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The big idea

Politics books Do we want to live in a meritocracy?
Sam Freedman
Mon 10 Jan 2022 08.00
GMT

189

Illustration: Elia Barbieri/The Guardian

Individual talents aren’t deserved or earned, so why should Advertisement

they be organising principle of society?

T
he double shock of Donald Trump’s election and Leave’s
referendum win in 2016 sent political commentators scurrying for
an explanation. The blame was largely placed on members of a
smug liberal elite, who had grown so convinced of their own
status and opinions that they ignored the growing discontent of their fellow
citizens. Trump’s win and Brexit were, in their different ways, a reason and
an opportunity for those who had been “left behind” to kick back.

There’s much to this argument. In western democracies, modern political

parties of centre left and right have increasingly emphasised merit as the
basis on which society should be organised. The promise of “equality of
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efforts deserve greater reward and

object to the advancement of people both above and below them on the
ladder. After becoming prime minister, Theresa May, speaking to Brexit
voters, offered a “vision for a truly meritocratic Britain … ordinary working-
class people … deserve a better deal”. Politicians from all parties talk about
“people who work hard and play by the rules” with the frequency of a
catechism.

The best of the post-populist backlash books, such as Michael Sandel’s

Tyranny of Merit, accept that the current elites do not represent a genuine
meritocracy, but take the argument a stage further. Even if we could
somehow organise society to ensure genuine equality of opportunity, and
allow everyone a fair shot at success, would we want to? After all, the term
“meritocracy” was coined by the sociologist and politician Michael Young in
his 1958 book, which imagined it leading to a dystopia where a high-IQ elite,
certain their position was justified, lorded it over everyone else until
rebellion ensued.

Sandel’s view is that our talents are not deserved any more than the
advantages bestowed by wealthy, well-connected parents. They are also an
accident of birth. In her recent book, The Genetic Lottery, Kathryn Paige
Harden notes that there is a 1 in 70tn chance that any given child emerges
from the combination of their parents’ genetic material. None of us control
either the genes we are born with or the environment we are born into. You
may think that, regardless of your natural talents, you still had to work hard
to achieve your successes. But it is our genes, too, that help to determine
how conscientious we are, how well we can concentrate and so on.

Sandel points out that the same logic applies even if you are religious and
don’t accept a purely biological account of human behaviour. If your talents
were bestowed by an omnipotent god then your achievements are no more
due to your personal merit than if they were a genetic accident.

But fully accepting this logic is almost impossible. When Luther and Calvin
strongly reasserted Augustine’s principle of salvation by grace alone, their
followers found it impossible to believe their own actions made no difference
to their eternal fate, so ended up seeing their good works as evidence of
God’s plan to save them. They did “deserve” it after all.

It would be hard to organise society if people weren’t

incentivised by the prospect of reward for what feel like their
efforts

The same is true in our more secular world. While people may be able to
accept the logic of Sandel and Harden in theory, it would be very hard to
organise society if, in practice, people weren’t incentivised by the prospect of
reward for what feel like their efforts. And both authors struggle to offer
pragmatic suggestions on how to reduce the fixation on merit. Harden,
writing for a US audience, merely proposes the kind of welfare state common
in Europe, which, while obviously preferable, still leaves huge inequalities.
Sandel pushes for a redistribution of status based on civic and moral worth
rather than just financial success, which simply changes the definition of
merit to one he’s more comfortable with.

Meritocracy as an organising principle is an inevitable function of a free

society. We are designed to see our achievements as worthy of reward and
any politician who tried to suggest otherwise wouldn’t be long in elected
office. But the raft of books about the limits of merit is an important
correction to the arrogance of contemporary entitlement and an opportunity
to reassert the importance of luck, or grace, in our political thinking. The
more we are able to accept our achievements are largely out of our control,
the easier it becomes to understand that our failures, and those of others, are
too. And that in turn should increase our humility and the respect with
which we treat our fellow citizens. Ultimately, as the writer David Roberts
put it: “Building a more compassionate society means reminding ourselves
of luck, and of the gratitude and obligations it entails.”

Sam Freedman is a senior fellow at the Institute for Government and a

former adviser at the department for education.

Further Reading
The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? by Michael
Sandel (Penguin, £9.99)

The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality by Kathryn Paige
Harden (Princeton, £25)

The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World by

Adrian Wooldridge (Allen Lane, £25)

Topics
Politics books Y The big idea
Society books / features

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