Google the concept of Meritocracy and you will discover the term was introduced in 1958 by British sociologist Michael Young, its satirical intent being the suggestion that Western Capitalist societies were anything but bastions of “merit.” Ironically, the term has come to be used by “conservatives” to explain the basic superiority of those societies to others around the world.
Typical of recent academic discourse on this issue is 2019’s “The Meritocracy Trap” written by Yale law professor Daniel Markovits. Whereas works such as Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” saw wealth as the bludgeon by which Western Elites maintain their positions of dominance, Markovits identifies Education as that weapon. Is it true that the children of those elites, inasmuch as they have access to institutions of higher learning which the impoverished do not, have a distinctive advantage over the latter? Of course it is. But is this a matter of “social injustice” or a simple fact of life, the fact that History counts, the fact that the accomplishments [i.e., merits] of our ancestors, both immediate and remote, must inevitably impact our lives? No caring human being could callously ignore the horrific conditions to which the children of the Third World are frequently born, and Western Nations have contributed billions to the amelioration of their plight. But the fundamental conviction of the contemporary Left is that all such gaps between the rich and the poor, including those within Western societies, are a moral abomination. It’s the absurd, informing principle of the Religion of Egalitarianism and it quite literally removes Human History and Behavior as factors in the human narrative.
But, one might suggest, that’s insane; one can’t just pretend history never happened! The Ontology [i.e., definition of Man] of the Left, however, grants it that option, its Darwinian/Marxist assumption being that what might appear to be human accomplishments are actually just attempts by the compulsively self-serving Animal, Man, to exploit both his Environment and his fellow Man. While Markovits pretends to be intent on proving that Merit is in no way the determining factor in the socio-economic outcomes of the Capitalist West, he actually doesn’t believe in merit at all. Not only, according to the Left, are poor people victims of circumstance, so also are the rich, their “accomplishments” coming not in response to a perfectly natural, intelligent, conscious quest for self-improvement, but to their apparently naive belief in the myth of Human Merit. Hence Markovits’ telling assertion: “Meritocracy traps elites in an all-encompassing, never-ending struggle.” They are, that is to say, the victims of a simple animal urge to succeed. Such is the amoral vision of Man promulgated by the Left, a vision which is by definition antipathetic to the very concept of Merit.
The rational, scientific orientation of the Post-Enlightenment West is clearly the source of the freedoms and affluence enjoyed by most within that domain. But what our “intellectuals” have had the audacity to perpetrate is the conflation of the Merit of Reason with the moral failings of its advocates, the essence of Post-Colonial studies being that Western Rationalism and the achievements it engendered are inherently evil. To be successful, as were British colonialists world-wide, is somehow inherently evil, the actual beliefs and behavior of both they and those they confronted, simply irrelevant to the Egalitarian narrative.
And yet, astoundingly, while impugning Western Rationalism, while denouncing its advocates as White Supremacists, the Left has the audacity to demand that those living in squalor, both domestically and world-wide, are entitled to the same freedoms and affluence produced by the very system they so thoroughly despise. It’s one of the many contradictions at the heart of “progressivism,” the hypocritical assertion that all cultural perspectives are equally valid even as History proves unequivocally that they are Not!
A second book you would no doubt confront should you investigate the topic of “meritocracy” is Michael J. Sandel’s 2020 “The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?” The title says it all! It is a fact obvious to any but the most deluded that a society committed to rewarding “merit” will by definition imperil the self-indulgent, the ignorant, the lazy, will by definition be indifferent to the common good. The naive Leftist belief that all people are equally beautiful, that Evil does not in fact exist, informs Sandel’s conviction that rewarding achievement is a species of tyranny. His is a formula for the decline of Western Civilization, for the decline of Human Morality itself. To repeat for the thousandth time, no one is suggesting our Democracies are perfectly equitable, but the Left’s elevation of the “common good” over and above the value of Merit perfectly illustrates the indifference to both intellectual and moral excellence at the heart of its vision.
Among the host of flattering reviews of Markovits’ book cited by Google is one by Philip Bell of the London School of Economics who, while acknowledging the powerful evidence the work presents of Capitalism’s apparent injustices, states rather wryly that its diagnosis is far more compelling than its proposed solutions. Among those solutions, of course, increased government intervention into the private affairs of men, arbitrary edicts designed to assure equality of outcome in every domain, punitive policies leveled at the “privileged” for transgressions committed by their forbears hundreds of years ago, etc., etc., etc…….all of the above entailing an effort to stifle the amazing Diversity and Creativity of the Human Spirit out of deference to the “common good.” To put it as simply as possible, the Egalitarian Left actually hates Life, its various historical, political incarnations being not only antagonistic to Human Freedom, but perfectly comfortable with Death Camps in the pursuit of its noble ends.
Just watched a video of Candace Owens in conversation with Melissa Tate, a Black American “conservative” who spent her youth in Zimbabwe. Amongst the various factors which led to that country’s financial decline and intolerable level of inflation, she says, was the expropriation of hundreds of White farmers from their lands in the name of “social justice,” their Black replacements, unfortunately, knowing relatively little about farming. The predictable decline in the nation’s agricultural productivity, sadly, has made the price of a loaf of bread beyond the reach of the average family. Apparently “merit” is not just a fetish of the Rational West, but an integral aspect of Man’s ability to survive in the Real World!