One advantage of having a collection of out-of-date books is that, like old clothes, they come into fashion from time to time. My histories of the Roman Empire are suddenly relevant again. Sometimes they’re almost like reading the daily news as they reveal the plots, conspiracies, fantasies, and lies of the men who fought so greedily for power in Rome two thousand years ago – long dead now, of course, along with their mad ambitions. But their stories have never been out of date and remain as relevant now as ever.
One of my old books, published more than sixty years ago by a sociology professor called Michael Young, was a foretelling of the future that has now come back to haunt us, much as the stories of ancient Rome have done. It was called The Rise of the Meritocracy. Professor Young’s thesis was perfectly simple and perfectly convincing. It was that in an open Society with equal opportunity, the best, most capable, and most trustworthy people would rise to the top – a true hierarchy of merit. The promise of meritocracy was that the future belonged to people with superior qualities of character, knowledge, intelligence, and honesty. At its most basic, the logic of 'meritocracy' is indisputable. It places the best-qualified people rather than the least qualified into positions of greatest responsibility and importance.
A meritocracy is unequal, of course, but at least it is an inequality of merit. All men and women may be created equal, but they don’t stay equal even for a second. Once we are born, we all join the competition, like it or not, ready or not.
I can almost hear you thinking: “Something went wrong here. Why are we not governed by benevolent philosopher-kings as Plato once imagined?” The principle of meritocracy has worked well for us for a long time, building peaceful, wealthy, and technologically advanced societies all over the world. The question that Professor Young asked in 1958 was how long can it last? And at that point, he shifted his argument from sociology to prophecy, always a dangerous move. He predicted a rebellion against the meritocratic elite by people who felt and were, in fact, left out. Resentment would build up against the experts, scientists, professionals and skilled administrators who ran things. There’s no doubt that knowledge elites make people uncomfortable, and sometimes angry, and that throughout history, political leaders have seized on this anger as a road to popularity. It’s a continuing theme in American politics, brilliantly illuminated by Richard Hofstadter in his book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life.
Intelligence is always a problem for autocrats. Hannah Arendt wrote: “Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is the best guarantee of their loyalty.”
It is important to understand that Professor Young’s vision of the future was no more than a piece of fiction, a dystopian satire, because real history, as usual, has played a trick on him and on us. The attack on meritocracy has come not from below – the excluded classes – but from above, the ultra-rich classes who see a well-educated population as a threat to their power. However, it’s not over yet. History is never over yet. Professor Young predicted the final, liberating revolution for May 2034, two full election cycles in the future. We’ll have to wait and see what happens.
