
of merit that brings him to reject riches as possible objects
of meritorious action.
The theological battle was won by Augustine; Pelagius’s
theology, his vision of wealth, was defeated. And so, the
place of the Pelagian motto—“Take away the rich and there
will be no poor either”—was taken by the Augustinian one:
“Take away pride, and wealth will not harm you” (Augustine
in Brown 2013, 349). In our lexicon, take away the pure
economic–retributive logic of merit, and meritocracy, and
the market society, where merit is still present reconsidered
within other logic, appears. The young John Rawls showed
how this lesson from the fifth century can be applied to the
modern market societies of the twentieth century.
The Augustinian Rawls and His Critique
of Meritocracy
Three decades before publishing his Theory of Justice
(1971), when he was in Princeton, Rawls wrote an under-
graduate senior thesis dissertation entitled A Brief Inquiry
into the Meaning of Sin and Faith: An Interpretation Based
on the Concept of Community (1942). After Rawls’s death,
the thesis was published by Thomas Nagel (Rawls 2009).
The commentators of that volume (Cohen and Nagel,
Adams, in Rawls 2009), together with recent commenta-
tors (Weithman 2016; Nelson 2019), all converge on one
point: the theological ideas of the young Rawls remained
in the background of the political philosophy of the mature
Rawls. Among those ideas, we highlight Rawls’s critique of
Pelagian heresy in favor of an Augustinian account,2 which,
in turn, is connected to mature Rawls’s critique of merit and
meritocracy.
The fault of Pelagius was to have taught “that man could
do good works and could save himself without the aid of
grace” (Rawls 2010 171) and, consequently, “that man’s
nature was corrupted by Adam’s fall” (Rawls 2009, 171).
Rawls counterpoised Augustine’s theory and life, both
demonstrating that corrupted humanity is saved by divine
mercy rather than human merits. Hence, “there is no merit
before God. Nor should there be merit before Him. True
2
  This is not to say that the young Rawls conceived of himself as an
Augustinian author. He believed that Augustine, together with Aqui-
nas, was responsible for the naturalization of Christian ethics, with
which he strongly contrasted (See Weithman 2016).
community does not count the merits of his members. Merit
is a concept rooted on sin, and well disposed of” (Rawls
2009, 241). Rawls offers efficacious insight regarding the
logic of merit. Merit is not only associated with individual-
ism, nor with simple egoism. Merit is deeply connected to
“egotism” (a term Rawls borrowed from the Christian theo-
logian Philip Leon), “which is that perverse self-love of the
spirit for itself, which craves honor, distinction, glory, and
praise […] The egotist will go to all sort of extremes […]
to win his goal” (Rawls 2009, 123). According to Rawls,
egotism—the forward-looking and backward-looking logic
of merit intertwined with its ideology—blinds people’s eyes
to the other elements that are behind their achievements:
The human person, once perceiving that the Revelation
of the Word is a condemnation of the self, casts away
all thoughts of his own merit […] He knows that what
he has received has been given by some “other,” and
that ultimately all good things are gifts of God. There-
fore in the face of this givenness of God, in the face of
His perfect and righteous mercy, he knows that he has
no merit. Never again can he hope to boast of his good
deeds, of his skill, of his prowess, for he knows that
they are gifts. The more he examines his life, the more
he looks into himself with complete honesty, the more
clearly he perceives that what he has is a gift. Suppose
he was an upright man in the eyes of society, then he
will now say to himself: So you were an educated man,
yes, but who paid for your education; so you were a
good man and upright, yes, but who taught you your
good manners and so provided you with good fortune
that you did not need to steal; so you were a man of a
loving disposition and not like the hard-hearted, yes,
but who raised you in a good family, who showed you
care and affection when you were young so that you
would grow up to appreciate kindness—must you not
admit that what you have, you have received? (Rawls
2009, 239–240, our emphasis).
The young Rawls adopted Augustine’s primatus of the
logic of grace above that of merit. Egotism is the full mani-
festation of humanity’s fallen state. God’s grace restores
human free will so that “man is also pictured as cooperat-
ing with grace, as being a co-actor in the path of salvation”
(Rawls 2009, 176). The mature Rawls, while abandoning the
theological path and the logic of gift, refused the logic of
merit impregnated of ideology in favor of the logic of “jus-
tice as fairness”—his version of the social contract theory.
In A Theory of Justice, Rawls was interested in finding the
principles of justice that could regulate the institutions of a
liberal society. There, the theological critique of the logic
and ideology of merit, secularized (Nelson 2019), became
Rawls’s critique to anyone who proposes merit as a criterion
to regulate the political, social, and economic institutions
13

of a liberal society. What in the theological sphere was just
an example to illustrate God’s gift of grace later becomes
Rawls’s main concern about the logic of merit: people
imbued in the meritocratic–egoistic logic ignore the exter-
nal factors that contribute or have contributed to their suc-
cess, i.e., they identify the logic of merit with meritocracy.
According to Rawls, “natural endowments” (Rawls 1971,
17), “favourable starting place in society” (Rawls 1971,
102), and “chances to acquire cultural knowledge and
skills” (Rawls 1971, 73) are all manifestations of “luck” in
a person’s life, and hence they cannot be attributed with any
moral worth. The major parts of human achievements in the
socioeconomic sphere are conditioned by undeserved fac-
tors as well as meritorious efforts. Hence, the inequalities
of the starting points and endowments cannot legitimate an
institutional scheme that perpetuates the very same inequali-
ties. In other words, the logic of merit cannot be the base on
which the institutions of a society distribute social benefits.
Rather, “since inequalities of birth and natural endowment
are undeserved, these inequalities are to be somehow com-
pensated for” (Rawls 1971, 100).
Rawls employed the concepts of the original position
and veil of ignorance to describe the main features of the
contractarian procedure from which the principles of justice
emerge. The contract imagined by Rawls is hypothetical, not
historical. The artificial part of the veil of ignorance sets
conditions to remove disparity between participants. The
parties do not know the income, social class, health condi-
tions, or other features they will possess in society. They
must choose the principles of justice on which they will
model their basic institutions, ignoring these features. Rawls
integrates the logic of merit with the logic of “justice as fair-
ness,” which tries to restore a certain degree of equality in
society. This operation disentangles the logic of merit from
meritocracy. One cannot fully understand Rawls’s emphasis
on the second principle of justice, which recommends that
“social and economic inequalities […] are to be attached
to positions and offices open to all under conditions of fair
equality of opportunity and […] they are to be to the greatest
benefit of the least advantaged members of society” (Rawls
1993, 6) if this is not framed in the theological critique of
Pelagianism in his earlier Inquiry.
Rawls’s Contractualism, in fact, is the sign of his refusal
of Pelagius’s logic. Following Pelagian doctrine, according
to the young Rawls, we end up with a Hobbesian view of
society, in which distrust and fear are sovereign. Hobbe-
sian Contractarianism mirrors Pelagius’s distrust of God’s
providence: “Pelagian falsity is a lack of faith and trust.
Man wants to flaunt some merit before the decisions of the
divine election; he wants to control that election by merit
because he does not trust the elector […] it will reveal a
lack of faith and an inner state of fear” (Rawls 2009, 229).
Conversely, Rawls liberal society holds a central place for
13
L. Bruni, P. Santori
fraternity, conceived not as “sentiment and feeling which it
is unrealistic to expect between members of a wider society”
(Rawls 1993, 106); rather, fraternity is expressed by “the
idea of not wanting to have greater advantages unless this
is to the benefit of the others who are less well off” (Rawls
1993, 105), that is, the second part of the second principle
(known as the difference principle). Fraternity is an antidote
to the inequalities produced by meritocracy.
As for Augustine the object of merit was reconsidered
from both the logic of merit and gift, so for Rawls the object
of merit is determined by many different logics. To the prob-
lematic confusion between luck and merit, Rawls counter-
poises the fruitful encounter between the logic of “justice as
fairness” and that of merit, clarifying the real object of merit
in what he named “legitimate expectations”:
Moreover, the notion of distribution according to
virtue fails to distinguish between moral desert and
legitimate expectations. Thus it is true that as persons
and groups take part in just arrangements, they acquire
claims on one another defined by the publicly recog-
nized rules. Having done various things encouraged
by the existing arrangements, they now have certain
rights, and just distributive shares honor these claims.
A just scheme, then, answers to what men are entitled
to; it satisfies their legitimate expectations as founded
upon social institutions. But what they are entitled to
is not proportional to nor dependent upon their intrin-
sic worth. The principles of justice that regulate the
basic structure and specify the duties and obligations
of individuals do not mention moral desert, and there
is no tendency for distributive shares to correspond to
it. (Rawls 1993, 311).
Here Sandel’s sees a failure in Rawls’s egalitarian liberalism.
In his view, maintaining the legitimate expectations while
denying the role of merit upholds the logic of merit, and
therefore the problems of meritocracy is still in play. We
disagree with this very last statement, because the logic of
merit is reconsidered within other logics, in this case justice
as fairness, and this changes radically the object of merit.
Legitimate expectations are against meritocracy, rather than
supporting it.
How is the refusal of Pelagian ideas connected to Rawls’s
view of the market sphere? When Rawls refused the logic
of merit, he recalled the example of wages in a competi-
tive economy, which are determined by supply and demand
rather than the moral worth of individual actions.3 In other
3
  In the market, the credit acquired through individual performance
does not always correspond to the return the individual gets from a
mutually beneficial transaction. Merit is also a backward-looking
concept: what people deserve can depend on how they behaved in
the past. But mutual benefit is defined in terms of people’s circum-
stances and beliefs at the time at which they trade. Whereas the logic
of merit lies in the temporal dimensions of past and future, legitimate
The Illusion of Merit and the Demons of Economic Meritocracy: Which are the Legitimate…
words, he showed that the market works through mecha-
nisms other than the logic of merit. In the footnote Rawls
quotes Frank Knight’s The Ethics of Competition (1935). In
doing so, he locates himself, as far as the critique of eco-
nomic meritocracy is concerned, in the liberal tradition,
where finds in Knight’s best student, Friedrich August von
Hayek, his apex. We refer to Hayek’s critique to go deep
into that of Rawls.
Even though many counterpoised Hayek’s attack on the
notion of social justice and Rawls’s Theory, Hayek believed
that “the differences between us seemed more verbal than
substantial” (Hayek 1998, xvii) and that both “agree on what
is to me the essential point” (Ibid.). As Sandel (2020) noted,
if free-market liberal Hayek and the liberal egalitarian Rawls
differed on the prognosis, both agree on the diagnosis: merit
and meritocracy are not criteria by which to judge or regu-
late a market’s functioning. Hayek noted that the “illusion
of merit,” that is, the illusion that markets reward efforts
acquired by individual action, has a double function in the
market sphere. On one hand, “few circumstances will do
more to make a person energetic and efficient than the belief
that it depends chiefly on him whether he will reach the
goals he has set for himself” (Hayek 1998, 74). On the other
hand, “people will tolerate major inequalities of the mate-
rial positions only if they believe that the different individu-
als get on the whole what they deserve […] they support
market order only because (and so long as) the thought that
the differences in remuneration corresponded roughly to
the difference of merit” (Hayek 1998, 74). The belief that
market is ruled only or chiefly by the logic of merit brings
to meritocracy. Pelagius’s emphasis on merit as a cure for
moral laxity and the popular acceptance of his logic of merit
returns strongly in Hayek’s words.
Useful as it may appear, this illusion comes with the price
of not describing the real market’s functioning. In the market
sphere, many worthy people fail, whereas many unworthy
people succeed, both influenced by external factors rather
than their merits. Hayek, as Rawls, was not only thinking
about brute luck but mostly of the real logic at the core of the
market mechanism: mutual advantage. The rewards mecha-
nism is not related to the logic of merit. Rather, “the remu-
neration they can expect to get for it corresponds to the value
Footnote 3 (continued)
expectations of economic actors could be predicated only through
the present tense or the conditional tense. This is because economic
circumstances can change unpredictably, and thus efforts that were
made with reasonable expectations of return may turn out not to be
rewarded by the market. This proves once more that other logics rule
market transactions together with the meritocratic one and that the
object of merit is defined more by mutual benefit than by individual
efforts. Given these premises, meritocracy should find very little
space in the market.
their services have to those of their fellows who receive them
[…]these values which their service will have to their fel-
lows will often have no relations to their individual merits”
(Hayek 1998, 72). The illusion of the logic of merit brings
people to believe that the object of merit in the market is the
individual effort or the worth of individual actions. However,
the reality of market transactions teaches that there are other
logics ruling market mechanisms alongside merit,4 and thus
the object of merit consists more in the benefits we can pro-
cure to others rather than the intrinsic worth of our actions.
Hayek posed a fundamental question:
It is therefore a real dilemma to what extent we ought
to encourage in the young the belief that when they
really try they will succeed, or should rather emphasize
that inevitably some unworthy will succeed and some
worthy fail-whether we ought to allow the views of
those groups to prevail with whom the over-confidence
in the appropriate reward of the able and industrious
is strong and who in consequence will do much that
benefits the rest, and whether without such partly erro-
neous beliefs the large numbers will tolerate actual
differences in rewards which will be based only partly
on achievement and partly on mere chance. (Hayek
1998, 74).
Interestingly enough, Sandel overlooked this part of Hayek’s
reflection, concluding that “Hayek tells the wealthy that
although their wealth is no measure of their merit, it does
reflect the superior value of their contribution to society”
(Sandel 2020, 140). More than a fixed belief, we believe that
the essence of Hayek’s thought on merit and markets lies in
the abovementioned dilemma.
Rawls unveiled the illusory veil of merit to put his own
veil of equality, that is, the veil of ignorance. He answers
through his difference principle and the idea of legitimate
expectations. Inequalities are allowed insofar as they favor
the least advantaged. Hayek disagreed because there is no
4
  Economics is all built on the idea of perfection—perfect competi-
tion, perfect rationality, perfect information. Every deviation from
perfection has been classified as a failure of the market. Perfection-
ism seems well-suited for the meritocratic logic that, as we showed
through Pelagius, was born as a discourse for the élite. Aristocracy,
virtue, and rewards are all concepts intimately related to merit.
Hence, could we assume that in circumstances of perfect concur-
rence the market is ruled by the logic of merit? Is it correct to argue
that perfectly rational economic actors, endowed with perfect infor-
mation, will get returns corresponding to the net-worth of their indi-
vidual actions? The axioms of micro-economics prove how erroneous
such inferences can be. Thus, when we affirm that meritocracy is not
a market virtue, we mean that even in its perfect form the market is
ruled by elements other than individual merits. Since we know that
markets are not perfect and that neither are the individuals who every
day produce and exchange goods and services, we should avoid look-
ing for merits in a non-meritocratic domain.
13

organism that can accomplish this aim or that is responsible
for this outcome, neither a unique concept social justice to
refer, just the spontaneous order of the market. Nonetheless,
Rawls added that the logic of merit cannot be accepted if not
reconsidered within the logic of “justice as fairness,” nor if
merit is not replaced with legitimate expectations. Other-
wise, one supports a logic that not only does not describe the
functioning of the market but that helps to maintain inequali-
ties through the ideological separation of the meritorious
from the non-meritorious. Our analysis of Pelagius’s thought
helped us to see that this mechanism is attached to the very
logic of merit. Not by chance, Rawls was concerned about
the effects of Pelagian merit-egotism in the economic sphere
since his undergraduate senior thesis:
The capitalist seems merely to use his employees. […]
In the mind of the capitalist those persons are inferior,
while he is superior. Further, the employees are not
being used as means to concrete egoism, that is, to
help amass large properties and estates; no, the end is
not purely appetitional, but is spiritual. The capitalist
takes great pride in his wealth; he loves to show it
off. He likes to walk about his estate inwardly praising
himself on his success. He likes to imagine his estate
as a kingdom in which he is the most important figure.
He keeps a host of servants not to serve his needs, but
to swell the ranks of those who must obey him. All
of his activities go to build up this petty kingdom by
virtue of which his consuming vanity can congratulate
itself. The entire activity of his life, all the feverish
rushing in and out of town, all the unending worries of
business, all these efforts which exhaust body, mind,
and soul are aimed at this indeterminate end of silent,
self-congratulatory self-worship. Underlying all this
sinful striving is the egotist lie, namely, that he is a
person distinct and superior. (Rawls 2009, 194–195).
Legitimate expectations are aimed to avoid merit-egotism
and excessive inequalities in a liberal market society. Legiti-
mate expectations, focusing on the real object of merit in
the economic domain, disentangle the logic of merit from
meritocracy. Even though the mature Rawls will affirm, “my
religion is of interest only to me” (Rawls 2009, 261), some
elements of the Augustinian teachings he embraced are still
fundamental to an understanding of his political theory.
Rawls’s applies the notion of legitimate expectations
to the economic institutions in general, including market
exchange, state redistribution, and the process of produc-
tion. Sandel (2020) saw space for merit only in the last two
points. State redistribution based on merit—although hold-
ing a second place in respect to other criteria as solidarity
or redistributive justice—should be based on a deliberative
democratic decision, in which people agree on what are the
actions which contribute to the common good of society
13
L. Bruni, P. Santori
(merits) they want to compensate. Similarly, recognizing
the dignity of work, for Sandel, means to publicly debate of
the social value different works, and not leaving this role to
meritocratic discourse.
We share these reflections, and in particular, the idea that
the merit should be the content of an informative discussion
between citizens. With Rawls, and differently from Sandel
(2020), we are skeptical in excluding the market exchanges
from this scenario.
Conclusion: Legitimate expectations
in the market?
Last section ended with an interesting finding. For Sandel
(2020), the logic of merit associated with meritocracy should
be refused insofar it is related to the market sphere. In other
spheres, merit can be acceptable if deliberatively reconsid-
ered in connection to the common good of society: “From
the standpoint of the civic conception, the most important
role we play in the economy is not as consumers but as pro-
ducers. For it is as producers that we develop and exercise
our abilities to provide goods and services that fulfill the
needs of our fellow citizens” (Sandel 2020, 209). Here and
throughout the book Sandel is sure in affirming that market
transaction are not and cannot proxy to the contribution to
the common good. In other words, when he rightly claims
that market value does not coincide with social value, he
made, in our view, an illegitimate further step, totally sepa-
rating market value from social value. Tacit in this way of
thinking, in fact, is the idea that true virtues can flourish
in many social spheres except the market exchange, a con-
viction he shared with a recent tradition of virtue ethicists
(MacIntyre 1983; Andreson 1993; Satz 2010). The differ-
ent liberal traditions—Rawls Hayek—would have failed in
noticing this consequence, being not even interested in vir-
tues and common good. While we agree that Rawls was not
interested in describing the market virtues, we think that his
notion of legitimate expectations, which partially overlaps
with Sandel’s idea of democratic deliberatively process for
reconsidering merit, shows that merit can be present in the
market, and that it should not be necessarily related to meri-
tocracy as Sandel argued.
In our view, the market is a network of mutual beneficial
transactions—each individual benefits according to the value
that other people place on their transactions with that indi-
vidual.5 But mutual benefit or mutual advantage (Sugden
5
 From the microeconomic side, it emerges clearly that meritoc-
racy—when merit becomes the only parameter to describe mar-
kets—is not only against equality, but it can lead also to inefficiency.
A person who expects a return major than the benefits she provides
to the trading party, that is, a person who refuses the notion that the
trading party freely judges the value of the services they perform or
the goods they need, creates barriers to the achievement of mutual
The Illusion of Merit and the Demons of Economic Meritocracy: Which are the Legitimate…
2018) is not necessarily a morally neutral category: “the par-
ties to a market transaction have a more internalized sense of
its mutually beneficial nature. Somehow, each party’s under-
standing of his own part in the transaction must include the
idea of the transaction as mutually beneficial” (Bruni and
Sugden 2008, 49). Mutual assistance regards the self-under-
standing of the parties involved in a market exchange (Bruni
and Sugden 2008). The parties conceive themselves during
the economic transaction as a team directed towards a com-
mon goal, which is mutual benefit. The semantic scope is
not the ‘I’ but the ‘we’: both parties care, at the same time,
about their own good and the good of the others with whom
they are trading. This understanding changes not only the
perceptions of economic actors, but it can also affect the
choices and actions performed.
Then, mutual advantage internalized by economic actors,
i.e., mutual assistance (Bruni and Sugden 2008), is an ele-
ment from which the logic of merit should be reconsidered.
As for Augustine was the logic of gift, as for Rawls was the
logic of justice as fairness, for us it is the reconsideration
of merit within the logic of mutual assistance which ren-
ders legitimate expectations as the object of merit in market
sphere. Whereas merit is an illusion when markets are con-
ceived as a network of people seeking exclusively their own
interest and unintentionally promoting the common good
(invisible hand mechanism); and whereas meritocracy with
is demons—hybris of the wealthy, legitimations of inequali-
ties, blame on the non-deserving (meritocratic deficit)—is
tied to this illusion; however, nothing prevents to create
a space for merit as legitimate expectations when people
internalize the sense of the mutual advantageous nature of
the market transaction, promoting their goods alongside
the good of other people and, in turn, the common good of
society.
How can people internalize this understanding of the
moral nature of markets? Here Sandel’s referment to the
deliberative and democratic process, close to what Rawls
named the exercise of public reason (Rawls 1993, chap. 6)
might be of help. We envisage the idea of something close to
a process of deliberative democracy (Gutmann and Thomson
2004) on the moral nature of market transactions. From the
representatives within a parliamentary college to the citi-
zens in a neighborhood meeting, in the debates people must
offer in support of their theses reasons that they expect to be
recognized as valid by free and equal citizens, who accept
Footnote 5 (continued)
benefit. The opportunity of mutual advantage, the incentive mecha-
nism that the market spontaneously produces (Sugden 2018) to lead
people where they can benefit and be benefitted most by each other,
risks being distorted by individuals’ beliefs in the deserving nature of
their actions.
this fundamental public principle of discussion (Habermas
2015). Moreover, the debate has to be characterized by the
condition of publicity (Rawls 1993, chap.), namely the delib-
eration must take place in public and the arguments pre-
sented must be understandable and acceptable to all. Finally,
our idea of deliberative democracy on the moral nature of
markets is that it should be constantly open to change. A
position adopted today may not have any effectiveness in the
future and there must therefore be the possibility of changing
it. In a normal democratic process, the revision is important
because it allows citizens who find themselves suffering
the consequences of decisions that they did not endorse to
legitimately accept them, while continuing to fight for future
changes. In our case, giving the mutable nature of markets
and technology, applying this principle could be useful to
also advance our moral understanding of markets.
The questions which should animate these discussions
could be like this: what are the legitimate expectations of
the buyer and the seller, of the producer and the consumer,
of the worker and the manager? What can they reasonably
expect for their efforts in the economic domain? Which vir-
tues would help them to face the interference of unpredict-
able circumstances in their economic exchanges? What is
the social value of market value? In other words, what is
the moral nature of the market transactions? If the citizens
start to endorse this kind of discussions, nothing prevents
to imagine the legitimate expectations—merit revised—as
characterizing the market sphere.
We conclude saying that there is another way in which
merit as legitimate expectations can influence the market
without becoming meritocracy. Our idea is also that people
start to debate on what market activities can be dangerous
for the common good. This not to encourage paternalis-
tic dystopic measure by the state against non-meritorious
economic activities. More modestly, we believe that peo-
ple have much to say as consumers. Differently from what
Sandel believes (see above), their democratic power can be
expressed also in the act of consumerism, buying products
which express their moral understanding and avoiding prod-
ucts which they think can damage the quality of civic life.
Hence, they can legitimate expect to live in market society
which asymptotically resembles their ideas of justice and
good, merit included.
Acknowledgements  To the editor and the two anonymous referees
goes our gratitude. Their comments helped significantly to improve
the quality of our manuscript and coherence of our argument. We thank
also Robert Sugden and Francesco Guala for their comments on the
earlier version of this manuscript.
Funding  The authors received no specific funding for this work.
13

Compliance with Ethical Standards  Frank, R. H. (2016). Success and luck: Good fortune and the myth of
Conflict of interest  The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Ethical Approval  This article does not contain any studies with human
participants or animals performed by any of the authors.
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