Meritocracy increasing inequality: Toby Young

Singapore swears by meritocracy. But it has led to greater inequality in Britain, according to the writer, Toby Young, who adds his father coined the word, “meritocracy”.

But the people aren’t protesting, he says, because they think they too can make it like “those premier league footballers and their wives, pop stars, movie stars, soap stars and the like” coming up from nowhere. Here’s an excerpt from Toby Young’s article, Lulled by the Celebritariat, in Prospect magazine:

Fifty years ago, the sociologist Michael Young—my father—published a book that, in his own words, gave him a minor claim to immortality. A dystopian satire in the same vein as 1984, it was an attempt to sound a warning bell about various social and political trends by describing a future in which they had come to fruition. It wasn't as successful as Orwell's book, but it did enjoy some afterlife thanks to a word my father coined to describe the new ruling class that would hold sway in this nightmarish future. It was called The Rise of the Meritocracy.

People are often surprised when I tell them that my father invented the word "meritocracy" — they assume it must have been around for ever — and even more astonished to learn that he wasn't a fan. How could anyone be against meritocracy? It seems incomprehensible today. The commitment to making Britain more meritocratic has become an ideological shibboleth that almost no one dissents from.

Michael disapproved of meritocracy because he saw it as a way of legitimising inequality. After all, if everyone starts out on a level playing field, then the resulting allocation of rewards—however unequal—seems fair. Those at the very pinnacle of our society might not inherit their privileged position, as their forebears had done, but its pyramid-like shape would be preserved. Indeed, once this hierarchical structure became legitimised, as it would in a meritocratic society, it was likely that power and wealth would become concentrated in even fewer hands.

Just how prescient was The Rise of the Meritocracy? Equality of opportunity has become every bit as entrenched as my father thought it would, but that hasn't had a corresponding impact on the composition of Britain's elites. Much of today's ruling class is still drawn from a narrow band of schools and universities and while those institutions accept only the "brightest" applicants they have not had to compete with the rest of the population on a level playing field. They have not earned their place at the top on merit alone which, for the purposes of his book, my father defined as IQ + effort.

The Sutton Trust—which tirelessly compiles evidence to show that Britain is not a meritocracy—has calculated that the proportion of privately educated high court judges has barely changed in the past 18 years: 74 per cent in 1989 compared to 70 per cent in 2007. And according to the trust, "the proportion of independently educated top newspaper editors, columnists and news presenters and editors has actually increased over the past 20 years."

Analysts of the broader sweep of social mobility are divided on how much it has slowed down, but there is some consensus that there has been a falling off since the time my father wrote Meritocracy. What there is no dispute about is the surge in inequality in Britain in recent decades. According to a recent survey by the OECD, income inequality grew steadily from the mid-1970s, dipped briefly in the mid-1990s, then continued to grow until 2000 when it started to dip again. Overall, the long-term trend is towards greater inequality. In 2005, the earnings gap between rich and poor was 20 per cent wider than it was in 1985.

However, Toby Young adds, “a profound increase in economic inequality has been accompanied by a dramatic increase in social and cultural equality… with most educated people under 45 embracing popular culture almost exclusively”.

Popular culture – and rise of celebrities – keeping masses happy

“Economic divisions may be more pronounced than ever, but we support the same football teams, watch the same television programmes, go to the same movies. Mass culture is for everyone, not just the masses.”

And that is why the masses are not vocal against the growing inequality. Popular culture is the opiate of our times. Toby Young writes:

I believe it is largely due to the emergence of a new class that my father didn't anticipate and which, for want of a better word, I shall call the "celebritariat." I am thinking of the people featured in Heat magazine, rather than Hello!—the premier league footballers and their wives, pop stars, movie stars, soap stars and the like. For all its shortcomings, the celebrity class is broadly meritocratic and because it is so visible it may help to persuade people that Britain is a fairer place than it really is.

One of the criticisms levelled at Britain's professional elites is that they have become closed shops, creating insurmountable barriers to entry. The same could not be said of the celebritariat, a class that is constantly being refreshed, with old members being forced out to make way for the new. Indeed, we now hold national competitions—The X Factor, Pop Idol, Britain's Got Talent—to discover genuinely deserving candidates to promote into the celebrity class.

If the celebritariat really does play a role in legitimising economic inequality, it is also because ordinary people imagine that they, too, could become members. A YouGov poll of nearly 800 16-19-year-olds conducted on behalf of the Learning and Skills Council in 2006 revealed that 11 per cent said they were "waiting to be discovered."