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

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2020

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Introduction

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-6

Chapter 7-Conclusion

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1 Summary: “Winners and Losers”

Contemporary politics are plagued by partisanship and the inability to break away from distinct party lines, but there is large agreement that things are not going well. The election of Donald Trump in 2016 was a sign that a rising populist movement was gaining steam thanks to widespread feelings of dissatisfaction, disenfranchisement, and a sense of a lack of agency on the part of individual citizens: “The hard reality is that Trump was elected by tapping a wellspring of anxieties, frustrations, and legitimate grievances to which the mainstream parties had no compelling answer” (17-18). What is more, “these grievances are not only economic but also moral and cultural; they are not only about wages and jobs but also about social esteem” (18).

The issue is to diagnose the root cause of these feelings and issues. On the one hand, one could view the rise of populist discontent as stemming from a rejection of increasing diversity in the American populace. On the other hand, one could see it as a result of increasing anxiety over globalization and the loss of things previously taken for granted in a more localized economy. Regardless, what is clear is that the solution needs to be careful and nuanced: “Construing populist protest as either malevolent or misdirected absolves governing elites of responsibility” (19)—the truth of the matter is far more complex.

There are two major factors in the failure of globalization and its promulgation. First, the public good has been viewed through a primarily technocratic lens. Second, society has been divided into “winners and losers,” rooted in a meritocratic way of viewing the world. The technocratic mode of doing politics has ushered in a globalist economy that has greatly devalued national identity and tradition, simultaneously taking decision-making out of the hands of ordinary people and sequestering governance in the hands of the privileged, educated, wealthy, and powerful few—in other words, into the hands of the elite.

The rise of populism in recent decades is a revolt against this increasing power of the elites, and “has ultimately to do with the changing terms of social recognition and esteem” (22). In years past, the possibility of upward social mobility was present and assumed, but the reality for the average person has proved it to be largely false in recent years. The United States was founded with an aversion to hereditary aristocracy, but the meritocracy of today has become a de facto aristocracy, where the “haves” increasingly gain more and the “have nots” continue to wallow in their present circumstances: “Mobility can no longer compensate for inequality” (24).

Attempting to discover part of the genesis of these issues lies in interrogating the principles upon which meritocracy is founded. In essence, the question comes down to this: Why do the talented deserve outsized financial benefits that are the result of today’s market-driven society, made possible by a very particular liberal, capitalist system? One of the tenets of meritocracy is that rewards and benefits are based on an individual’s hard work and talent, and thus people are meant to get what they work for and deserve, but that assumption needs to be questioned because one’s individual talent is not based simply on hard work. Some talents are genetic, and even those which are acquired are often the result of expensive training or financial stability.

When meritocracy is the be-all and end-all of social mobility, it fails to create a true community, “leav[ing] little room for the solidarity that can arise when we reflect on the contingency of our talents and fortunes” (25). In this sense, then, merit becomes “a kind of tyranny, or unjust rule” (25). While the rule by the meritorious is not a novel idea, it has become something quite different than those ancient conceptions based on wisdom and virtue, shifting more towards an authoritarian mindset.

Chapter 2 Summary: “Great Because Good”: A Brief Moral History of Merit

When it comes to finding people to fill jobs, there are two primary reasons that taking merit into consideration is important: efficiency and fairness. When those who are most competent are given responsibility, the job is performed with the greatest amount of efficiency, and the reason for doling out responsibility has a solid foundation. In addition, rewarding the meritorious is also attractive since it caters to the modern sensibility that freedom and self-determination are also at play. This, however, belies the reality that a great portion of one’s life is determined by factors outside those governed by free will and choice. Even the concept of merit is grounded in pre-modern conceptions of divine providence: “To speak of one’s ‘lot’ suggests the drawing of lots, a result determined by fate, fortune, or divine providence” (35).

While the merging of these concepts may seem dissonant to the modern ear, it is an inescapable truth: “the most consequential early debates about merit were not about income and jobs but about God’s favor: Is it something we earn or receive as a gift?” (35). Part of the reason for this is the fact that a meritocratic way of thinking presumes that merit, talent, and virtue naturally result in prosperity, while a lack of talent and affinity for vice would result in poverty or suffering. In a world governed by divine providence, this makes sense, but the downside is that the meritocratic worldview necessarily “gives rise to harsh attitudes toward those who suffer misfortune” (36).

The Christian history of the United States comes into play in meritocratic debates owing to its close association with the doctrine of Salvation in Christian circles. The issue boils down to the question as to how salvation is achieved: Is it the result of “good works,” whereby the individual is rewarded, or is salvation a freely-offered gift regardless of personal moral rectitude? Debates over this question have proliferated for hundreds, even thousands, of years, but in America the question largely became a question of a personal work ethic being evidence of salvation and divine election, thanks to the background of American Christianity in Calvinism and Puritanism.

The work of historian Jackson Lears argues that American culture is balanced between “an uneven contest between an ethic of fortune and a more muscular ethic of mastery” (43). When mastery begins to dominate, an ethos of fortune and meritocracy wins the day: “Combining human striving with providential sanction creates rocket fuel for meritocracy” (44). This manner of thinking gives rise to tangentially-related movements and ideologies; the modern televangelism movement is just one such example, promulgating what is widely known as the Prosperity Gospel. The meritocratic worldview denies any role of luck, providence, or fate, which results in a kind of hubris: All prosperity is the result of God’s blessing on an individual’s personal work ethic and determination, while all suffering and failure is a direct result of the individual’s failure to achieve success and is an indictment of their own moral failings.

In the American mind, “the ethic of earning and achieving has exerted an almost irresistible allure, threatening always to override the humbler ethic of hoping and praying, of gratitude and gift” (58). At the corporate level, this is seen in the penchant to elevate certain forms of American exceptionalism, built on the idea that America’s character has resulted in divine blessing. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the 19^th-century hymn “America the Beautiful,” which claims that God’s grace has been shed on the country.

Chapters 1-2 Analysis

Rather than starting with theoretical principles and working from the top down, Sandel begins Chapter 1 with experience and practical evidence to construct an argument from the ground up. In order to ground his argument for why meritocracy has devolved into a specific kind of tyranny, he outlines why the 21^st century has seen such an uprising in populist discontent. He sets forth a simplistic dichotomy that is often used to explain popular discontent, but opts for a more nuanced approach that takes the grains of truth in the polar extremes and folds them into a diagnosis of the problem that stems from the governance of the rich and powerful, rather than flaws or evils actually present in the population itself.

As he points out, the world evolved in the 20^th century. Globalism ushered in a technocratic regime in which the financial markets govern the world. Any criticism of the global marketplace is immediately considered to be driven by fear or ignorance, with critics dubbed closed-minded and technophobic. Any and all criticism of the current mode of doing politics and finance is shouted down, but the early 21^st century began to see a widespread backlash against this kind of political rhetoric across all Western countries, especially in the United States and in Great Britain. Opposed to the technocratic confidence in market dynamics, popular sentiment began to move in favor of the local and independent. The shift was directly a result of the rising inequality that the average citizen began to see in their everyday lives that flatly contradicted what they were being told by the elite governing class, who insisted mobility was available to all.

Sandel calls this language “the rhetoric of rising,” and it is indicative of the classic idea of the American dream. The problem with continuing to use this language and to speak of the American dream is that most people began to feel as though this was no longer an appropriate or realistic way of viewing the world. The social mobility that used to be an assumed component of liberal democracy and capitalism ground to a halt, and the equality that was promised is largely seen as an illusion thanks to the increasing evidence of inequality in all walks of life and arenas, especially in the economic sector. Not only is this evidence of injustice, but it is also extremely demoralizing—to continually hear the rich and powerful speak of equality of opportunity while struggling to make ends meet is a radicalizing thing.

What is so curious about the death of the American dream is that it goes completely against the idea of success accruing to merit, as Sandel discusses in Chapter 2. As Sandel points out, building a society based on merit is attractive for numerous reasons: there is a certain level of fairness built in, it is often incredibly efficient since it provides opportunities to the best and brightest individuals, and it appears to allow the greatest amount of freedom in interactions between people and institutions, since merit seems to level the playing field.

The problem with this perspective is that the entire concept of merit is derived from a conviction that the universe is ordered toward the good and the virtuous, primarily derived from a religious standpoint. Sandel goes through various issues revolving around arguments concerning the mode of salvation in Christian doctrine and theology, concluding that America’s obsession with hard work, virtue, and merit is largely derived from its Calvinist and Puritan background. Calvinism teaches a concept called “double predestination,” in which some are predestined to go to heaven, and some are predestined to perdition. Participating in good works and working hard is seen, in Calvinist circles, as very good evidence that one has been elected to eternal salvation, and so hard work becomes a badge of honor and marker of salvation.

As Sandel observes, even though this worldview does not teach that merit is the cause of salvation, it is very clear how easy it is to begin thinking that it is. Transposing this conversation to American ideology, Sandel shows how there is a subconscious struggle between two competing ideas of American exceptionalism: the idea that America can be great if it is good, and the idea that America is already great because it is good. An older generation saw the potential of American greatness if it proved to be good, seeing a possibility for divine blessing if the nation proved itself. The meritocratic regime shifted this perspective by concluding that America is, and always has been, great, and that this is evidence that America—regardless of its actions—is, and has always been, good.