"}It would take several hundred years to fully realize the ruling claim\n that Locke heralded in the late seventeenth century. Michael Sandel \nappropriately identifies James Conant as a main protagonist of this \ntransformation in the United States. As president of Harvard Uni\u00adversity\n from 1933 to 1953, Conant was instrumental in shifting what was still a\n relatively staid and aristocratic institution, with admission largely \ndetermined by one\u2019s family lineage, to a \u201cmeritocratic\u201d insti\u00adtution \nbased upon aptitude and achievement. Sandel relies on Nicho\u00adlas Lemann\u2019s\n masterful treatment of this subject in his 2000 book, The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy,\n which de\u00adscribes how Harvard and Princeton were at the heart of a \ngenuine regime change, one that hinged especially on the creation of the\n Scho\u00adlastic Aptitude Test.4\n No longer would admission to these prestigious institutions rest on \none\u2019s lineage and a nod from the headmaster of Choate. Rather, an \nincreasingly national (and later, international) search for the \u201cbest \nand the brightest\u201d was unleashed, demoting any purported benefit from \nbirth or inheritance in favor of raw ability. Hence the creation and \napplication of an objective test of aptitude.
On the one hand, Conant was fiercely committed to overturning the \ngood old boys\u2019 network; on the other, his successful efforts to remake \nHarvard were born not of an egalitarian aspiration, but to replace what \nhe saw as a mediocre ruling class with Jefferson\u2019s \u201cnatu\u00adral \naristocracy.\u201d In particular, Conant anticipated what would be\u00adcome the \npressing demand for people adept at processing and manip\u00adulating information\u2014those Robert Reich would later call \u201csymbolic-analysts.\u201d5\n Harvard and other elite institutions were well placed to fill the \npost\u2013World War II demands for scientists, engineers, and, more \ngenerally, people capable of guiding an increasingly capitalist, \nscien\u00adtific, and technological society. Sandel cites John W. Gardner, \nauthor of Excellence (1961), who forthrightly acknowledged that\n modern so\u00adciety demanded a fierce and merciless sorting of the capable \nfrom the incompetent: \u201cAs education becomes increasingly effective in \npulling the bright youngster to the top,\u201d writes Gardner, \u201cit becomes an\n increasingly rugged sorting-out process for everyone concerned\u2026 . \nThe schools are the golden avenue of opportunity for able youngsters; \nbut by the same token they are the arena in which less capable \nyoung\u00adsters discover their limitations.\u201d6
These sentiments were broadly shared as America rose to world power \nand engaged in a prolonged military-industrial competition with the \nSoviet Union. But over the course of the next fifty years, as the \neconomic and social order increasingly rewarded the \u201cable\u201d and abandoned\n any commitments to shoring up the conditions of the meritocratic \nlosers, the noble claims of the \u201cmeritocracy\u201d began to ring hollow. The \nmaterial as well as psychological inequalities ines\u00adcapably arising from\n the new system undermined its legitimacy.
Sandel is especially adept in cataloguing the array of economic, \nsocial, and psychological pathologies of a society based upon rule by \n\u201cmerit.\u201d His insight into the distance between the claims that justify \nmeritocracy and its real-world implications is particularly striking. \nWhatever the benefits of meritocracy in demolishing the aristocracy of \nthe ancien r\u00e9gime, meritocracy has produced in turn a pervasive system \nof inequality and resulting instability. Those who achieve suc\u00adcess in \nthe merciless competition of the \u201csorting machine\u201d believe their \nachievement to be the consequence of their own striving and effort, \nwhile disdaining those who have failed to rise. Correspondingly, those \nwho have not ascended in the meritocratic order are prone to internalize\n their failure even as they resent the status and advantages of the \n\u201cmeritorious.\u201d The result is a politically destabilizing \u201ctoxic brew of \nhubris and resentment\u201d (118).
Sandel is among the few thinkers who warn fellow elites that the very\n system that has afforded them prestige, material comfort, and the tools\n to survive, and even thrive, amid economic and social instability has \ngiven rise to pervasive political discontent and lies at the root of the\n recent populist backlash against elites. He notes that liberal and \ncenter-left political parties\u2014once the champions of the working class\u2014have\n become the home of the meritocrats, and hence the party of the new \naristocracy. Liberal-left parties have developed a self-serving \nobliviousness to their complicity in creating the threat to their own \nposition.
Sandel is well positioned to observe the contortions that the \nmeritocratic Left undertakes to avoid confrontation with its historic \nbut now abandoned commitment to egalitarianism. As one might expect, \nSandel is especially insightful in dismantling the egalitarian veil that\n many Left academics have donned to assuage their bad conscience, even \nas they blithely participate in and benefit from the meritocracy. That \nveil comes in the form of an attraction to the philosophy of John Rawls.\n Rawls not only spent much of his career at Harvard, but he is a \nfavorite philosopher of the Ivy League set, and for good reason. Rawls\u2019s\n signature work, A Theory of Justice, boils down to a proposal \nfor differential equality that at once keeps the meritocracy in place \nwhile potentially blunting its inevitable inequalities. Rawls proposed \nthat \u201cthe difference principle\u201d would ensure that the least successful \nwould nevertheless benefit from the gains of the successful, through \ntransfers managed by the state. Rawls offered a more sophisticated, \ngovernment-mandated version of Kennedy and Reagan\u2019s mantra (ultimately \ncopying Locke) that a rising tide lifts all boats.
Sandel identifies two significant problems with Rawls\u2019s effort to \njustify a form of meritocracy that would nevertheless promote the common\n good. First, he notes, meritocracy is not merely a system that affords \nwealth to the winners and poverty to the losers. While there is a good \ndeal of correspondence to wealth and poverty, meri\u00adtocracy\u2014as the name suggests\u2014inevitably\n also accords distinction and prestige upon some, shame and a sense of \nfailure upon others. A relatively low-paid professor possesses more \nsocial esteem than the well-remunerated salesman. Credentials quickly \nbecome markers of social distinction, and Sandel presses the point that \nRawls ultimately ignores and even dismisses the way these social markers\n can and will manifest themselves in forms of condescension, resentment,\n and resulting political pathology. Moreover, Sandel notes that it is \nthe very impetus to afford material compensation for the losers that \nwill likely fuel condescension. \u201cQuestions of honor and recognition \ncan\u00adnot be neatly separated from questions of distributive jus\u00adtice,\u201d he\n writes. \u201cThis is especially true when it turns out that patronizing \nattitudes toward the disadvantaged are implicit in the case for \ncom\u00adpensating them.\u201d
When put into practice, the Rawlsian version of the meritocratic \nsystem ultimately impacts how redistribution is carried out. If someone \nhas fallen behind in the race of life through no fault of their own, \nthen according to Rawls\u2019s scheme, their material circumstances should be\n improved to the stipulated differential of the best-off. The rub, \nhowever, lies in determining who is disadvantaged \u201cthrough no fault of \ntheir own.\u201d Perhaps it\u2019s easy to agree that the person who has \nexperienced bad luck\u2014someone born into poor circumstances, or afforded deficient education, or debilitated by disease or injury\u2014deserves\n compensation according to \u201cthe difference principle.\u201d But what of the \ngraduate of Harvard who simply didn\u2019t apply himself or herself and now \nseeks aid? What of the person who has gambled away savings or an \ninheritance? Bet one\u2019s life savings on a cryptocurrency that went bust? \nWhat of the person suffering from lung cancer be\u00adcause he was a \ntwo-pack-a-day smoker? Or what about someone, in the most egregious \ncase, who refuses to move away from a dying, rust belt city out of some \nmisplaced sense of loyalty to place, or even simple lack of gumption?
Sandel writes that, \u201cas with other forms of liberalism, luck \negal\u00aditarian philosophy begins by rejecting merit and desert as the \nbasis of justice but ends by reasserting meritocratic attitudes and \nnorms with a vengeance\u201d (148). The impetus to distinguish between the \ndeserving and the undeserving losers becomes inevitable. One hears \nechoes of just this ethos in the judgment of James Stimson, professor \nemeritus of political science at the University of North Carolina, who \nde\u00adscribed working-class populists in the following terms:
When we observe the behavior of those who live in \ndistressed areas, we are not observing the effect of economic decline on\n the working class, we are observing a highly selected group of people \nwho faced economic adversity and choose to stay at home and accept it \nwhen others sought and found opportunity elsewhere\u2026 . [Those who are\n economically successful are] ambitious and confident in their \nabilities. Those who are fearful, conservative, in the social sense, and\n lack ambition stay and accept decline\u2026 . I don\u2019t see them as once \nproud workers, now dispossessed, but rather as people of limited \nambition who might have sought better opportunity elsewhere and did not.\n I see their social problems more as explanations of why they didn\u2019t \nseek out opportunity when they might have than as the result of lost \nemployment.7
In short, the Raymond Dawson Distinguished Bicentennial Emeritus \nProfessor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina \njudges that the locals have gotten what they deserve. If only everyone \nhad moved to the Research Triangle\u2026.
In the end, Sandel flinches: in spite of accusing the new ruling \norder of \u201ctyranny,\u201d he fails to locate any tyrants. This silence on the \nmeri\u00adtocracy\u2019s self-deception, in what is otherwise a singularly \npowerful critique of the pathologies of meritocracy, is telling. Sandel \nis remark\u00adably incurious about whether meritocrats\u2019 justifications of \ntheir moral eminence might in fact shroud the deeper \u201cwill to power\u201d one\n would expect to find among tyrants.
For instance, Sandel evinces a lack of suspicion when listing a \nstring of dubious actions by the meritocrats, concluding simply that \nthey \u201chave not governed very well\u201d\u2014not \nthat they have governed with malevolence. He cites a string of failures \nfrom 1980 to the present, includ\u00ading \u201cstagnant wages for most workers, \ninequalities of income and wealth not seen since the 1920s, the Iraq \nWar, a nineteen-year, incon\u00adclusive war in Afghanistan, financial \nderegulation, the financial crisis of 2008,\u201d and so forth (29). In each \ninstance, however, these were not \u201cfailures\u201d if you were a member of the\n meritocracy. Almost to a person, the ruling class benefited from these \ncrises, or at the very least, were not harmed by their consequences, \neven as they collectively diminished the prospects for flourishing among\n the meritocracy\u2019s losers. Sandel regards these outcomes as failed \npolicies of otherwise well-intentioned leaders, rather than identifying \nthem as the expected outcomes of a ruling class\u2019s efforts to maintain \nits position.
one thing i\u2019ve mentioned before is that college educated americans are much more likely than those with a lower education to believe in racism (here expressed as \u201cGenetic differences contribute to income inequality between black and white people\u201d) and yet much less likely to openly say it, even in fairly private settings. the college educated understand that such speech would get them punished, despite 40% of them (in the study at least) agreeing with it. why would such punishment be doled out in the midst of a group for whom such ideas are clearly attractive? the answer is that such racism conflicts with the meritocratic ideology that predominates on college campuses, an attitude that the american state felt was necessary to inculcate in the future state managerial class in the 30s so as to better compete with rival great powers like the soviet union, germany, japan, and the uk, and to maintain a world-spanning empire.