logo

49 pages 1 hour read

Michael J. Sandel

The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2020

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Chapter 7-ConclusionChapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 7 Summary: Recognizing Work

In the wake of the Second World War, it was relatively easy to support a family on a single income, even without the benefit of a college education. Today, that situation has changed drastically. Even in these circumstances, however, The Dignity of Work needs to be championed, for work is more than just a way to make a paycheck: “Work is both economic and cultural. It is a way of making a living and also a source of social recognition and esteem” (198). The change in attitudes towards work, and those who participate in certain industries, has resulted in what has sometimes been called “deaths of despair” (199)—evidence of excess mortality due to decreased life expectancy on account of depression and medical conditions caused or exacerbated by stress.

The populist shift toward resentment of the meritocratic system caught politicians and media pundits completely off-guard in the lead up to the 2016 presidential election: “[T]hey were oblivious to (and in some cases complicit in) the culture of elite condescension that had been building for some time” (202). While some considered more simplistic causes, such as racism or anger, the reasons for the general shift are not so simple, and should not be written off so easily. The only way to begin shifting attitudes the other way and to solve the problem is to take the feelings of the populace—especially the working class—seriously, placing the “dignity of work at the center of the political agenda” (205). By getting to the roots of what makes work worthwhile, numerous questions would be asked in the moral and philosophical sphere that have henceforth been ignored or undiscovered.

What is needed is a genuine commitment to the common good, but not as defined by majority vote or by a kind of amalgam of popular choices and goals. The common good is, rather, that which allows individuals to lead lives of dignity and value, that allow them to flourish in their circumstances and chosen vocations. Economic policies should not be aimed exclusively at increasing the national GDP and increasing profits and consumption, but need to be aimed at increasing personal happiness and making contributions to the common good as a whole, not as conceived in extremely narrow financial terms.

A return to more traditional and ancient concepts of the common good and the reason for politics is needed. The ancient Greek philosophers saw human flourishing as dependent on the possibility of cultivating virtue and exercising the whole range of human capabilities, and the American founders largely agreed: “The American republican tradition taught that certain occupations—first agriculture, then artisan labor, then free labor broadly understood—cultivate the virtues that equip citizens for self-rule” (209). Seen from this vantage point, what is sought is commonly known as “contributive justice,” which proposes that “we are most fully human when we contribute to the common good and earn the esteem of our fellow citizens for the contributions we make” (212). If the meritocracy of contemporary America fails to do this, then what proposals should be made in order to remedy this?

First, a return to recognizing The Dignity of Work should be made. This could be done in a number of ways. One solution would be a wage subsidy that could be implemented for low-wage workers to supplement their need for a living wage even in sectors that do not typically offer high wages. Another way could be exacting tariffs and bans on certain imports or modes of outsourcing labor in order to improve the home economy, creating jobs and increasing revenue at the local and national level. Further, the outsized flow of money in the finance sector could be greatly curbed; money made in finance rarely contributes to the common good—“finance is not productive in itself” (217)—and thus is a prime choice for making cuts and changes that would improve the lives of Americans in a way that would not drastically change the way the average American lives: “A political agenda that recognizes the dignity of work would use the tax system to reconfigure the economy of esteem by discouraging speculation and honoring productive labor” (218).

Conclusion Summary: Merit and the Common Good

Many saw the integration of Major League Baseball—accomplished by Jackie Robinson—as an unmitigated good and this is true, in its own way. The tragedy of the situation is that a situation where this needed to occur was in place at all: “The moral of Henry Aaron’s story is not that we should love meritocracy but that we should despise a system of racial injustice that can only be escaped by hitting home runs” (223-24). The tragedy is that one needs to find a way to implement equality of opportunity in a system that is already characterized by widespread injustice. Equality of opportunity is good, but “it is a remedial principle, not an adequate ideal for a good society” (224, emphasis added).

A society needs to be based on justice and equality from the start, and any society that banks on finding some way to escape is a society that is crumbling from within. In 1931, James Truslow coined the term “the American dream” (225), but it was not primarily a term describing upward mobility based on personal economics—rather, it was concerned with “achieving a broad, democratic equality of condition” (225, emphasis added) by which anyone could be equipped with the means to make their own life better, regardless of their circumstances.

In today’s America, equality of opportunity and condition is not widespread, and it is largely thanks to the meritocracy that has gripped the nation for most of the 20th and 21st centuries. The freedom that meritocracy envisions and demands, however, is not conducive to human flourishing because it points individuals away from the common good, demanding that they pursue their own private good even if it comes at the expense of others.

Chapter 7-Conclusion Analysis

In the end, Sandel’s critique of merit and the technocratic meritocracy would ring hollow if a solution were not proposed that could at least begin to address the major issues raised in the preceding six chapters. Chapter 7 revolves around the need to transform our culture’s view of work and the dignity of jobs that fall outside the white-collar realm. The credentialist meritocracy has consistently undervalued the contribution that working-class men and women make to the common good. Technocracy forces a vision of work that is purely economic, so if a job does not create a great amount of wealth or opportunity, then it is seen as intrinsically lower on the hierarchy of social honor.

Work, however, is far more than brute economics: it is a matter of humanity and social esteem. Work is a source of honor and meaning, providing far more than a paycheck. Human beings are drawn to meaningful work by nature, and a person’s work is intimately connected to their self-esteem and sense of their own worth. To degrade certain types of work and social positions from the very start is to create a social structure that subconsciously divides its citizens into a caste system. America’s democratic and capitalist commitments would seem to rule out such an eventuality, but the meritocracy ends up bringing this result about anyway.

Perhaps Sandel’s most effective tactic to drive home the point of the importance of work is in his discussion of the “deaths of despair.” Recent decades have seen a massive uptick in rates of physical and mental health complications, and these in turn have spiked rates of preventable deaths, lowering the nation’s life expectancy significantly, especially among certain demographics. The meritocracy, which is theoretically meant to inspire hope, has actually brought about a regime of popular despair thanks to the conditions which it has ushered in for the average working-class citizen. Not only do people deal with material deprivation of basic goods and necessities thanks to the rising cost of living and stagnant wages—not to mention the issues associated with access to healthcare—but the resulting mental and emotional dispositions among those most disadvantaged by the technocratic economy have become increasingly poor.

If there is a way to reinvigorate a sense of worth and dignity for all work—and not just certain types of work—then the culture could see a massive positive shift towards a healthier, happier, and more hopeful population. The question is not, as many think, primarily a question about economics (though it does include that). As long as a person’s basic necessities are taken care of, where financial hardship is ruled out of the equation, then there is not a significant gap in levels of satisfaction. What matters is the individual’s conception of their own contribution to the common good: Nobody wants to feel useless, unneeded, or like a drain on society. What human beings actually want is to feel useful, to feel as though they are making a contribution to the good of their community.

The book concludes with an illustration of the basic problem the book has been attempting to highlight. Looking at the integration of baseball in the 20th century, many people see a satisfying, feel-good story about Hank Aaron’s breakthrough into Major League Baseball. The problem with this perspective is that it ignores a very simple fact: integration should never have been necessary to begin with. If we continue to celebrate and promulgate solutions to the problem as our be-all, end-all manner of dealing with issues of inequality and injustice, then the problem will never really end.

Sandel believes that what is needed is an overhaul of the underlying system. The condition needs to be treated at its source: the American dream is rotten at the core if it is predicated fundamentally on escape from the very society that is meant to be rife with opportunity. The worship of merit is a double-edged sword: it is a powerful means by which to sort the population to find the best and brightest to solve problems and make particular contributions to the common good. When it creates a system more beneficial to those who focus on individual and private goods, however—which in practice seems inevitable—it destroys the bonds of care and kinship between neighbors, eroding a society’s ability to pursue its true political end: cultivation of the common good.

blurred text
blurred text
blurred text
blurred text