Meritocracy is just another autocracy.
Meritocracy from a sociological perspective is a system where leadership, often even autocratic (I’ll explain what I mean), should be given to those who have merit. This leadership can either be given to government officials or even in enterprises where we work.
It is a very highly celebrated idea because meritocracy is often associated with capitalism, which is a system of private accumulation under an autocratic management. Under capitalism, we are assumed to provide goods and services for the community because we made an investment, which came from an idea. That idea is put into production, which is often run by the idea people, and people buy the commodities of said production. The person who had the idea is then rewarded with money and income. Couple that with being smart with your money and being knowledgeable (which is like merit) then you’ll be successful.
Meritocracy and capitalism are not just systems, they have become ideologies. It is very easy to intertwine them together and make it seem like capitalism is a meritocracy. You have earned your way to the top because you own the means of production and made it upwards. Meritocracy has become what Christianity was during the time of feudalism. You can’t not argue against this idea because the ideology is so powerful. You needed Christianity to justify feudalism, and now you need meritocracy to justify capitalism. You need these things to be infallible to justify their position in the hierarchy. Conservatives and Right-Libertarians (who are fake libertarians) will often shut down and not listen when you even criticize the idea of meritocracy. Even social liberals will sometimes say “we aren’t a meritocracy, but we haven’t achieved the idea yet.”
It has gotten so bad that leftists often must make arguments along meritocratic lines.
So, let’s try arguing along their lines for a minute here.
Meritocracy as a capitalist system
As described above, meritocracy is often associated with how much money you have. And if there is inequality, then it is because certain people are just better than others. The poor are just not that good with their money. So, we shouldn’t care about inequality. Any deviation from this model will result in poverty!
But is it as simple as this? That those on the top are there just because they earned it?
Well first let’s play a game for a minute with the game of monopoly. Fun fact: this game was invented to describe capitalism and a critique of it. Now its message has become usurped by the powers at be to describe merit. You won because you are meritorious. But I digress.
Imagine that we are playing a series of monopoly games with up to four players. The objective of the game is not to go bankrupt and if you don’t, you win. The winner of the game gets to keep 25% of their earnings for the next game. While it can be anybody’s game within the first few sets, after a certain point of time, the winner will accumulate so much money and property that they will almost always be guaranteed to win. While the loser would be almost guaranteed to lose. And if you’re a good businessperson, like so many right wingers will fervently promote, then you won’t lose.
The point of this analogy is that when someone has so much monetary advantage because of meritocracy, then they are able to invest their money and keep others out of the market. Thus, meritocratic inequality almost assures low economic mobility.
Of course, it is not always about land accumulation, sometimes people move up in companies and become executives. Heck my papi started as a janitor but is now a CEO (sarcasm)!
First, most companies don’t do this idea anymore. Most people who are executives both have post-secondary degrees with a high level of education and never even worked in the positions of the workers. Even earning their wages too. When you start somewhere at the bottom of said enterprise, you often stay there, and baby boomers need to stop suggesting this old idea.
Secondly, when you have a lot of money, you can invest more in your own labor power. This includes better education, housing, food, and the best healthcare money can buy. You’re able to be “as healthy as a horse” as the old saying goes. And then you’ll be able to invest more in the education of your children (and that’s an important part of all of this). Healthy people make better choices and those can be influenced by all the factors I mentioned above. Right now, Harvard universities’ economic makeup consists of 15.4% from the top 0.1% while if you include the rest of the upper 10%, that number goes up to a jarring 70%! It is a very similar situation at other Ivy League universities which tend to offer the best education. This is because Ivy League education is out of reach due to costs [1]. Many top law firms, which pay the most money, will often hire strictly from these top universities which are expensive. In fact, college in general is getting more and more expensive as the student loan debt crisis very clearly shows. It also helps to have connections which affirm the old saying: “It’s all about who you know” and most people at the top generally don’t socialize with the bottom class. Those people are set up for life and their children are too.
Yes, there are people who have broken into the system despite their poor roots but that’s not as common as it’s made out to be. It is a very common propaganda trick used by the bourgeoisie to justify capitalist, meritocratic hierarchies that hey you can be one of us too if you work very hard! You should start a business, that’s what a lot of successful people do! Yes, that can be the case but right now, capital is incredibly centralized around a few right now and small business ownership in terms of percentage, is smaller than ever before. Corporate, monopolistic behemoths like Amazon, Walmart, and Microsoft are well known for predatory pricing against small businesses. Also, those who produce commodities for retailers, that pretty much dominated by a few.
What about the poor people then?
As mentioned before, you can invest more in the labor power of your own children. Meaning that they will have all the advantages to make better decisions in life. Meaning that you don’t get to choose where you are born or who your parents are.
Those children who are born lower class tend to suffer from the effects of pollution, crime, broken homes, so many negative effects over time. All of these are due to lack of access to opportunities [2]. Many will often go out and join gangs when they grow up because they think well, it’s what you do because everyone else is doing so and there’s nothing else.
While we do have freedom, you need to have the ability to act on it. This idea is called positive freedom. The ability to act. Rich people have lots of positive freedom because they can use their own wealth and position to advance their own interests. Poor people lack access to institutions that may help them advance and middle class society itself is even slipping away.
Do you know why the rust belt is called what it is? It’s because many communities like Youngstown, Ohio and Camden, New Jersey were once thriving industrial towns which produced many of the world’s goods in the 1950s. Now they are towns of blight, crime, pollution, and horrible social consequences that come with it. It wasn’t just because of white flight that caused these communities to fall, it was outsourcing jobs and most importantly automation. Automation brought about 70% of job losses according to MIT professor Daron Acemoglu and Boston University professor Pascual Restrepo [3]. It makes sense that automation was the biggest job killer because capitalism always moves to a more organic form of production first, rather than employ human laborers.
We often refer to foreigners as the problem because it is a political cheap shot. An easy target because A) they can’t vote in your elections and B) nowadays immigrants are coming from Latin America and Asia rather than Europe, meaning they aren’t white. America has a very old tradition of racism that we often convince ourselves that we are over (the election of Donald Trump pretty much disproves this). And if the logic of the system follows, you will want to pander to those prejudices because it is much more rewarding.
But now let’s talk about meritocracy more broadly.
Meritocracy and democracy aren’t compatible.
Meritocracy and capitalism can be mutually exclusive, but they usually go hand in hand with one another. Imperial China for example, used to employ meritocracy as a means of deciding bureaucrats in their government. The communist government of China still employs many of these tactics. Meritocracy and authoritarianism are quite compatible.
Democracy and meritocracy in this modern world are often interlinked to association with one another. We elect the leaders of the country because they are the most “meritorious”. In fact, a very common talking point used by candidates running for public office is that they have provided the most for the community, therefore they are fit to run for office.
This idea should sound ridiculous on its face but because people associate merit with fitness, I will challenge this idea.
Because of our current Second Nature, we often give credence to the idea that we need hierarchical structures. Democracy is often thought of as the “tyranny of the masses”. So instead of aristocracy like what we used to do, we should do what’s called a meritocracy. Those who would produce the most should be given leadership because power cannot be trusted by the masses for, they would use it to terrorize other people. So, the argument usually goes.
Of course, we never exactly wonder why people would terrorize others, what forces are at work which would influence such behaviors. What are the contradictions in this sort of idea (by the way, meritocrats hate dialectics).
The key contradiction of meritocracy is that those who produce the most often end up making policies that benefit them rather than that of society.
Milton Friedman in his famous essay regarding social responsibility, he argued that businesses should do what is good for their respective companies rather than that of the communities they inhibit. Companies shouldn’t concern themselves with the issues of their communities and focus instead on maximizing profits. This idea is often called “greed is good”. Government in turn should stay out of the economy. Profit is often associated with merit.
Or so that’s the story we are often told.
Government is influenced by the kind of economic system that exists. Be it capitalism, socialism, fiefdom, slavery, primitive communism, etc. Contrary to what we are often told, capitalism and the state are quite interlinked with one another. Capitalists don’t care very much about capitalism. Milton Friedman for example supported the fascist coup of Pinochet against democratically elected socialist Salvador Allende. The policies were imposed against the will of the people. The rich became richer, and the poor became poorer.
So, what is the point of me saying all of this?
When you put people into power, they don’t care very much about what things ought to be. They care about what the world is. The current system is dominated by profit and that is what capitalism is constantly seeking. The people on top would say something one day, but do something else another because it is profitable.
Meritocracy is that way and it would produce bad results for those who don’t succeed in the game. Meritocrats don’t really care about meritocracy or the society they live in.
There is an old parable that might help explain this:
“Imagine that a society is composed of farmers, who are nurturing and cooperative; and warriors, who are cunning and strong. For decades, the society lives in prosperous harmony with its neighbors, as farmers raise crops and warriors keep the peace, and both do well. Then one day, some warriors commence a border skirmish and, through a stream of provocations, steadily escalate hostilities until eventually harmony has been replaced by pervasive and constant warfare. Once the society has adopted a war footing, the farmers become increasingly unproductive and the warriors increasingly essential to preserving safety and warfare. The warriors now claim disproportionate status, wealth, and power on the ground that they deserve private advantages to their disproportionate contribution to the public good. To which the farmers might answer that the warriors would not be so productive if they had not started the wars. The warriors’ true product must be offset by the general costs of the war, and especially by its suppression of farming.” [5]
The war was decided by a few people because the desire for profit was at force. We rewarded people based on merit, rather than ability. Merit and ability aren’t necessarily the same thing. Merit and meritocracy aren’t themselves necessarily the same thing.
Ironically, meritocracy would be more possible under socialism than capitalism. I have done a paper on what socialism is which you can view below. Socialism would give leadership based on what people decide. Democracy. The workers would likely reward leadership based on use, rather than merit (in this case exchange). Neither even for who produces the most. What the leaders can and can’t do in an enterprise, would be decided by those who they rule. Socialism doesn’t necessarily get rid of the division of labor but democratizes it. https://medium.com/@derekhudley/what-is-socialism-07faca88bd0c
A good book I would recommend reading is called “The Meritocracy Trap” by Daniel Markovitz.
Thank you for reading! If you wish to contact me, my email address is derekhudley@gmail.com. If you have any suggestions about what I should do to improve my writing, please let me know.
[1] Bolotnikova, Marina N. “Harvard’s Economic Diversity Problem”. Harvard Magazine. 1.19.17 Harvard’s Economic Diversity Problem | Harvard Magazine
[2] Dizikes, Peter. “Study shows the poor simply lack opportunities to gain wealth, but a one-time boost can make a major difference”. Study shows the poor simply lack opportunities to gain wealth, but a one-time boost can make a major difference (phys.org)
[3] Winck, Ben. “Automation helped kill up to 70% of the US’s middle class jobs since 1980, study says.” Business Insider. Jun 22, 2021. Automation Helped Kill up to 70% of the US’s Middle-Class Jobs: Study (businessinsider.com)
[4] The Illusion Of Choice — Good Stuff (jamesgood.co.uk)
[5] Markovitz, Daniel. “The Meritocracy Trap.”
