It’s well-known that urban settlements and the division of labour led to increasing stratification. — Jamal

Stratification comes also by the free market system, where supply and demand determine price and thus the income of people. And we accept this because this usually goes along the lines of a meritocratic society: if you have quite rare abilities and knowledge for which there is a demand for, you get a higher income for your work. If on the other hand you can only do something that nearly everybody can do with little training, then likely the compensation for that work will be meager. If there is a shortage of labour, then the price of that labour has to go up, which then also affects just where people choose to work. And as we cannot know just what will be needed, we get the needed information from the price mechanism.

Thanks for that perspective on conservatism.

All the same, if the "humane" form of conservatism you address does intend to progress toward somewhere, isn’t it incrementally progressing toward an more egalitarian society (contra progression toward the authoritarianism of a fascist state, for example)? — javra

From the point of view of conservatism, I think it’s primarily negative. That is, it’s about taking the edge off hierarchy, preventing the flagrant abuses, rather than a positive effort towards a different kind of society. Thus, it’s not really about progress in the general sense. Many conservatives like to give to charity.

But because conservatism is pragmatic and diverse, they’ll have many different positions on this. One might be that so long as the change is organic and gradual rather than deliberatively applied all at once on the basis of grand principles, whatever progress happens might be okay. But again, they would reject an imagined perfect goal for these changes.

NOTE: In what I’ve just written, I’m not really taking into account the newer, more strident kinds of conservatism associated lately with the US or with Thatcherism (some conservatives doubt that Thatcherism was a form of conservatism at all).

Maybe a root issue here is what is meant by “egalitarianism”. Does the term intend something along the lines of an equality of fundamental rights for every citizen (e.g., a CEO gets ticketed just as a janitor will for a parking violation despite the stratification of economic class between the two … to not bring into the conversation more complex issues, such as healthcare) or does it imply the absolute equality of all people in all ways? — javra

Good question. Liberal egalitarianism refers to the former. For me, that’s not good enough, but not because I want the latter. My utopian egalitarianism is about the equal possibility for every individual to flourish, to actualize their potential in whatever they choose to do, free of economic, bureaucratic, and authoritarian compulsion or hindrance. (“Whatever they choose to do” has limits, needless to say).

Marx would have said that egalitarianism just is the false belief that a capitalist society can be the kind of society I just sketched, hence he rejected egalitarianism along with all talk of rights and justice. He took that position for specific political reasons and I don’t feel the need to follow him in that, but it does contain the insight that rights are not enough in a world where material reality doesn’t allow for the full flourishing of every individual.

Marx would have said that egalitarianism just is the false belief that a capitalist society can be the kind of society I just sketched, hence he rejected egalitarianism along with all talk of rights and justice. — Jamal

Interesting again, thanks.

As background for a, maybe all too naive, question on Marxism:

Speaking from a common folk understanding of capitalism, as I’m so far aware of it, the term can mean different things to different people (I’ve bumped into more than a few that reflexively equate it to democracy, for example; something I sharply disagree with). As for myself, though, I can’t find any other succinct label for a meritocratic economy other than that of “capitalism” – all the technicalities and history to this term aside. What I mean by this is that those who put in more effort into and have better skills at X become economically compensated for engaging in X more than those who do little if anything, lack knowhow, or both when engaging in X. As a theoretical ideal this may seem straightforward enough, but it would require societal movements toward a cessation of nepotism (be it racial, of economic class etc.); equal educational opportunities for all children, regardless of their parents’ background, to allow those who put in the greatest effort and hold the greatest knowhow to flourish … the list can go on.

I’m mentioning this because I so far find that an egalitarian society needs to be meritocratic (economically as well as politically) if it’s not to succumb to vices that undermine its long-term preservation. And this in turn would then result in certain societal hierarchies, fluid though they'd be. An authority (not to be confused with “authoritarianism” or authoritarian interests) in some discipline is then to ideally be trusted, respected, and economically compensated more than a trainee in the same field, for example – this, again, ideally based on due merit – with the further ideal that such an authority in a field works in good faith to best optimize the flourishing of those who are not as experienced in the given field.

Yes, this would, I believe, require a much more elevated moral compass of all citizens/members of an egalitarian society. But my main point to this is that an egalitarian society, to be successful in sustaining itself, can only result in a meritocratic specialization / stratification / hierarchy of roles (in large enough societies, each with its own due degree of economic compensation that in part roughly correlates the individual’s degree of societal responsibility toward other(s)) ... a hierarchy which, again, would be dynamic rather than static in nature.

Feel free to disagree, of course. But I do find this ideal to be a far cry from the capitalism of today, which does not check and balance itself against such things as monopolies (economically) and oligarchies (politically); with these in turn stopping those who hold potential to improve things via innovation from so doing; hence, with these ending meritocracy. To not here evoke today's capitalism essentially being a global pyramid structure which lacks the infinite resources it is modeled on. A different issue, though.

I only know of Marx and Engels indirectly, and have not read their works. So, the naive question:

What do you gather was (more aptly, would have been) Marx’s stance on a meritocratic economy? (The term “meritocracy” wasn’t coined until recently, and even then it was initially used as a pejorative label … this to argue against the very type of healthy competition and fluid stratification I was endorsing above as a needed aspect of any healthy egalitarian society – be it tribal or the prospect of one that is global.)

At the very least, he did hold that labor merited more than what it was getting. But I'd like better insight into the matter: would he have been opposed to people being compensated based on merit?

(BTW: Coming from a communist Stalinist background – I immigrated to the US from Romania as a preadolescent – the backlash against communism as ideology from many of those I’m close to stems, not only from the Stalinist, totalitarian surveillance-state mechanisms and the like, but also form the everyday experience that many who were lazy and inept benefited greatly on account of nepotism while those who worked hard and had much to offer where often not treated very well … especially if the latter were not members of the communist party. I should also add, I’m personally all for community-ism – which is how I rephrase my current understanding of the communist ideal when it comes it being theory on paper. Though, again, I don’t have much of any expertise in firsthand readings.)

He took that position for specific political reasons and I don’t feel the need to follow him in that, but it does contain the insight that rights are not enough in a world where material reality doesn’t allow for the full flourishing of every individual. — Jamal

I'm in agreement with this.

Yikes! I’m going to have to do some work here. Great post. :up:

First, capitalism.

As for myself, though, I can’t find any other succinct label for a meritocratic economy other than that of “capitalism” – all the technicalities and history to this term aside. What I mean by this is that those who put in more effort into and have better skills at X become economically compensated for engaging in X more than those who do little if anything, lack knowhow, or both when engaging in X. — javra

In capitalism, many important relationships between people reduce—by way of contracts between employers and employees or between buyers and sellers, etc.—to the cash nexus, the complex of social connections whose entire raison d'etre is money. In a society in which money rules and in which work is usually done for a company operating in a market to make profits, in theory the person who can help to produce the biggest profits with skill and hard work has the highest market value—because their working ability, not only what they might produce, is a market commodity—and is compensated accordingly. This is what I see as the truth of your meritocratic definition of capitalism.

And it’s an important truth, because it shows that capitalism is not, as some people claim, as old as civilization itself. Before capitalism, social relations were based on traditions and obligations that had nothing to do with money, and the people at the top had other things to think about, like winning wars, getting in to heaven, or producing an heir (and if they did make money, they didn't actually make it but just took it). A clan chief was obliged to protect his clan members and they owed him loyalty and service; a vassal was obliged to fight for his king to justify holding on to his fief, and also to protect his peasants, who in turn owed him part of their produce; and so on across many variations and times up to the modern period. Capitalism swept most of this away. The result in connection to merit was, ideally, that at last people could be rewarded for their effort and ability, not for their existing attachments of family, class, guild, religion, tradition, obligation, and so on.

But I think there is untruth in it too. The untruth is not that you failed to account for the fact that this theoretical ideal of meritocracy has not been fully realized—following the passage quoted above you went on to describe exactly that. Rather, the untruth from my point of view is that you equate the theoretical ideal of meritocracy with the theoretical ideal of capitalism itself, obscuring the reality of the social relations that were ushered in by capitalism, the reality that sweeping away the stratifications of the old society did not result in an unstratified society, and more particularly, did not result in a society in which stratification was based only on merit, as you imply (at least in theory).

In your picture, to say that meritocracy has not been fully realized is also to say that capitalism has not been fully realized. I think this is an unbalanced and restricted view: if we take a wider view of capitalism, we might see that in fact, the structures and tendencies of capitalism are not always conducive to meritocracy, because they produce a kind of stratification that prevents it (concentration of wealth and opportunity, etc). So what makes your definition importantly untrue is that it is precisely capitalism that prevents the realization of meritocracy. If you equate them, you fail to see this. I know this simplifies your view but I'm outlining the problems I see in gross terms partly for my own clarification.

However, that's just a part of my critique. I think there are deeper problems with meritocracy too, but I'll come to that later.

Anyway, what I mean by "capitalism" can probably be seen in what I've written, but I'll try to summarize, and this should make it even clearer why I don't agree with your definition. A capitalist society is one in which most useful things are commodities, sold in markets by or on behalf of those who privately own the technology, raw materials, buildings, money, land, and the best part of each worker's day, required to produce them. Historically this required the separation of workers from their own tools and products and the forcible seizure and enclosure of common land by private concerns, and this state of affairs must be maintained for the system to work. Capitalism is based on dispossession and the preservation of dispossession, and that's despite the increasing abundance of consumer goods available to almost everyone.

So I think meritocracy is, at least in theory, a part of what capitalism is or could be, but it's not the whole story.

What follows? Rather than just a matter of, as you suggest later, stratification resulting from meritocracy—which for you is just to say, resulting from capitalism—under my view of capitalism, it's the other way around as well: capitalism is based on stratification, and this means that meritocracy, which I agreed is enabled to some degree by capitalism, is also based on stratification. Thus, meritocracy is both produced by and produces stratification.

At least, this is often what has happened in reality. Some kind of system of award for merit could also conceivably work in a rationally planned economy, not only under capitalism. But I'll come to that.

Now, on to meritocracy itself. Economics is really not my strong point, but we'll see how it goes.

I’m mentioning this because I so far find that an egalitarian society needs to be meritocratic (economically as well as politically) if it’s not to succumb to vices that undermine its long-term preservation. And this in turn would then result in certain societal hierarchies, fluid though they'd be. An authority (not to be confused with “authoritarianism” or authoritarian interests) in some discipline is then to ideally be trusted, respected, and economically compensated more than a trainee in the same field, for example – this, again, ideally based on due merit – with the further ideal that such an authority in a field works in good faith to best optimize the flourishing of those who are not as experienced in the given field.

Yes, this would, I believe, require a much more elevated moral compass of all citizens/members of an egalitarian society. But my main point to this is that an egalitarian society, to be successful in sustaining itself, can only result in a meritocratic specialization / stratification / hierarchy of roles (in large enough societies, each with its own due degree of economic compensation that in part roughly correlates the individual’s degree of societal responsibility toward other(s)) ... a hierarchy which, again, would be dynamic rather than static in nature. — javra

This is really interesting, thanks.

I can think of two basic responses. Right now I’m endorsing both, even though they contradict.

1. Meritocracy is good in principle, but:

• Capitalist society fails to realize it
• Not only that, but capitalism and meritocracy are contradictory

2. Meritocracy is bad in principle


1. Meritocracy is good in principle, but

You admit that meritocracy has not been fully realized:

As a theoretical ideal this may seem straightforward enough, but it would require societal movements toward a cessation of nepotism (be it racial, of economic class etc.); equal educational opportunities for all children, regardless of their parents’ background, to allow those who put in the greatest effort and hold the greatest knowhow to flourish … the list can go on. — javra

Since you agree with my first sub-point here, I don't need to argue for it, although it does occur to me that it would be worth going in to more detail to expose and emphasize the scale of the problem; as you no doubt know, it has been extensively studied over the past years and decades. Another time, maybe.

My important point is that capitalism and meritocracy are contradictory, where contradictory means something like essentially in conflict.

To put my cards on the table: meritocracy is to an important degree a myth, an idea that justifies the current reality by describing it falsely. Widespread upward mobility, which meritocracy depends on, is possible in capitalism not primarily thanks to the market, but rather to policies that curtail or ameliorate the inequality, the concentration of wealth and opportunity that the market produces. For instance, in the British post-war consensus—when governments of both the right and the left maintained a mixed economy, a large welfare state, strong unions, and free education—upward mobility was possible to some extent. It has been visible in the changing memberships of governments, in business, in the arts, and in education, how important this was in allowing working class people to succeed professionally, and how much it has now collapsed. It began to change under Thatcher, despite her explicit and no doubt sincere belief that she was actually advancing the cause of meritocracy ("pull yourself up by your bootstraps" and all that).

The mythic nature of meritocracy is most obvious in the United States, where the myth is strongest (the American Dream), but where social mobility is among the lowest in the developed countries.

The reason for the contradiction is that under capitalism, wealth and opportunity become concentrated and inequality widens, even alongside a general alleviation of poverty—and this is obviously self-reinforcing. And I'd argue that this is a structural feature of capitalism, and not simply an unfortunate epiphenomenon. I don't think we can just group this all together under the label of "nepotism" and imagine that it can be done away with while at the same time leaving the workings of capitalism alone. The market is not a socially neutral mechanism to reward the most able.

If that's not a full-enough argument to prove the inherent contradictions and tendencies of capitalism, it's because I'm trying to avoid economics as much as possible. I can pathetically hand-wave by saying that several economists have made the same points, not all of them Marxians.


2. Meritocracy is bad in principle

Meritocracy is bad in two senses. One is that it works as a myth, so that the very idea of meritocracy hides the truth (this is like Marx’s attitude to the idea of egalitarianism). But the other sense is more profound: a society stratified by income and status on the basis of skill and work might not be such a good thing after all.

This is potentially the most interesting part of this post, but I'm out on a limb. In the most general terms, while I do believe that it's important for individuals to gain recognition as authorities in their fields, I simply don't believe that general social stratification along the dimensions of income and status necessarily follows from this, or that it should follow. This is a moral point of view but also a pragmatic one: social stratification leads to inequalities of not only income but also opportunity, thus it tends to negate the equality of opportunity that meritocracy ideally depends on. This can even be seen in the history of modern non-capitalist countries such as the USSR. Aside from the obvious non-meritocratic features of these economies and administrations, those who did manage to work their way up tended to form their own privileged dynasties. If it is true that meritocracy leads to stratification, as you admit, and if it is true that this will happen in both capitalist and non-captalist societies, and if it is true that meritocracy in its stratifying tendency undermines itself by negating the level playing-field, then meritocracy begins to look bad to its core. Meritocracy not only contradicts capitalism, but contradicts itself.

Even more fundamentally, I don't think I believe that people ought to be differentially awarded in the way you've described.

Stalinist countries adopted the following slogan as a purported step on the way to communism:

From each according to his ability, to each according to his work

Meritocracy seems partly to fit with this. But although I'm being utopian here, I want to go further and endorse Marx's slogan:

From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs

(where "needs" can be interpreted widely)

In other words, even for a society of equal opportunity, where ideal meritocracy might work, I want to ask: why should those who are naturally more able or inclined to produce useful things gain any privilege at all? That they should gain effective positions and the concomitant authority: that I can see; but I can't see why they should gain better, richer lives, or even higher social status, unless perhaps the production of life's necessities is generally precarious and we need incentives (this is why communism is sometimes said to depend on a post-scarcity economy).

Even more fundamentally again—and this is where I go beyond even Marx's utopian slogan—I think the problem here is that the very notions of productivity, usefulness, and ability are also in a way mythical, and do violence to human dignity. But I won't go on down that route, just yet.

(BTW: Coming from a communist Stalinist background – I immigrated to the US from Romania as a preadolescent – the backlash against communism as ideology from many of those I’m close to stems, not only from the Stalinist, totalitarian surveillance-state mechanisms and the like, but also form the everyday experience that many who were lazy and inept benefited greatly on account of nepotism while those who worked hard and had much to offer where often not treated very well … especially if the latter were not members of the communist party. I should also add, I’m personally all for community-ism – which is how I rephrase my current understanding of the communist ideal when it comes it being theory on paper. Though, again, I don’t have much of any expertise in firsthand readings.) — javra

This is very agreeable. I should emphasize, in case it's not obvious, that I have no fondness or nostalgia for those regimes and think that even the initial efforts to create them were wrongheaded.

"He took that position for specific political reasons and I don’t feel the need to follow him in that, but it does contain the insight that rights are not enough in a world where material reality doesn’t allow for the full flourishing of every individual."
— Jamal

I'm in agreement with this. — javra

Like I say, maybe we're not so far apart on this after all.

their advantage — frank

You've never boarded a plane before? You have to make sure your own mask is secured before securing that of your child. Selfish? Hardly. What good is an incapacitated parent to that of a child in need. Very little I can assure you.

By the way, in my post above I think I failed to address a few of your points. Sorry about that. I’ll save it for the next round.

Thanks for taking the time to reply in such an in-depth manner. It’s appreciated.

As to discussions regarding capitalism, I’m not intent on engaging in disagreements regarding a) what capitalism is in our entrenched economic model (a system that when devoid of governmental regulations will gleefully make use of forced child labor and other types of either direct or indirect slavery) verses b) what capitalism could be in terms of a more humanitarian system comprised of, I will here stress, a healthy competition in relation to private ownership of means of production for gain (i.e., for profit in far more than a merely monetary sense). Here interpreting the sweat, tears, and/or blood of an individual in their labors to produce X in itself being “a means of production” that is “the private belonging and hence ownership (so to speak)” of the individual in question. I foresee this could easily get relatively deep into debates regarding the validity of certain notions about the human psyche that today's capitalism both depends on and also skews toward a (non-metaphysical) materialism wherein all prosperity is defined via a monetary value, and I unfortunately don’t currently have the luxury of enough time to engage in such debates in any meaningful sense. I’ll instead strictly keep to the issue of meritocracy.

Do correct me if I’m wrong about this but, in reading in-between the lines of your post, I gather that you deem Marxism opposed to compensation based on merit. This being the central motivation for my last post. That mentioned, to address some of your points:

Meritocracy is bad in two senses. One is that it works as a myth, so that the very idea of meritocracy hides the truth (this is like Marx’s attitude to the idea of egalitarianism). But the other sense is more profound: a society stratified by income and status on the basis of skill and work might not be such a good thing after all. — Jamal

As to meritocracy being a myth. Yes, the term “meritocracy”—just as “communism”—can easily become perverted so as to fit Orwellian propaganda. Communist states arguably were never communist—for, though all comrades were supposed to be equal in worth, some comrades were always deemed “more equal” than others and materially profited accordingly (sometimes, such as can be exemplified by Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu, to exorbitant degrees). In like manner, the myth of meritocracy which you’ve repeatedly mentioned can to my mind only consist of the roundabout notion of “this system we’ve got is the pinnacle of meritocracy in action—despite all appearances to the contrary—so don’t question the status quo and let those in power do their thing”. Otherwise, (a perfected) meritocracy is, and can only be, a target aimed at—from which we can gauge what needs improvement. To call this target a “myth” would be equivalent to calling any ideal that can be held a myth, including that of “health”. Is the ideal of “being healthy” valueless or a myth—here in the sense of being a falsity—on grounds that it is unreachable in absolute form? I take it that most would answer “no”; that all can distinguish better health from worse, and that we all would desire to be relatively healthy if we’re not—thereby making the ideal of health something substantial, even if unobtainable in perfect form.

In this light, I don’t view the concept of meritocracy as a myth but as an ideal worth struggling for—again, this as much as health (or, else, a healthy economy and politics) is an ideal that is worth pursuing. What I then mean by “a meritocratic economy” is not some Orwellian system that claims to so be while simultaneously not so being (requiring its double-think) but an economic system that—while not perfectly—does facilitate a functional meritocracy; one which thereby can become even more meritocratic in time, despite this being very gradual.

Then there was the other theme of stratification resulting from meritocracy being a bad that works against egalitarianism.

This is a moral point of view but also a pragmatic one: social stratification leads to inequalities of not only income but also opportunity, thus it tends to negate the equality of opportunity that meritocracy ideally depends on. — Jamal

One key ingredient to egalitarianism is equal opportunity (imperfect though it might be). But we are, I think, addressing this in realistic terms: An individual cannot be a specialist in all societal fields simultaneously for the entirety of their lives—much less can all people of a society fit this just expressed model. So equal opportunity cannot be equated to the possibility that all people are actualized in all societal roles.

I think it might help if I were to address hunter-gatherer tribes—these typically being the most egalitarian societies we (or at least I) currently know of. Here, the abilities and efforts of some will see them specialized into hunters and others into gatherers as adults, and some can further specialize in other fields, such as medicine. Doubtless, within many of these fields, further specializations can occur. To my knowledge, more often than not, these tribes are informally democratic. Personal gain in the form of trust, respect, and material possessions does occur for individuals. But individuals typically view themselves as parts of a collective. So the wellbeing of an individual is viewed as in large part contingent on the wellbeing of the collective. What we formally have as taxes for the purpose of benefiting the democratic state and all people therein, these tribes simply hold to be the fraternity of giving to those in need or in want from one’s own resources. But one must first acquire goods (in the sense of food, knowledge, artifacts, and other valuables here not equated to moneys) in order to distribute them to others. Much like one ought first put on the oxygen mask in an airplane before assisting others with theirs, the collective tribe must first acquire goods by the abilities and efforts of the individuals within prior to having these individuals give to other members of the tribe. The medicine-man gains the opportunity to heal others of the tribe at expense of loosing opportunity to, for example, be deemed the best hunter of gazelles. But both medicine-man and best hunter of gazelles—while being respectively compensated based on merit for their respective skills and efforts in terms of trust, respect, and material possessions—will teach others of like ability and enterprise to be as good as themselves if not better. Here, equal opportunity implies that all children of the tribe are encouraged to maximally develop their own inherent skills—as contrasted to oppressing the potential of certain children so as to further the potential of others.

OK, I acknowledge this is a very incomplete appraisal. For starters I’m here focusing on male roles of the hunter-gatherer tribe (which as tribe can often enough be matriarchal). But this won’t be a dissertation, only a post intending to better illustrate my view on the matter: The relatively egalitarian societies of hunter-gatherer tribes are stratified in specialty of societal roles, but (at least as I interpret them) this in relatively meritocratic means that allow for a fluidity within tribal relations.

The ideal hear is that—while not all potential will be actualized by all members of the given society as individuals develop from children into adults—no potential will be systematically oppressed by members of the society so as to biasedly grant other members of the society greater gains (this, again, at the expense of those individuals whose potential is actively oppressed). That all peoples' potential be encouraged to develop as much as possible. And in this, I find a pragmatic approach to the ideal of (a perfectly) equal opportunity for all members of society.

If the society were to be honestly meritocratic, then, to my way of seeing, an ever increasing proximity to equal opportunity for all in the sense just described would be enacted, this despite the resulting fluid stratification of roles and their respective compensations.

In other words, even for a society of equal opportunity, where ideal meritocracy might work, I want to ask: why should those who are naturally more able or inclined to produce useful things gain any privilege at all? That they should gain effective positions and the concomitant authority: that I can see; but I can't see why they should gain better, richer lives, or even higher social status, unless perhaps the production of life's necessities is generally precarious and we need incentives (this is why communism is sometimes said to depend on a post-scarcity economy). — Jamal

For the same reason that, for example, the hunter which provides for the tribe has a better, richer life than the fellow tribesman whose leg was bitten off by a lion and who depends on the hunter for sustenance. Here, the two-legged hunter has greater privileges than the handicapped tribesman in terms of providing for the tribe, maybe in term of prospective lovers, and so forth. This, however, does not make the handicapped tribesman's life insignificant. If the latter, for example, is a good story (to not say myth) teller at campfires, or does his best to assist the tribe in the ways he can, then he too gains his own role-specific privilege, which is also based on merit.

As to incentives, don't we all require incentives of some form or another to do anything? The very notions of pleasure and pain come to mind, these being rudimentary incentives to all life. Why would someone invest well over a dozen years of intense study (and go into extreme debt) to become a doctor if their compensation at the end of it all would be indistinguishable from that of a warehouse worker's? I would agree that financial wealth might not be the most ideal of incentives for a doctor to so become, but I deem that there will need to be some benefit to being a doctor, such as prestige, that serves as incentive for all the effort required.

I’ll take a breather at this point. Feel like apologizing for length. Suffice it to say, it is easier to post as written then to spend time editing for brevity. Fingers crossed that a sufficient amount of clarity in what I intended to express is nevertheless there.

"He took that position for specific political reasons and I don’t feel the need to follow him in that, but it does contain the insight that rights are not enough in a world where material reality doesn’t allow for the full flourishing of every individual."
— Jamal

I'm in agreement with this.
— javra


Like I say, maybe we're not so far apart on this after all. — Jamal

I tend to think this might be true as well—even if we might hold different perspectives on certain topics.

Great stuff. I’ll deal with the myth issue in this post and the more difficult stuff some time in the next few days, I hope.

In like manner, the myth of meritocracy which you’ve repeatedly mentioned can to my mind only consist of the roundabout notion of “this system we’ve got is the pinnacle of meritocracy in action—despite all appearances to the contrary—so don’t question the status quo and let those in power do their thing”. Otherwise, (a perfected) meritocracy is, and can only be, a target aimed at—from which we can gauge what needs improvement. To call this target a “myth” would be equivalent to calling any ideal that can be held a myth, including that of “health”. Is the ideal of “being healthy” valueless or a myth—here in the sense of being a falsity—on grounds that it is unreachable in absolute form? I take it that most would answer “no”; that all can distinguish better health from worse, and that we all would desire to be relatively healthy if we’re not—thereby making the ideal of health something substantial, even if unobtainable in perfect form.

In this light, I don’t view the concept of meritocracy as a myth but as an ideal worth struggling for—again, this as much as health (or, else, a healthy economy and politics) is an ideal that is worth pursuing. What I then mean by “a meritocratic economy” is not some Orwellian system that claims to so be while simultaneously not so being (requiring its double-think) but an economic system that—while not perfectly—does facilitate a functional meritocracy; one which thereby can become even more meritocratic in time, despite this being very gradual. — javra

I confess I’m vacillating between saying that meritocracy is a myth tout court and saying that it’s a myth to some extent. I haven’t sorted that out yet. In any case, I think you underestimate the mythic nature of it, how it really functions in the world.

Sociologist Jo Littler argues that…

…the idea of meritocracy has become a key means through which plutocracy – or government by a wealthy elite – perpetuates, reproduces and extends itself. Meritocracy has become the key means of cultural legitimation for contemporary capitalist culture. — Jo Littler, Against Meritocracy

Proponents of meritocracy can admit that we don’t yet have meritocracy and that it’s an aim we should work towards, but that what we need to get there is more neoliberal policies. After all, it’s the market that rewards talent and hard work. This undercuts your distinction between meritocracy as myth and meritocracy as aim. The former swallows up the latter.

The idea of meritocracy will always be used to justify the present order, so that it can be plausibly argued that those at the bottom are either less talented or haven’t worked hard enough, and that those at the top deserve to be there. Successful entrepreneurs do this all the time, with their self-servingly inspiring narratives of failure, hard work, and eventual success (while conveniently omitting the luck, the top-class education, the comfortable childhood, etc.).

The idea cannot be used to achieve the society you envision, because by design it floats free of any comment on or critique of the fundamental economic structure of society, which I contend is the issue that has to be addressed if equal opportunity is the aim. The idea of meritocracy is neutral with regard to economic system, which means that effectively it is not neutral in a world in which capitalism is for the most part unquestioned and unchallenged. The notion that democracies and elected governments might actually make some real changes to how economies work has gone by the wayside. Democracy and government are no longer about envisioning a different society but about tinkering with what we’ve got, and mostly leaving capitalism alone except to prop it up when it goes wrong (very roughly speaking).

To push this point home, I’d say that if you do supplement your idea, or ideal, of meritocracy with conditions with respect to how the economy works—and you produce something like an ideal of social democratic meritocracy—then there is nothing much left for the idea of meritocracy to do, because what is crucial here is a vision of real equality of opportunity where merit is valued, and “meritocracy” is left merely emphasizing the -cracy, i.e., rule, which I know is not really the thrust of your concept.

If that’s unconvincing, then merely as a practical move I think it would be wise to abandon the idea, because of the way it functions in the real world. Meritocracy can be achieved only by opposing meritocracy.

On the difference between the idea of meritocracy and the idea of health…

Interesting! An extremist might argue that the idea of health is a myth because it obscures the systemic barriers to health in capitalist society. Since I don’t agree with this, I have to explain how meritocracy is different.

The difference is that meritocracy is fully predicated on equality of opportunity across society, whereas health does not have an equivalent dependency. Health is not a social concept, but a personal one, at least in your example. The correct parallel concept of meritocracy would be something like a society in which everyone is healthy. The reason I had to think for a moment to work that out demonstrates the mythic nature of meritocracy: as a credo for personal advancement expressed in social terms it actually hides its dependence on social circumstances that the present society cannot provide. And in the other direction, the parallel concept of health would just be something like personal success on the basis of merit, which, like health, is achievable in actually existing society, and therefore not a myth.

So, it is not the fact that “meritocracy is unreachable in absolute form” that makes it a myth. It is that it obscures and justifies existing inequality. The aim itself is unclear, because the important debate about how to achieve equal opportunity is hidden beneath it or relegated to a side-issue; whereas the aim of ideal health is clear (it does not obscure the fact that I should reduce my consumption of wine).

Everything I’ve written so far is probably unfair with respect to your own vision of meritocracy, because it’s taking aim at the real ideology. Your own vision is much more agreeable, I admit.

I’ll stop now. The good but difficult points I still have to answer concern the need to reward merit and the need for incentives. But I’ll leave you with this: a meritocracy is by definition an oligarchy of talent, so it is essentially anti-egalitarian. From this perspective, maybe what you are arguing for is not really meritocracy at all?

I greatly value the perspectives you’ve been sharing.

I should maybe preface my reply with one example of what I envision by a more perfect meritocratic governance. First, in a democratic society wherein all adult individuals are of relatively equal ability, public offices could be awarded via lottery for optimal fairness—as was in large part the case in ancient Athens. That said, in contrast, in a democratic society wherein individuals are not of a relatively equal ability, a “rule by merit” could be in part established in the following manner: for individuals to be able to run for public office they would first need to pass a number of pre-established tests in subject matter competency. Topics could include history, law, ecology, etc., and would be democratically established. If these general subject tests are not passed, one could not then run for public office—with citizens voting only among those individuals that evidence minimum background knowledge regarding the offices they pursue. One can consider this a small piece of a more general idea that intends to oppose what the satirical movie Idiocrocy alludes to (a comedy to which I find a number of unfortunate truths). In this proposed (fraction of a) work-in-progress model, there would be a political elite selected based on merit—to which all citizens would/should have roughly equal opportunity to pertain—whose evident privilege would be that of rulership for the limited terms that are democratically allotted to each public office.

This, again, in attempt to better depict what I envision as a democratic “rule by merit”. But, yes, devil’s in the details.

To push this point home, I’d say that if you do supplement your idea, or ideal, of meritocracy with conditions with respect to how the economy works—and you produce something like an ideal of social democratic meritocracy—then there is nothing much left for the idea of meritocracy to do, because what is crucial here is a vision of real equality of opportunity where merit is valued, and “meritocracy” is left merely emphasizing the -cracy, i.e., rule, which I know is not really the thrust of your concept.

If that’s unconvincing, then merely as a practical move I think it would be wise to abandon the idea, because of the way it functions in the real world. Meritocracy can be achieved only by opposing meritocracy. note — Jamal

A very valid point. I'll keep it in mind better from now on.

The good but difficult points I still have to answer concern the need to reward merit and the need for incentives. But I’ll leave you with this: a meritocracy is by definition an oligarchy of talent, so it is essentially anti-egalitarian. From this perspective, maybe what you are arguing for is not really meritocracy at all? — Jamal

Due to you're insightful critique I'm currently struggling with this question myself.

Thanks again for your views.

I'd rather be a poor horse

https://poorhorse.bandcamp.com/

Are they any good?