Meritocracy Revisited

Michael Young
For some years I thought The Rise of Meritocracy was doomed never to appear. I h
awked it around from one publisher to anothereleven of themand was always turned d
own. A director of oneChatto & Windus, an old, respected and literary English pub
lishersaid he would be prepared to publish it if I rewrote it as a novel on the m
odel of Aldous Huxleys Brave New World. This I did, with the young and ravishing
lady Avocet as the heroine having a love affair with an elderly plumber, but sti
ll to no avail. Another publisherlarger and stuffier, Longmansmade the extraordina
ry, but amusing, excuse that on principle they never publish Ph.D. theses. They
took the book to be a Ph.D. thesis although it was presented as being written by
a person of the same name as myself writing in A.D. 2034.
By that time this Michael Young, if observing society at all, will be doing so f
rom another place which he will not have got to on the strength of a Ph.D. thesi
s either accepted or rejected by higher powers. A doctoral thesis would be a str
ange presentation to make at the Pearly Gates, hardly guaranteed to secure entry
. But I suppose Longmans reaction was fair warning that the book, if it ever wo
uld see the light of day, was going to be misunderstood.
It was only published at all because l happened to meet an old friend, Walter Ne
urath, on a beach in North Wales. He and his wife Eva were starting a publishing
house, Thames & Hudson, which has become highly renowned on both sides of the A
tlantic for its books on the arts. Sociology was not among its interests; Neurat
h published my book out of friendship. Fortunately, his kindness was rewarded th
is side of the Pearly Gates. Soon after the book was first published in 1957, it
was taken up by Penguin and sold hundreds of thousands of copies, and appeared
in seven translations. I have sometimes wondered what on earth Japanese readers
make of it.
Why should it have caught on? It must have been partly the title. I had doubts a
bout the key word which I made up. A friend, a classical scholar, said I would b
e breaking the rules of good usage to invent a new word out of one Latin and one
Greek word. I would, she said, be laughed to scorn if I did. In the event, the
book has been subjected to much criticism but not on grounds of bad taste about
the titlerather the opposite, l would say.
The twentieth century had room for the word. People of power and privilege were
readier than ever to believe that modern society (in the language of the book) h
as rule not so much by the people as by the cleverest people; but a true meritocr
acy of talent. The association with the aristocracy was particularly favorable. S
ome people like to congratulate themselves on being like aristocrats but going o
ne better by earning power and privilege on merit. Aristocracy went wrong becaus
e so many of the people who had power simply because they inherited it from thei
r parents were clearly unfit to exercise it. Nobody should be born with a silver
spoon in the mouth, or, if he is. it should choke him.
There was nothing new in the proposition that IQ + effort = merit; only in the w
ay it was formulated. Ever since the Industrial Revolution, and indeed even befo
re, la carriere ouverte aux talents, as John Gold-thorpe has forcefully pointed
out, has been one of the prime goals of social reform, especially in the adminis
tration of the public services, including the armed forces. Nepotism should go,
bribery should go, inheritance should go as means of attaining public office. Th
ey have not disappeared, of course, but the belief has become established that i
t is wrong to allow nepotism, bribery, or inheritance any sway: individual merit
should be the only test that should be applied. The coming of industry and its
displacement of agriculture as the foundation of the economy is what has made th
e difference.

The argument of the book is that if the soil creates castes, the machine manufac
tures classesclasses to which people can be assigned by their achievement rather
than ascribed by their birth. Insofar as this has happened, social inequality ca
n be justified, and, to avoid too blatant a contradiction, such a justification
is almost always needed in a democratic society which has bowed to equality at l
east as far as elections are concerned. Otherwise the people who exercise power
are going to be undermined by self-doubt and people over whom the power is exerc
ised become indignant and subversive because they deny that the others have any
right to lord it.
The word, and the apparent argument of the book, have become particularly attrac
tive because of the role assigned to education. In all industrial societies the
growth of mass educational systems has been one of the significant phenomena of
the century. A basic education has been regarded as a universal right. But after
the basic education what? If there has to be selection at some rung on the educ
ational ladder (as there always has to be), selection should surely not be on th
e basis of the parents position or wealth but according to the merit of the child
or youth.
This is what educators like to think they are doing, and are often actually doin
g, with the aid of more or less elaborate systems of testing and examination. Th
ey can be motivated by an egalitarian concern for children from deprived homes w
ho should have equality of opportunity, or by a more social Darwinist concern to a
void a run-down of the precious stock of ability which is always and everywhere so
limited. Whatever their motivation, the outcome is believed to be the same, wit
h young people, chosen for advancement by tests of their competence, being the p
eople whose further attested achievement in school and university gains them sub
sequent advancement in the world at large. Practically and ethically, a meritocr
atic education underpins a meritocratic society.
These then are some of the reasons for the word, and even the book gaining a cer
tain currency amongst people whom the argument suitspeople who believe themselves
to be worthy members of the new elite, or at least as opening the way for futur
e meritocrats to take up their proper place in the order of things. Daniel Bell
put the case well. He said, The post-industrial society, in its logic, is a merit
ocracy. Differential status and differential income are based on technical skill
s and higher education, and few high places are open to those without such quali
fications. In his influential book, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, he ela
borated that in a meritocracy formal qualifications provide entry to the system
but subsequent achievement is needed to make material and other benefits genuine
ly deserved.
The Rise of Meritocracy was always meant to make that kind of case, and most peo
ple who have commented on it, or referred to it, without ever having read it (th
e most influential books are always those that are not read), have implicitly, o
r even explicitly, accepted that this must have been the case I was trying to ma
ke. They have neglected, or not noticed, the fact that the book is satirical, an
d although sociological, and therefore properly earnest, it is also in an older
tradition of English satire. I know that in those island clothes the book may no
t travel so well. But if the book is not seen to be counter-argument as well as
argument, the point of it (or at least a good half point) will be lost.
The imaginary Michael Young of 2034 is meant to seem more dour and portentous th
an I hope I am. By apparently taking his views so seriously, I am trying to make
fun of him, and for another forty years or so he will not be able to get his ow
n back. I tried to make him out rather ridiculous because I also wanted to show
the strength of the opposite case. I wanted to show how overweening a meritocrac
y could be, and, indeed, the people generally who thought they belonged to it, i
ncluding the author to whom the book was attributed.

That author was meant to be vulnerable. He was, as it were inadvertently, the mo

uthpiece for another story, showing how sad, and fragile, a meritocratic society
could be. If the rich and powerful were encouraged by the general culture to be
lieve that they fully deserved all they had, how arrogant they could become, and
, if they were convinced it was all for the common good, how ruthless in pursuin
g their own advantage.
Power corrupts, and therefore one of the secrets of a good society is that power
should always be open to criticism. A good society should provide sinew for rev
olt as well as for power. But authority cannot be humbled unless ordinary people
, however much they have been rejected by the educational system, have the confi
dence to assert themselves against the mighty. If they think themselves inferior
, if they think they deserve on merit to have less worldly goods and less worldl
y power than a select minority, they can be damaged in their own self-esteem, an
d generally demoralized. Even if it could be demonstrated that ordinary people h
ave less native ability than those selected for high position, that would not me
an that they deserved to get less. Being a member of the lucky sperm club confers
no moral right to advantage.
What one is born with, or without, is not of ones own doing. John Rawls, in his b
ook A Theory of Justice, is one writer who recognizes that fair opportunity can
lead to a callous meritocratic society. An object of his difference principle is to
ensure that a confident sense of their own worth should be sought for the least f
avored. Resources should go to education, not solely, or necessarily mainly, accor
ding to their return as estimated in productive, trained abilities, but also acc
ording to their worth in enriching the personal and social life of citizens, inc
luding here the less favored.
Another line of argument that is also made much of in
racy can only exist in a full form if there is such a
hat people can be put into rank order of their worth.
at is referred to, toward the end of the book, as the
a Manifesto states:

the book is that a meritoc

narrowing down of values t
The opposite to that is wh
classless society. The Chelse

Were we to evaluate people, not only according to their intelligence and their e
ducation, their occupation and their power, but according to their kindliness an
d their courage, their imagination and sensitivity, their sympathy and generosit
y, there could be no classes. Who would be able to say that the scientist was su
perior to the porter with admirable qualities as a father, the civil servant wit
h unusual skill at gaining prizes superior to the lorry-driver with unusual skil
l at growing roses.
The book was, in other words, intended to present two sides of the casethe case a
gainst as well as the case for a meritocracy. It is not a simple matter and was
not intended to be. The two points of view are contrasted throughout. The imagin
ary author has a shadow. The decision, one way or another, was, and is, left to
the readers, the hope being that on the way to making up their mind on one of th
e great issues of modern society, they will also be a little fun.
Michael Young is author of The Rise of the Meritocracy, reissued in paperback by
Transaction. Among his other hooks is Family and Kinship in East London (with P
eter Willmott). He is founder and director of the Institute of Community Studies
in London. He is a past chairman of the Social Science Research Council of the
United Kingdom and founder of the Open University. He is a member of Parliament
as Lord Young of Dartington.
I Current affiliation: Institute of Community Studies. Londonj