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The Rise of the Meritocracy
Michael Young has christened the oligarchy of the future "Meritocracy." Indeed, the word is now part of the English language. It would appear that the IQ+Effort=Merit may well constitute the basic belief of the ruling class in the twenty-first century. Projecting himself into the year 2034, the author of this sociological satire shows how present decisions and practices may remold our society. It is widespread knowledge that it is insufficient to be somebody's nephew to obtain a responsible post in business, government, teaching, or science. Experts in education and selection apply scientific principles to sift out the leaders of tomorrow. You need intelligence rating, qualification, experience, application, and a certain caliber to achieve status. In a word, one must show merit to advance in the new society of tomorrow. In a new opening essay, Young reflects on the reception of his work, and its production, in a candid and lively way. Many of the critical ambiguities surrounding its original publication are now clarified and resolved. What we have is what the Guardian of London called "A brilliant essay." and what Time and Tide described as "a fountain gush of new ideas. Its wit and style make it compulsively enjoyable reading from cover to cover."
198 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1958
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About the author
Michael Dunlop Young
333 books43 followersMichael Dunlop Young, Baron Young of Dartington, English sociologist, social activist and politician.
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May 28, 2012
Like 1984 and Brave New World, The Rise of the Meritocracy, written in 1958, provides one of the great dystopian visions of the twentieth century. What makes the book peculiar, however, is that modern politicians have unashamedly taken the values of “meritocracy” – including the word itself – and have claimed them as the central and most desirable feature of a modern society. This is therefore a deeply subversive book rarely mentioned in polite society.
Michael Young became famous among British sociologists of my generation as the co-author of a delicate, insightful, intelligent study of working class life, called Family and Kinship in East London. The equally brilliant Rise of the Meritocracy, in contrast, is a fiction masquerading as an essay in social history written in 2033.
The alleged “author” of this history – a scholarly apologist for meritocracy - tells of the decline of a society based in the privileges of birth and seniority and the rise of a quite different society where social classes are differentiated according to intelligence and effort, known as “merit”.
For at least the first half of the book, Young seldom reveals that he himself disbelieves this meritocratic idea, and then only by very subtle - often-hilarious - hints. Indeed, this part of the essay is a telling attack on the privileged elite whose decline it traces. In 1914, we learn, “the upper classes had their fair share of geniuses and morons, so did the workers; --- The inferior classes contained almost as high a proportion of superior people as the upper classes themselves.” By 2033, in contrast, there is genuinely equal opportunity. This means that the upper classes are all highly intelligent, while the lower classes are all stupid.
Only in the book’s second half do readers discover the horrific nature of this new meritocracy, though here too the “author” retains a scholarly tone and remains a true believer. There is now a huge gulf between the classes. “The upper classes are, on the one hand, no longer weakened by self-doubt and self-criticism. Today the eminent know that success is just reward for their own capacity - - - They deserve to belong to a superior class. - - - As for the lower classes - - - they are bound to recognize that they have an inferior status – not as in the past because they were denied opportunity; but because they are inferior.” These classes are so different they can barely speak to each other. Indeed, the meritocracy “have become so impressed with their own importance as to lose sympathy with the people whom they govern”. By 2033, therefore, schools have introduced courses in humility to counteract this unfortunate trend.
Another problem is large-scale unemployment among the lower classes, to counter which there has been a systematic revival in domestic service, happily liberating intelligent people from menial labour.
With the rise of the meritocracy comes the decline in the older forms of the Labour movement. With a deliciously spoof Weberian flourish, the author credits socialist egalitarianism with having created equality of opportunity. Real egalitarianism, however, was incompatible with modern meritocracy and it had to go. To appeal to the aspirational meritocratic elite, such words as “worker”, or “labour” were generally dropped by the Labour movement in favour of “technician” (but not, however, “New Labour”).
Parliament too declined. The problem here was that “the assumption of one man one vote was egalitarian.” Solutions to this difficulty included limiting MP’s salaries to make it difficult for the less able to go to Parliament and enhancing the powers of the Civil Service and an appointed House of Lords. Our moderate author, however, resists the more extreme “proportional representation, whereby the number of votes a man has would be proportional to his intelligence”.
The tone of the book changes in the last chapter. As 2033 approaches, there grows up a new Conservatism that advocates a more radical segregation of the social classes justified by the fact that intelligent parents tend to have intelligent children. Simultaneously, there arises a new, feminist-led, egalitarian, socialist opposition to meritocracy, hoping to establish a classless society. Indeed, the “author” himself seems to change his meritocratic mind in this final chapter and Michael Young himself rather blows his own cover and gets polemical. So the book ends with a questioning of meritocracy both by the upper and the lower classes with battle lines drawn for a new class war. In a final footnote, we learn from the editor that the author has died at somewhere called "Peterloo".
Of course, it is easy to pick holes in this narrative, for, unlike Young, we know what actually happened after 1958. What is astonishing, however, is the degree to which Young captures the spirit of the meritocratic ideas that now penetrate our political culture, and the extent to which social class is now based, as he prophesied, on spurious ideas of merit. The social classes differentiated by merit are indeed increasingly segregated and additionally differentiated by income and culture and this is reflected in rates of morbidity and mortality. Meritocracy, the idea as well as the word, is now the central ideology of modern British politics, adopted by all three main political parties. It is proving to be just as awful as all the preceding class structures. And it was Young who first identified it.
Michael Young became famous among British sociologists of my generation as the co-author of a delicate, insightful, intelligent study of working class life, called Family and Kinship in East London. The equally brilliant Rise of the Meritocracy, in contrast, is a fiction masquerading as an essay in social history written in 2033.
The alleged “author” of this history – a scholarly apologist for meritocracy - tells of the decline of a society based in the privileges of birth and seniority and the rise of a quite different society where social classes are differentiated according to intelligence and effort, known as “merit”.
For at least the first half of the book, Young seldom reveals that he himself disbelieves this meritocratic idea, and then only by very subtle - often-hilarious - hints. Indeed, this part of the essay is a telling attack on the privileged elite whose decline it traces. In 1914, we learn, “the upper classes had their fair share of geniuses and morons, so did the workers; --- The inferior classes contained almost as high a proportion of superior people as the upper classes themselves.” By 2033, in contrast, there is genuinely equal opportunity. This means that the upper classes are all highly intelligent, while the lower classes are all stupid.
Only in the book’s second half do readers discover the horrific nature of this new meritocracy, though here too the “author” retains a scholarly tone and remains a true believer. There is now a huge gulf between the classes. “The upper classes are, on the one hand, no longer weakened by self-doubt and self-criticism. Today the eminent know that success is just reward for their own capacity - - - They deserve to belong to a superior class. - - - As for the lower classes - - - they are bound to recognize that they have an inferior status – not as in the past because they were denied opportunity; but because they are inferior.” These classes are so different they can barely speak to each other. Indeed, the meritocracy “have become so impressed with their own importance as to lose sympathy with the people whom they govern”. By 2033, therefore, schools have introduced courses in humility to counteract this unfortunate trend.
Another problem is large-scale unemployment among the lower classes, to counter which there has been a systematic revival in domestic service, happily liberating intelligent people from menial labour.
With the rise of the meritocracy comes the decline in the older forms of the Labour movement. With a deliciously spoof Weberian flourish, the author credits socialist egalitarianism with having created equality of opportunity. Real egalitarianism, however, was incompatible with modern meritocracy and it had to go. To appeal to the aspirational meritocratic elite, such words as “worker”, or “labour” were generally dropped by the Labour movement in favour of “technician” (but not, however, “New Labour”).
Parliament too declined. The problem here was that “the assumption of one man one vote was egalitarian.” Solutions to this difficulty included limiting MP’s salaries to make it difficult for the less able to go to Parliament and enhancing the powers of the Civil Service and an appointed House of Lords. Our moderate author, however, resists the more extreme “proportional representation, whereby the number of votes a man has would be proportional to his intelligence”.
The tone of the book changes in the last chapter. As 2033 approaches, there grows up a new Conservatism that advocates a more radical segregation of the social classes justified by the fact that intelligent parents tend to have intelligent children. Simultaneously, there arises a new, feminist-led, egalitarian, socialist opposition to meritocracy, hoping to establish a classless society. Indeed, the “author” himself seems to change his meritocratic mind in this final chapter and Michael Young himself rather blows his own cover and gets polemical. So the book ends with a questioning of meritocracy both by the upper and the lower classes with battle lines drawn for a new class war. In a final footnote, we learn from the editor that the author has died at somewhere called "Peterloo".
Of course, it is easy to pick holes in this narrative, for, unlike Young, we know what actually happened after 1958. What is astonishing, however, is the degree to which Young captures the spirit of the meritocratic ideas that now penetrate our political culture, and the extent to which social class is now based, as he prophesied, on spurious ideas of merit. The social classes differentiated by merit are indeed increasingly segregated and additionally differentiated by income and culture and this is reflected in rates of morbidity and mortality. Meritocracy, the idea as well as the word, is now the central ideology of modern British politics, adopted by all three main political parties. It is proving to be just as awful as all the preceding class structures. And it was Young who first identified it.
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May 28, 2014Meritocracy, what a great idea! Surely it's a good thing that people advance based on talent, instead of who their parents were.
We just have to make sure that everyone has equality of opportunity to do so and we'll have a fundamentally fair society, right?
The unnamed author of this book, writing in the distant year 2033 certainly believes that. He's the product of an age where comprehensive education reform has channelled unprecedented levels of funding into identifying the most adept students and bringing them to their full potential. The system is publicly-funded, rigorously screened against nepotism, its tests impeccably scientific and open to all applicants and re-applicants. Similarly, the employment market is ruthlessly focused on hiring and promoting the highest-scoring, regardless of race, class or gender (sorta, feminism is acknowledged but doesn't get a big run in this world). This focus on the best has produced a dynamic and vibrant creative class has ushered in a new golden age of innovation in science and culture, whose great achievements have restored the nation to prominence on a competitive global stage.
But something is amiss: in the past year, the government and education system have been wracked by violence against people and property. The Populists, a movement of disaffected heirs of the old, privileged order and disgruntled unskilled labourers and service workers swell in numbers and threaten to bring down the system itself. What is happening? Where does this unrest spring from? Our plucky author believes the answer lies in the origins of the system and proceeds to outline the history of meritocracy, starting in Victorian England.
Through this history, the reader starts to get at the basic problems posed by the idea of meritocracy. As the meritocrat author freely admits, the idea of equality of opportunity is limited by the need to apportion scarce resources, which ultimately requires the prioritisation of efficiency over equality if the potential of the brightest is to be maximised. There is no meritocracy unless the best rise, which requires that they should not be held back by those less able. The social mobility of a true meritocracy also requires that others fall. Initially, this doesn't sound too bad. As the meritocrat explains, this means turfing the elites and their idiotic children out of their offices and elite boarding schools in favour of those who genuinely deserve to be there. Really, what's so wrong with that?
The sting in the tail isn't immediately visible, but as the book unfolds it emerges in full view: in the feudal and capitalist societies of the past, idiots and geniuses any everyone in-between had been roughly evenly distributed across the class system, and class itself was a product of birth as well as education. This meant that there was a realisation amongst some members of all levels that their status in life wasn't a reflection of their individual merit, occasioning guilt and unease amongst the ruling class and anger and unrest amongst those beneath them. Meritocracy, fully realised does away with any such uncertainty: status is merit, merit is status. As the system is scrupulously fair in identifying and rewarding talent the new meritocratic class can have no doubt that they are the best placed to wisely govern society and those beneath them can have no complaint. This is a true aristocracy, rule by the best.
As the complexity of governance increase with technological advances parliament has become increasingly irrelevant, incapable of keeping up with the demands of the creative and technological revolutions unleashed by the creative elite. Democratic representatives of the lower classes are so unfit to grasp the nature of these developments that they may as well be speaking a different language to the creative class, and in fact, increasingly they are. At the time of the meritocrat's writing there are demands circulating within the academies that parliament either be abolished or an IQ qualification be introduced,while moderates still find the lower house a useful sounding-board and remain confident that the merit-appointed upper house, with its lock on the Ministry of Education and working in tandem with the civil service remains capable of steering the lower chamber to the right decisions. Similarly neutered, political parties and trade unions have been weaned off egalitarianism and no longer try and claw back national income with wage rises to lowly technicians when national competitiveness requires relentless investment in productivity to keep pace with China (yes, not a bad intuition for 1958).
Oddly, this hasn’t been popular with the lower classes, who denied a voice in the governance of the nation and faced with an endless horizon of austerity and menial service are responding with agitation and violence.
Does any of that sound familiar? A little bit?
Young, writing from the high point of Britain's post-war settlement envisages a future that's bureaucratic, institutional and mass-mobilized to a degree that is comes across as deeply weird to us kids of Ronnie and Maggie (or Keato) - amusingly, in his 2033 the law and finance are dead-end career paths - but his insights and intuitions are nonetheless impressive, ranging from the anticipation of the creative class in their brattish, disruptive glory to an eerily accurate description of present debates on the aged workforce and entitlement reform. Interestingly for a Labour policy wonk of the Attlee era he identifies the seeds of the hyper-aristocratic Meritocracy of 2033 in the egalitarian socialist reforms of Crosland, Benn and Bevin, whose single-minded focus on tearing down the hereditary pillars of the British Establishment rebounds against them by creating a new aspirational class without any attachment to the cause of labour and egalitarian politics - which is more or less the electoral coalition that brought Thatcher to power (again, not a bad call from 1958).
What stops the Rise of the Meritocracy from being better known? Well, leaving aside that it cuts right against the zeitgeist - later Young would rail against the political class's championing of a term he coined in order to discredit - it is just a little too soaked in its time and place. In-jokes about Fabians and education policy disputes of the Attlee ministry don't have the longest half-life, and the book is packed with them. The middle section, comprised of a detailed policy history of an education reform that didn't happen is quite a slog, requiring a solid grasp on mid-century UK education policy, something of a rarefied topic. I found it worth the effort but I can see why sci-fi dystopias tend to focus on the simstim tapes and datajacking.
Still, this is a very short book and rarely have I read something that demolishes a big and powerful idea so thoroughly, its dry academic prose concealing an argument rich with irony and humanity.
We just have to make sure that everyone has equality of opportunity to do so and we'll have a fundamentally fair society, right?
The unnamed author of this book, writing in the distant year 2033 certainly believes that. He's the product of an age where comprehensive education reform has channelled unprecedented levels of funding into identifying the most adept students and bringing them to their full potential. The system is publicly-funded, rigorously screened against nepotism, its tests impeccably scientific and open to all applicants and re-applicants. Similarly, the employment market is ruthlessly focused on hiring and promoting the highest-scoring, regardless of race, class or gender (sorta, feminism is acknowledged but doesn't get a big run in this world). This focus on the best has produced a dynamic and vibrant creative class has ushered in a new golden age of innovation in science and culture, whose great achievements have restored the nation to prominence on a competitive global stage.
But something is amiss: in the past year, the government and education system have been wracked by violence against people and property. The Populists, a movement of disaffected heirs of the old, privileged order and disgruntled unskilled labourers and service workers swell in numbers and threaten to bring down the system itself. What is happening? Where does this unrest spring from? Our plucky author believes the answer lies in the origins of the system and proceeds to outline the history of meritocracy, starting in Victorian England.
Through this history, the reader starts to get at the basic problems posed by the idea of meritocracy. As the meritocrat author freely admits, the idea of equality of opportunity is limited by the need to apportion scarce resources, which ultimately requires the prioritisation of efficiency over equality if the potential of the brightest is to be maximised. There is no meritocracy unless the best rise, which requires that they should not be held back by those less able. The social mobility of a true meritocracy also requires that others fall. Initially, this doesn't sound too bad. As the meritocrat explains, this means turfing the elites and their idiotic children out of their offices and elite boarding schools in favour of those who genuinely deserve to be there. Really, what's so wrong with that?
The sting in the tail isn't immediately visible, but as the book unfolds it emerges in full view: in the feudal and capitalist societies of the past, idiots and geniuses any everyone in-between had been roughly evenly distributed across the class system, and class itself was a product of birth as well as education. This meant that there was a realisation amongst some members of all levels that their status in life wasn't a reflection of their individual merit, occasioning guilt and unease amongst the ruling class and anger and unrest amongst those beneath them. Meritocracy, fully realised does away with any such uncertainty: status is merit, merit is status. As the system is scrupulously fair in identifying and rewarding talent the new meritocratic class can have no doubt that they are the best placed to wisely govern society and those beneath them can have no complaint. This is a true aristocracy, rule by the best.
As the complexity of governance increase with technological advances parliament has become increasingly irrelevant, incapable of keeping up with the demands of the creative and technological revolutions unleashed by the creative elite. Democratic representatives of the lower classes are so unfit to grasp the nature of these developments that they may as well be speaking a different language to the creative class, and in fact, increasingly they are. At the time of the meritocrat's writing there are demands circulating within the academies that parliament either be abolished or an IQ qualification be introduced,while moderates still find the lower house a useful sounding-board and remain confident that the merit-appointed upper house, with its lock on the Ministry of Education and working in tandem with the civil service remains capable of steering the lower chamber to the right decisions. Similarly neutered, political parties and trade unions have been weaned off egalitarianism and no longer try and claw back national income with wage rises to lowly technicians when national competitiveness requires relentless investment in productivity to keep pace with China (yes, not a bad intuition for 1958).
Oddly, this hasn’t been popular with the lower classes, who denied a voice in the governance of the nation and faced with an endless horizon of austerity and menial service are responding with agitation and violence.
Does any of that sound familiar? A little bit?
Young, writing from the high point of Britain's post-war settlement envisages a future that's bureaucratic, institutional and mass-mobilized to a degree that is comes across as deeply weird to us kids of Ronnie and Maggie (or Keato) - amusingly, in his 2033 the law and finance are dead-end career paths - but his insights and intuitions are nonetheless impressive, ranging from the anticipation of the creative class in their brattish, disruptive glory to an eerily accurate description of present debates on the aged workforce and entitlement reform. Interestingly for a Labour policy wonk of the Attlee era he identifies the seeds of the hyper-aristocratic Meritocracy of 2033 in the egalitarian socialist reforms of Crosland, Benn and Bevin, whose single-minded focus on tearing down the hereditary pillars of the British Establishment rebounds against them by creating a new aspirational class without any attachment to the cause of labour and egalitarian politics - which is more or less the electoral coalition that brought Thatcher to power (again, not a bad call from 1958).
What stops the Rise of the Meritocracy from being better known? Well, leaving aside that it cuts right against the zeitgeist - later Young would rail against the political class's championing of a term he coined in order to discredit - it is just a little too soaked in its time and place. In-jokes about Fabians and education policy disputes of the Attlee ministry don't have the longest half-life, and the book is packed with them. The middle section, comprised of a detailed policy history of an education reform that didn't happen is quite a slog, requiring a solid grasp on mid-century UK education policy, something of a rarefied topic. I found it worth the effort but I can see why sci-fi dystopias tend to focus on the simstim tapes and datajacking.
Still, this is a very short book and rarely have I read something that demolishes a big and powerful idea so thoroughly, its dry academic prose concealing an argument rich with irony and humanity.
March 12, 2014
The 1st part of the book can be a little hard to get through, as the author opted for a writing style similar to what you would expect of an article on social sciences, but that serious tone makes the 2nd part delightful. The satire of having a "meritorious individual" expose this merytocratic society through his highly biased point of view is not only entertaining, but tackles several important points that were relevant not only when this book first came out, but more so today.
February 10, 2022
In dit lange essay beschrijft Michael Young de opkomst van de meritocratie in Engeland vanuit een sociaal-historisch perspectief. De inhoud is dus nogal feitelijk, en hier en daar zijn het taalgebruik en de stijl overdreven academisch. “Maar Thomas, hoezo geef je dit vijf sterren dan?”, hoor ik u vragen.
Het zit zo: het boekje komt uit 1958. Michael Young had net z’n PhD (in de sociologie) afgemaakt, en vond dat de Britse Labour Party (waar hij deel van uitmaakte) wel erg gretig was met haar gelijkheidsidealen op basis van IQ en inzet. Dus bedacht (!!!) hij de term meritocratie, en besloot hij er een dystopisch verhaal over te schrijven waarin hij doet alsof hij een sociaal-historicus is in het jaar 2034, die terugkijkt om te zien waar “het fout gegaan” is. De lijn tussen feit en fictie is dus nogal vaag: alle feiten en bronnen van voor 1958 zijn juist, en alles erna is klinkklare fictie (maar wel even droog en wetenschappelijk gepresenteerd).
Al met al is dit dus een uniek, genre-overschrijdend boek, en I love it!
Groetjes,
ik
Het zit zo: het boekje komt uit 1958. Michael Young had net z’n PhD (in de sociologie) afgemaakt, en vond dat de Britse Labour Party (waar hij deel van uitmaakte) wel erg gretig was met haar gelijkheidsidealen op basis van IQ en inzet. Dus bedacht (!!!) hij de term meritocratie, en besloot hij er een dystopisch verhaal over te schrijven waarin hij doet alsof hij een sociaal-historicus is in het jaar 2034, die terugkijkt om te zien waar “het fout gegaan” is. De lijn tussen feit en fictie is dus nogal vaag: alle feiten en bronnen van voor 1958 zijn juist, en alles erna is klinkklare fictie (maar wel even droog en wetenschappelijk gepresenteerd).
Al met al is dit dus een uniek, genre-overschrijdend boek, en I love it!
Groetjes,
ik
October 10, 2019
I came across this book as being the origin of the word meritocracy a few months ago and since then have heard reference to it several times; it is one of those things where once it gets on one's radar appears to be everywhere. I was rather excited to read this cute little novella; dystopia sociological novels are usually rather entertaining.
And yet, it was rather disappointing. It is obvious satire and I was expecting illumination as to why modern meritocracy is so dysfunctional. Instead, I see a great set up: use the educational system to find high intelligent people from all classes and then nurture their development! Young is clear to point out the problems with aristocratic and agricultural societies; he points out the problem with hereditary wealth, but his meritocracy seems to hum along just fine until the third generation wants to revert to hereditary ideas and those damn progressive women object because they want to push forward their own children.
The biggest problem I found with the book is that despite a brief mention that merit = IQ plus effort, merit is actually operationalized through an IQ test. He acknowledges real problems with this through the lens of the dissenting women progressives, but reassures the reader that modern sociologists and psychologists have perfected the measure.
Unfortunately, this does not shed much light on modern meritocracy; our modern meritocratic ideals are different from his set up. I was hoping for a structure to give light on how to better address actual criticisms of the American meritocratic system. Instead, Young's objections are less about proposing alternative structures and instead critique of the far right conservatives and the far right socialists.
Overall it is an entertaining read and relatively short; he is prescient about Chinese advancement and some technological developments, but the satire is just that. There is not much deeper analysis about current society.
And yet, it was rather disappointing. It is obvious satire and I was expecting illumination as to why modern meritocracy is so dysfunctional. Instead, I see a great set up: use the educational system to find high intelligent people from all classes and then nurture their development! Young is clear to point out the problems with aristocratic and agricultural societies; he points out the problem with hereditary wealth, but his meritocracy seems to hum along just fine until the third generation wants to revert to hereditary ideas and those damn progressive women object because they want to push forward their own children.
The biggest problem I found with the book is that despite a brief mention that merit = IQ plus effort, merit is actually operationalized through an IQ test. He acknowledges real problems with this through the lens of the dissenting women progressives, but reassures the reader that modern sociologists and psychologists have perfected the measure.
Unfortunately, this does not shed much light on modern meritocracy; our modern meritocratic ideals are different from his set up. I was hoping for a structure to give light on how to better address actual criticisms of the American meritocratic system. Instead, Young's objections are less about proposing alternative structures and instead critique of the far right conservatives and the far right socialists.
Overall it is an entertaining read and relatively short; he is prescient about Chinese advancement and some technological developments, but the satire is just that. There is not much deeper analysis about current society.
February 16, 2019
Michael Young is the guy who invented the word "meritocracy", which encapsulates the notion that the ruling class should comprise those who are the cleverest; "not an aristocracy of birth, not a plutocracy of wealth, but a true meritocracy of talent". It is a seductive and compelling argument. Of course we shouldn't allow one's birth and family circumstances to determine one's station in life. "Merit" should be the determining factor. Little wonder then that the words "meritocracy" and "meritocratic" have found favour with policymakers. It's a little discomfiting, then, to find out that The Rise of the Meritocracy is a satire.
Young notes in the foreword that he "wanted to show how overweening a meritocracy could be, and, indeed, people generally who thought they belonged to it, including the author to whom the book was attributed. That author was meant to be vulnerable. He was, as it were inadvertently, the mouthpiece 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 believe 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 pursuing 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 revolt as well as for power. But authority cannot be humbled unless ordinary people, however much their have been rejected by the educational system, have the confidence 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 worldly power than a select minority, they can be damaged in their own self-esteem, and generally demoralised. Even if it could be demonstrated that ordinary people had less native ability than those selected for high position, that would not mean 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 one's doing....The book, was, in other words, intended to present two sides of the case - the case against as well as the case for a meritocracy. It is not a simple matter and was not intended to be."
The Rise of the Meritocracy is supposedly written in 2034 by a sociologist (also named Michael Young) to explain the current social tensions observed in British society. The sociologist, Young, explains that meritocracy came about in Britain in the mid-1900s as a matter of necessity, to ensure that it was maximising the use of its human capital and remain globally competitive. In a agricultural society which required long term investment in the soil, commitment to the land was "best secured when men knew they were working for children and grandchildren who would benefit from improvement as they would suffer from neglect". But feudal practices had no relevance in an industrial economy.
Many of the shifts, as expected, started in education and our sociologist Young notes that the comprehensive schools were eventually done away with, because in a meritocratic system, it made no sense to have schools where bright children would "walk beside their inferiors in a deceit of equality". The grammar school system was instead strengthened; children of ability had to be streamed as early as possible if they were to realise their full potential. It went beyond the cognitive (although that was a priority): "the educational ladder was also a social ladder - the scruffy, ill-mannered boy who started at five years old at the bottom had to be metamorphosed, rung by rung, into a more presentable, more polished, and more confident as well as a more knowledgeable lad at the top...The social ladder was so long - the gap between the styles of life of upper and lower classes so wider - that promising children had to begin their climb through the schools at the earliest age possible....If clever low-class children had not been able to move int he more stimulating atmosphere of the grammar schools, alongside many of the same age from higher classes, until they were sixteen, some of them would then have been too old ever to shake off their origins and so overcome their handicap."
In the second part of the book, Young the sociologist examines the conditions of the lower class in a true meritocracy. He notes that in a meritocracy, the gulf between the upper and lower classes is at its widest: "the eminent know that success is just reward for their own capacity, for their own efforts and for their own undeniable achievement. They deserve to belong to a superior class...Hence one of our characteristic modern problems: some members of the meritocracy...have become so impressed with their own importance as to lose sympathy with the people whom they govern...As for the lower classes...all person, however humble, knows that they have had every chance. They are tested again and again....But if they have been labelled 'dunce' repeatedly they cannot any longer pretend...they have an inferior status - not as in the past because they were denied opportunity; but because they are inferior". The solution to the arrogance of the upper classes is education to instil them with greater humility. The solution to the potential demoralisation of the lower classes is to distract them with sports and encourage them to build physical vitality and vigor, if intellectual vitality and vigor is not an option for them. Assigning the dull witted menial tasks that they can excel in - through the creation of the euphemistically named "Pioneer Corps" which was "the essential counterpart of the administrative class in the civil service" was another brilliant stroke. (Even more brilliant was the subsequent creation of the Home Help Corps, which enabled the lower classes to work in domestic service for the upper classes, whose talents were wasted on chores at home.) That the dull witted were perhaps too dull to even recognise their situation and that they could console themselves that their offspring might have the chance to do better in life, also helped ameliorate the situation.
It's a thought provoking read, if only to make you wonder what it means to extol the virtues of meritocracy when the word originates from a satirical piece. As Young notes in his foreword, the book presents both sides of the case. And indeed, not everything about meritocracy is flawed. The basic premise, that rewards be based on 'merit' rather than birth and connections, is sound. The challenge is how you define merit and how strictly you want to apportion rewards to those who meet the mark. Some of the supposed reforms and developments that sociologist Young recounts are perfectly sensible policies (albeit taken to the extreme in the book); chapter 3 lays out some of the educational reforms made - helping poor but bright children remain in school by giving them financial support (by paying a 'learning wage' to grammar school pupils), improving the quality of teachers (by putting the salaries of science teachers on the same level as scientists in industry).
But it does make the policymaker reflect how the degree to which a policy is applied and how the framing of the intentions can lead to profoundly different outcomes. In chapter 3, Young the sociologist also discusses the application of IQ testing, to ensure that individuals are placed on the path best suited for the maximising of their ability. Given that intellectual capacity is not a constant, but can vary over time (e.g. with late bloomers), the system moved towards continuous testing. This led to perverse outcomes as "some children have become excessively ambitious on behalf of their parents and have exerted too much pressure on them to strive for reclassification (of their IQ, should they be late bloomers)".
Young notes in the foreword that he "wanted to show how overweening a meritocracy could be, and, indeed, people generally who thought they belonged to it, including the author to whom the book was attributed. That author was meant to be vulnerable. He was, as it were inadvertently, the mouthpiece 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 believe 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 pursuing 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 revolt as well as for power. But authority cannot be humbled unless ordinary people, however much their have been rejected by the educational system, have the confidence 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 worldly power than a select minority, they can be damaged in their own self-esteem, and generally demoralised. Even if it could be demonstrated that ordinary people had less native ability than those selected for high position, that would not mean 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 one's doing....The book, was, in other words, intended to present two sides of the case - the case against as well as the case for a meritocracy. It is not a simple matter and was not intended to be."
The Rise of the Meritocracy is supposedly written in 2034 by a sociologist (also named Michael Young) to explain the current social tensions observed in British society. The sociologist, Young, explains that meritocracy came about in Britain in the mid-1900s as a matter of necessity, to ensure that it was maximising the use of its human capital and remain globally competitive. In a agricultural society which required long term investment in the soil, commitment to the land was "best secured when men knew they were working for children and grandchildren who would benefit from improvement as they would suffer from neglect". But feudal practices had no relevance in an industrial economy.
Many of the shifts, as expected, started in education and our sociologist Young notes that the comprehensive schools were eventually done away with, because in a meritocratic system, it made no sense to have schools where bright children would "walk beside their inferiors in a deceit of equality". The grammar school system was instead strengthened; children of ability had to be streamed as early as possible if they were to realise their full potential. It went beyond the cognitive (although that was a priority): "the educational ladder was also a social ladder - the scruffy, ill-mannered boy who started at five years old at the bottom had to be metamorphosed, rung by rung, into a more presentable, more polished, and more confident as well as a more knowledgeable lad at the top...The social ladder was so long - the gap between the styles of life of upper and lower classes so wider - that promising children had to begin their climb through the schools at the earliest age possible....If clever low-class children had not been able to move int he more stimulating atmosphere of the grammar schools, alongside many of the same age from higher classes, until they were sixteen, some of them would then have been too old ever to shake off their origins and so overcome their handicap."
In the second part of the book, Young the sociologist examines the conditions of the lower class in a true meritocracy. He notes that in a meritocracy, the gulf between the upper and lower classes is at its widest: "the eminent know that success is just reward for their own capacity, for their own efforts and for their own undeniable achievement. They deserve to belong to a superior class...Hence one of our characteristic modern problems: some members of the meritocracy...have become so impressed with their own importance as to lose sympathy with the people whom they govern...As for the lower classes...all person, however humble, knows that they have had every chance. They are tested again and again....But if they have been labelled 'dunce' repeatedly they cannot any longer pretend...they have an inferior status - not as in the past because they were denied opportunity; but because they are inferior". The solution to the arrogance of the upper classes is education to instil them with greater humility. The solution to the potential demoralisation of the lower classes is to distract them with sports and encourage them to build physical vitality and vigor, if intellectual vitality and vigor is not an option for them. Assigning the dull witted menial tasks that they can excel in - through the creation of the euphemistically named "Pioneer Corps" which was "the essential counterpart of the administrative class in the civil service" was another brilliant stroke. (Even more brilliant was the subsequent creation of the Home Help Corps, which enabled the lower classes to work in domestic service for the upper classes, whose talents were wasted on chores at home.) That the dull witted were perhaps too dull to even recognise their situation and that they could console themselves that their offspring might have the chance to do better in life, also helped ameliorate the situation.
It's a thought provoking read, if only to make you wonder what it means to extol the virtues of meritocracy when the word originates from a satirical piece. As Young notes in his foreword, the book presents both sides of the case. And indeed, not everything about meritocracy is flawed. The basic premise, that rewards be based on 'merit' rather than birth and connections, is sound. The challenge is how you define merit and how strictly you want to apportion rewards to those who meet the mark. Some of the supposed reforms and developments that sociologist Young recounts are perfectly sensible policies (albeit taken to the extreme in the book); chapter 3 lays out some of the educational reforms made - helping poor but bright children remain in school by giving them financial support (by paying a 'learning wage' to grammar school pupils), improving the quality of teachers (by putting the salaries of science teachers on the same level as scientists in industry).
But it does make the policymaker reflect how the degree to which a policy is applied and how the framing of the intentions can lead to profoundly different outcomes. In chapter 3, Young the sociologist also discusses the application of IQ testing, to ensure that individuals are placed on the path best suited for the maximising of their ability. Given that intellectual capacity is not a constant, but can vary over time (e.g. with late bloomers), the system moved towards continuous testing. This led to perverse outcomes as "some children have become excessively ambitious on behalf of their parents and have exerted too much pressure on them to strive for reclassification (of their IQ, should they be late bloomers)".
September 7, 2024
“In our island we never discarded the values of the aristocracy, because we never discarded the aristocracy.”
I can obviously see the point he’s trying to make, but there’s a waft of a straw man argument and creating an alternative dystopic narrative which will never occur, doesn’t make the incredibly corrupt and imbalanced system which exists any better.
I understand why so many publishers turned this down, it’s confusing, flat and too long to fulfil its intended aims. I thought this was a silly and disappointing read. There is the occasional interesting moment, but nothing too bold or ground breaking that makes it relevant or essential reading beyond its time.
Young (or should that be Baron Young of Dartington?) has tried to write a satire on the meritocracy and in particular the tripartite system, which existed at the time, but too often this reads closer to a call for maintaining the status quo.
March 7, 2021
Mit seiner exzellenten 1958 in Form eines soziologischen Essays verfassten dystopischen (utopischen?) Satire gelang Michael Young ein großes Buch, das in Teilen von der Realität eingeholt worden ist. Rückwirkend betrachtet der Autor selbst kurz vor einem geplanten Generalstreik im Mai 2034 die Entwicklung der britischen Gesellschaft in den Jahren 1870 bis 2033 hin zu einer rein meritokratischen Gesellschaft. Das Buch ist entsprechend den Gewinnern und Verlierern in einen Teil des Aufstiegs der Elite und einem damit einhergehenden Teil über den Abstieg der unteren Klassen gegliedert. Als Wissenschaft seiner Betrachtung kommt die Soziologie in Verwendung.
- Der erste Teil beginnt mit dem Abstieg der Familie und des Nepotismus durch die Einführung des Beamtensystems mit Aufnahmeprüfungen und des Schulsystems. Den Sozialisten wird hier Dank ausgesprochen, dass sie das klassische feudale Aristokratiesystem zerbrochen haben und damit eine Klassenstruktur rein nach Meritokratie mit ermöglicht haben.
- In nächsten Kapitel folgt zugleich eine Abrechnung mit dem Egalitätsprinzip der Sozialisten und deren Wunsch nach Einführung einer Gesamtschule, in der die Intelligenten mit den Idioten zusammen ins Mittelmaß geführt werden, wie zu sehen am High School System der USA. Die Sowjets hingegen hatten eine funktionierende Gesamtschule dank guten Lehrern und strenger Disziplin, allerdings ist die Aussiebung mit Aufnahmeprüfungen an den Universitäten zu spät. Schließlich können Wissenschaftler nur bis zum 30. Lebensjahr Leistung bringen, dann beginnt der geistige Abstieg. Nur Großbritannien hat dank seiner Aussiebung ab dem 3. Lebensjahr ein funktionierendes System. Die Versuche die Gesamtschule einzuführen sind zum Glück gescheitert, da die Sozialisten ihren Nachwuchs alle in Privatschulen geschickt haben oder die Gesamtschulverasuche ebenso strikte innere Trennung nach IQ und Leistungsvermögen eingeführt hatten. Dadurch konnte die strikte Einhaltung einer Meritokratie erfolgreich durchgehalten werden.
- Das dritte Kapitel beschäftigt sich dann eingehend mit dem Bildungssystem als ersten großen Schritt hin zur perfekten meritokratischen Gesellschaft. Dazu gehört etwa die gerechte Entlohnung von Lehrern (gerade im Bereich der Naturwissenschaften; Sputnik lässt grüßen). Ein wichtiger Punkt der Erhaltung der Reinheit der elitären Klasse ist die wissenschaftliche Weiterentwicklung von Intelligenztests. Diese werden nicht nur zu Beginn der schulischen Laufbahn, sondern auch später im Leben immer wieder wiederholt und die Ergebnisse zentral gespeichert ( die „National Intelligence card at the H.Q.“).
- Ein weiterer wichtiger Punkt auf den Weg in die perfekte meritokratische Gesellschaft war der Wegfall des Senioritätsprinzips in der Arbeitswelt und damit die Besetzung von Stellen rein nach IQ und Leistung. Senioritätsprinzip ist doch viel zu feudalistisch und verhindert, dass die ganzen brillanten jungen Eliten die Top-Jobs übernehmen können. Ein Meilenstein hierbei war die Aufhebung des Pensionsalters, sodass ältere Menschen gar nicht erst in die Verlegenheit kamen, in einer Firma die Seniorität zu erlangen. Stattdessen wurde man einfach gekündigt und konnte dann mit 50, 60, 70, 80 Jahren eine neue Stelle anfangen, anstatt in seiner alten Firma den Sessel für die jungen Eliten zu blockieren.
- Der zweite Teil führt uns dann zum Abstieg der unteren Klassen. Wie schön, dass die sozialistische Utopie der Egalität endlich überwunden wurde. Durch das meritokratische System wissen die Dummen gleich zu Beginn ihrer Kindheit von ihrer Blödheit und können sich dementsprechend gut auf ein Leben in einem harten manuellen Beruf in den unteren Schichten einrichten - ganz entsprechend ihrem IQ und ihrer Leistungsfähigkeit. Schuster bleib bei deinen Leisten. Auf der positiven Seite bleibt so der unnötige Klassenkampf weg, da eh jeder seinen Platz automatisch hat, wozu also noch kämpfen. Und für diejenigen, die trotz der ständig wechselnden Jobs keine Beschäftigung fanden hat sich das gute britische System der Hausdiener endlich wieder etabliert. Im Gegensatz zur verachtenswerten Ausbeutung im Feudalismus heute natürlich streng meritokratisch zum besten der Gesellschaft und des Fortschritts. Ordem e Pogresso vom Feinsten.
- Sozialismus und die Arbeiterpartei existieren zum Glück nicht mehr. Wozu auch, ihr Kampf ist vorbei. Alle haben die Möglichkeiten in einer meritokratischen Gesellschaft, das sozialistische Ziel ist erreicht.
- Der Feminismus ist ebenso unnötig geworden im Laufe der Zeit. Frauen sind genauso meritokratisch einzustufen wie Männer. Und für den Nachwuchs gibt es selbstverständlich Mögichkeiten des Aufstiegs in die Leistungselite, aber auch die des Abstiegs. Zum Glück können Intelligenztests heute bereits ab dem dritten Lebensjahr durchgeführt werden. Eine große Entwicklung war die Möglichkeit, den IQ durch die Gene der Eltern und Vorfahren im Voraus zu bestimmen. Dadurch wurde im britischen Empire ein großartiges Archiv erschaffen, das Eugenics House, in dem aufgrund von Daten der letzten vier Generationen die Nachkommen für die nächsten tausend Jahre vorherbestimmt sind. Was für ein Erfolg.
- Die letzte Bastion auf dem Weg in die vollständige Meritokratie steht gerade zur Debatte, die Reform des Parlamentssystems. Zur Auswahl stehen zwei Formen, die revolutionäre Form (das passive Wahlrecht ist gemäß der Meritokratie an einen Mindest-IQ gebunden) und die evolutionäre Form (Ersetzung des Parlaments durch das meritokratische Beamtensystem). Was sich durchsetzen wird steht zur Drucklegung des Buches noch nicht fest, wir erwarten alle noch den Sturm im Wasserglas, den angekündigten Generalstreik im Mai 2034.
Das waren die letzten Einträge des Bandes, nachdem der Autor bei den Unruhen im Mai 2034 in Peterloo getötet wurde. Was der perfekten meritokratischen Gesellschaft doch nichts entgegenzusetzen hatte, oder?
- Der erste Teil beginnt mit dem Abstieg der Familie und des Nepotismus durch die Einführung des Beamtensystems mit Aufnahmeprüfungen und des Schulsystems. Den Sozialisten wird hier Dank ausgesprochen, dass sie das klassische feudale Aristokratiesystem zerbrochen haben und damit eine Klassenstruktur rein nach Meritokratie mit ermöglicht haben.
- In nächsten Kapitel folgt zugleich eine Abrechnung mit dem Egalitätsprinzip der Sozialisten und deren Wunsch nach Einführung einer Gesamtschule, in der die Intelligenten mit den Idioten zusammen ins Mittelmaß geführt werden, wie zu sehen am High School System der USA. Die Sowjets hingegen hatten eine funktionierende Gesamtschule dank guten Lehrern und strenger Disziplin, allerdings ist die Aussiebung mit Aufnahmeprüfungen an den Universitäten zu spät. Schließlich können Wissenschaftler nur bis zum 30. Lebensjahr Leistung bringen, dann beginnt der geistige Abstieg. Nur Großbritannien hat dank seiner Aussiebung ab dem 3. Lebensjahr ein funktionierendes System. Die Versuche die Gesamtschule einzuführen sind zum Glück gescheitert, da die Sozialisten ihren Nachwuchs alle in Privatschulen geschickt haben oder die Gesamtschulverasuche ebenso strikte innere Trennung nach IQ und Leistungsvermögen eingeführt hatten. Dadurch konnte die strikte Einhaltung einer Meritokratie erfolgreich durchgehalten werden.
- Das dritte Kapitel beschäftigt sich dann eingehend mit dem Bildungssystem als ersten großen Schritt hin zur perfekten meritokratischen Gesellschaft. Dazu gehört etwa die gerechte Entlohnung von Lehrern (gerade im Bereich der Naturwissenschaften; Sputnik lässt grüßen). Ein wichtiger Punkt der Erhaltung der Reinheit der elitären Klasse ist die wissenschaftliche Weiterentwicklung von Intelligenztests. Diese werden nicht nur zu Beginn der schulischen Laufbahn, sondern auch später im Leben immer wieder wiederholt und die Ergebnisse zentral gespeichert ( die „National Intelligence card at the H.Q.“).
- Ein weiterer wichtiger Punkt auf den Weg in die perfekte meritokratische Gesellschaft war der Wegfall des Senioritätsprinzips in der Arbeitswelt und damit die Besetzung von Stellen rein nach IQ und Leistung. Senioritätsprinzip ist doch viel zu feudalistisch und verhindert, dass die ganzen brillanten jungen Eliten die Top-Jobs übernehmen können. Ein Meilenstein hierbei war die Aufhebung des Pensionsalters, sodass ältere Menschen gar nicht erst in die Verlegenheit kamen, in einer Firma die Seniorität zu erlangen. Stattdessen wurde man einfach gekündigt und konnte dann mit 50, 60, 70, 80 Jahren eine neue Stelle anfangen, anstatt in seiner alten Firma den Sessel für die jungen Eliten zu blockieren.
- Der zweite Teil führt uns dann zum Abstieg der unteren Klassen. Wie schön, dass die sozialistische Utopie der Egalität endlich überwunden wurde. Durch das meritokratische System wissen die Dummen gleich zu Beginn ihrer Kindheit von ihrer Blödheit und können sich dementsprechend gut auf ein Leben in einem harten manuellen Beruf in den unteren Schichten einrichten - ganz entsprechend ihrem IQ und ihrer Leistungsfähigkeit. Schuster bleib bei deinen Leisten. Auf der positiven Seite bleibt so der unnötige Klassenkampf weg, da eh jeder seinen Platz automatisch hat, wozu also noch kämpfen. Und für diejenigen, die trotz der ständig wechselnden Jobs keine Beschäftigung fanden hat sich das gute britische System der Hausdiener endlich wieder etabliert. Im Gegensatz zur verachtenswerten Ausbeutung im Feudalismus heute natürlich streng meritokratisch zum besten der Gesellschaft und des Fortschritts. Ordem e Pogresso vom Feinsten.
- Sozialismus und die Arbeiterpartei existieren zum Glück nicht mehr. Wozu auch, ihr Kampf ist vorbei. Alle haben die Möglichkeiten in einer meritokratischen Gesellschaft, das sozialistische Ziel ist erreicht.
- Der Feminismus ist ebenso unnötig geworden im Laufe der Zeit. Frauen sind genauso meritokratisch einzustufen wie Männer. Und für den Nachwuchs gibt es selbstverständlich Mögichkeiten des Aufstiegs in die Leistungselite, aber auch die des Abstiegs. Zum Glück können Intelligenztests heute bereits ab dem dritten Lebensjahr durchgeführt werden. Eine große Entwicklung war die Möglichkeit, den IQ durch die Gene der Eltern und Vorfahren im Voraus zu bestimmen. Dadurch wurde im britischen Empire ein großartiges Archiv erschaffen, das Eugenics House, in dem aufgrund von Daten der letzten vier Generationen die Nachkommen für die nächsten tausend Jahre vorherbestimmt sind. Was für ein Erfolg.
- Die letzte Bastion auf dem Weg in die vollständige Meritokratie steht gerade zur Debatte, die Reform des Parlamentssystems. Zur Auswahl stehen zwei Formen, die revolutionäre Form (das passive Wahlrecht ist gemäß der Meritokratie an einen Mindest-IQ gebunden) und die evolutionäre Form (Ersetzung des Parlaments durch das meritokratische Beamtensystem). Was sich durchsetzen wird steht zur Drucklegung des Buches noch nicht fest, wir erwarten alle noch den Sturm im Wasserglas, den angekündigten Generalstreik im Mai 2034.
Das waren die letzten Einträge des Bandes, nachdem der Autor bei den Unruhen im Mai 2034 in Peterloo getötet wurde. Was der perfekten meritokratischen Gesellschaft doch nichts entgegenzusetzen hatte, oder?
April 28, 2018
Michael Young coined the term 'meritocracy', a word that is on everyone's lips these days - and apparently an idea that has been on everyone's lips for a long time.
A bit of a dystopia, a bit of a satire, The Rise of the Meritocracy is a fictional history written in the future about the events that led to a permanent meritocratic elite.
Unfortunately the writing is dry and extraordinarily repetitive, and Young doesn't have enough ideas to fill out this very short book. It's okay for historical reasons but you could probably just read the first chapter and get the gist of the whole thing.
A bit of a dystopia, a bit of a satire, The Rise of the Meritocracy is a fictional history written in the future about the events that led to a permanent meritocratic elite.
Unfortunately the writing is dry and extraordinarily repetitive, and Young doesn't have enough ideas to fill out this very short book. It's okay for historical reasons but you could probably just read the first chapter and get the gist of the whole thing.
February 25, 2010
It is an amazing insight into how society works, how families work, and how good intentions go astray. It is really important that people realise that the term meritocracy, which we now wave around as if it was the one thing we could all agree on as a good thing, was actually coined for this satirical novel…and it’s not the arrival of nirvana.
December 5, 2018
A bone-dry dystopian satire written in the form of a charmingly pompous sociological treatise. Rise of the Meritocracy is perhaps less palatable than Huxley or Orwell, but it’s far more bitingly accurate in its predictions.
Written in 1958, this book by sociologist Michael Young features a totally fictional sociologist named Michael Young who, writing on the eve of revolution in 2034, reflects on the past century of human social, political, and economic development in order to explain how things have come to this point. He is comprehensive in his analysis.
The book starts a bit slowly, but I highly recommend reading the author's introduction, which is delightful. Here Young makes it clear that this book is indeed a satire – a point that may have been lost on those who have wholeheartedly embraced the concept of “meritocracy” without any consideration of the potential downsides.
Indeed, "merit" has underpinned many, if not most, economic and social policies of the 20th and 21st centuries, and Young’s depiction of a futuristic meritocratic society is eerily familiar. A non-exhaustive list of things that Young correctly predicted of the late 20th and early 21st centuries includes:
The shift from a manufacturing-based economy to a knowledge-based economy. This may not seem like much of a prediction in 2018, but in 1958 it was hardly clear how profound this shift would be. While Young does not attempt to predict the exact nature of the technology of the 21st century, he accurately predicts that changes in technology will devalue manual labor and shift labor demands to work involving innovation, problem solving, and highly technical knowledge.
The declining role of labor unions and Socialism. Here in the United States, labor unions, which used to represent about 33% of the workforce now represent less than 10% of the workforce. While our libertarian tendencies have always made labor union membership lower here than in Europe, recent declines in unionized labor are due in part because of the difficulty unionizing jobs in the emerging service- and knowledge-based economy, and in part because of our wholesale embrace of competition (as a producer of efficiency and as a system of determining merit), rather than solidarity. Young predicts this as the necessary consequence of the adoption meritocratic policies.
The uncoupling of wages from productivity. Young explicitly discusses this dynamic in which he envisions laborers demanding a share of GDP based on their increased productivity. However, since increases in productivity are no longer gained primarily from people working harder or longer, but rather by improvements in technology and organization, under a meritocratic society the profits from rising productivity should go to those who invented the technology and created more efficient organization – the scientists, inventors, and managers – not to the laborers.
Universal basic income. Because of the dynamic outlined above, Young envisions a shift towards a bare minimum standard income, determined not by a worker’s productivity, but by the bare minimum needed to survive. This is adjusted by CPI each year, and workers who produce higher value for their companies receive compensation above and beyond this bare minimum. While this is not yet a widespread reality, it is gaining traction because of the exact dynamics Young describes.
The increasing importance of education. Because labor demands shift away from brute strength and manual dexterity and towards mental capacity, Young identifies education as the single most important factor in a meritocratic society. In today’s world, despite a renewed call for shop classes and apprenticeships, higher education has steadily become increasingly correlated with both employment and higher earnings, while low educational attainment has become increasingly correlated with unemployment and low earnings. Education is today the single most predictive factor of financial wellbeing, just as Young predicted.
Parenthood as the primary barrier to implementation of meritocratic public policy Young picks up on a dynamic that is one of the oldest themes of political philosophy: the family as a unit of social structure introduces incentives and loyalties that often run counter to public goods or communal needs. In The Republic, Plato addresses this issue by having Socrates suggest a society in which all children are taken from their parents at birth and raised communally, so that parents have an incentive to educate and care for all children, not only their own. We might be aghast at such a suggestion, and yet the damage done by parents working towards their own children's interests, rather than society's interests, is real and profound. In a competitive meritocratic society where education is so highly correlated with financial wellbeing and professional success, any individual parent is incentivized not only to give their child the best education, but to give them a better education than other children receive, even if their own children aren't particularly... smart. This is precisely what we see in America today, where quality educational opportunities are hoarded by the upper class and upper middle class, regardless of their children's actual intelligence or academic aptitude. (Although, of course, any given upper middle class parent would argue that their child is truly exceptional, regardless of evidence to the contrary.) Poor and lower middle class parents can't afford the best education, both in terms of fronting tuition and in terms of the opportunity cost of having a dependent, non-income generating child for an extended period of time. The necessary consequence of this dynamic is that those who receive higher education today are not necessarily the best and brightest; they are simply those most able to afford the costs of educational advancement. This is repugnant to meritocratic ideals: from the standpoint of both individual justice and producing the greatest good for society as a whole, brilliant poor students should be the ones in Harvard, not average rich kids. While Young correctly identified this as a profound issue for the 21st century meritocratic society, he incorrectly predicted that the government would address this issue by standing up to the upper and upper middle classes, limiting the degree to which wealth can determine academic outcomes and increasing public funds to promote the advancement of poor and working class children.
The rise of the technocrats. Young sees a greater role for “experts” in governing in the democracies of the 21st century. In his world, with increasing economic and technological complexity, many representatives elected from among the masses are unable to fully understand or appreciate the issues they’re asked to deal with. Therefore, a class of policy experts and technical administrators rises to help govern and advise. While our current system is not as extreme as the one Young predicts, there has indeed been an explosion of think tanks and policy researchers whose roles are increasingly important in shaping the highly technical legislation required by our modern society.
Rising inequality. Young identifies two factors in increasing inequality: First, as companies become larger and more complex, they necessarily have more “rungs” in the ladder of their organizational structure. If you assume even a minor difference in income between these rungs, having more rungs necessarily increases the spread between the top rung and the bottom rung. Young discusses how there must be differences in income between rungs, because what other incentive is there to have able individuals step up into roles with increased demands, increased responsibilities, and more difficult tasks? Under a meritocratic system, it’s important to get the “best and brightest” into “upper-level” roles, so incentives should not run counter to this. Second, income follows merit in a meritocratic society. With the demands of the knowledge-based economy, Young envisions a scarcity of intellect and an over-abundance of physical skill relative to the demands of the economy. Because of this, it makes sense for organizations to compete more for “top talent,” driving up wages for the most intelligent and educated, while wages for unskilled laborers plunge. It’s basic supply and demand put into the context of a meritocratic, knowledge-based economy, and it is the dynamic we see today: Over the past several decades, "technical" workers, such as doctors, programmers, engineers, and executives have seen the vast majority of wage gains in the economy while wages for unskilled workers have stagnated, and, in some cases, fallen. Inequality has exploded.
Perks as pay. While inequality has been on the rise, it’s probably also under-reported since high-level jobs now include increasing amounts of “benefits” in addition to salaries. These benefits are not always included in measures of economic wellbeing, even though they often significantly increase the value of a worker’s “total compensation package.” Health insurance, child care, tuition reimbursement, 401(k)s with company matching, company contributions to employee 529 plans, free food and drinks, gym memberships, free on-site dry cleaning, free parking, company-sponsored travel, paid sabbaticals, company cars, happy hours: All of these benefits are far more likely to be provided to upper-level employees than to low-level employees or service-sector employees. Young correctly identified this trend as well as the shift towards classifying employee perks as “business costs,” rather than as direct compensation.
The self-segregation of “elites” into an exclusive upper class and declining social mobility. In Young’s meritocratic society, the upper class is no longer composed of those whose wealth or titles were inherited, but rather by those with the highest educational attainment: doctors, lawyers, highly skilled technocrats, and innovators. Because the new upper class attains their status through their own skill and hard work (merit), these people no longer feel any sense of uncertainty about their position. Correspondingly, there is no sense of noblesse oblige, nor any reason whatsoever to associate with people of different classes. Young writes:
“Now that people have become classified by ability, the gap between classes has inevitably become wider. The upper classes are, on the one hand, no longer weakened by self-doubt and self-criticism. Today the eminent know that success is just reward for their own capacity, for their own efforts, and for their own undeniable achievement. They deserve to belong to a superior class… What can they have in common with people whose education stopped at sixteen or seventeen?”
In today’s world, our society has never been more geographically segregated by wealth: the rich live in gated enclaves of mansions, the poor live in ghettos or destitute rural counties. In fact, the rich actively employ zoning restrictions and fees to keep their areas economically inaccessible to the lower classes. Geographic mobility is down, with the poor rarely able to move to more affluent areas. Economic mobility has likewise fallen off since the 1980s, with the vast majority of Americans never rising far from the class in which they were brought up. This is a trend that has only increased in the past several decades. Meanwhile, the upper-middle class and rich seem to feel positively indignant at the idea there is anything wrong with this: they’ve earned it. The problem is less one of attitude, however repugnant; the problem is one of division, and we have increasingly seen the political repercussions of having “two Americas.”
The rise of the service-sector economy, and the corresponding increase in male unemployment relative to female unemployment. This is an interesting prediction made by Young, and one of the most surprising to be more or less correct. Young envisions former factory workers needing to be “retrained” in skills more fitting for the modern economy if they are to remain employed. So, what does society need if not people making things? Young’s answer: Society needs service workers and caregivers. Young describes how a larger percentage of unskilled labor ends up in restaurants, bars, and in “personal service,” like housekeeping, transportation, and childcare, once factory work is no longer needed. Women, he says, make this transition well. Men, however, do not, and their unemployment rises drastically in the new economy, even as women fare relatively well. Young shows his true nature as a sociologist here: Factory work, and other manual labor, has long been dominated by men given our cultural understanding of strength and manual skill being associated with “maleness.” Meanwhile, “women’s work” has long been associated with caregiving and domestic tasks, so the new economy allows them to preserve a traditional cultural sense of identity. Indeed, we have seen male unemployment rise relative to female unemployment over the past decade, and at least part of this has been explained by similar cultural reasoning.
Women becoming doubly burdened under the new economic system. Young underestimates the degree to which society’s norms would change to allow more women into the workplace, but he does accurately predict that women will increasingly take up high-level roles in accordance with their intellectual capacity, becoming surgeons and high-level executives. However, Young notes that these 21st-century women are often forced to choose between a career and a family. Those who chose their careers either opt to not have children or have fewer children, leading to a decline in birthrate. Those who choose to have a family are forced to give up their careers, much to their discontent. Because “merit” is the highest value, being unable to fully realize their merit causes a very real crisis among women. Unfortunately, Young isn’t wrong on this front, although a rapid embrace of feminist ideals is leading to policy shifts to mitigate this dynamic (paid family leave, job protection laws), and changing cultural norms (men being equal partners in childcare and domestic tasks) are allowing for a more truly equitable society than Young dreamed possible.
Women lead the revolution of the future. Young discusses how educated, upper-class women become the ones to partner with the lower-class once they realize the “meritocratic” economy doesn’t work for them given their double burden. This is an uneasy partnership however, because the interests of the two groups aren’t necessarily well aligned. The political manifesto they create together ends up being a hodge-podge of minor demands, since going too far in any given direction will cause the coalition to fall apart. Although the coalition has neither a coherent political platform nor central driving ideology, their resistance to the current order is strongly felt, and the subsequent revolution comes as a complete surprise to those in power. Here I also see echoes of the present day, particularly in the wake of the Me Too movement, in which left-wing reformers are a coalition of uneasy alliances with more rage at the existing power structure than coherent narrative for the future. In a sense, what Young predicts in the end of this book is a rise of identity-based politics in response to a history of politics dominated by questions of economic efficiency.
Young makes some bad predictions too. As noted above, he fails to account for the sweeping changes brought about by feminism. He also overpredicts the degree to which governments act rationally in pursuit of meritocratic ideals. For example, since intelligence and education are in high demand in the new economy, Young believes that policy-makers will choose to spend more public funds on education: raising wages for teachers to attract the best into those ranks and giving not only scholarships, but stipends to low-income gifted students so they are able to continue their education rather than drop out to work. Neither of these things is true in America today, and in some ways, we’ve gone in the opposite direction in recent decades, letting schools crumble and making higher education more burdensome and unobtainable for brilliant low-income students, not less.
The genius of Young’s vision is not solely in its ability to predict the trajectory of social and economic development, but in its exposition of how a focused commitment to a single ideal, merit, can have serious unintended consequences. Social progress involves tradeoffs, and while perhaps everyone is made better off materially by a maximization of efficient use of labor resources, and while the value of merit is unquestionably supported by a sense of justice, there is also an existential desperation that sets in when any given individual’s future is fully determined by factors outside their control. This is the case in Young’s dystopia. Under a perfected meritocracy, the “stupid” will always be “stupid,” and the only thing they can do is accept their lot in life and make do with their meager wages. When “merit” is society’s only guiding ideal, anyone who cannot fully achieve his or her merit becomes hopelessly devalued, as with women forced to give up careers in favor of motherhood.
The solution to Young's dystopia is pretty straight forward: introduce additional values into the metric for forming economic and public policy. Most people hold multiple, if sometimes conflicting values already. Society is largely a balancing act between these values, played out a million times through a million interactions of a billion people. Given that people already hold multiple values, a single-minded commitment to just one is implausible. Life isn’t quite as simple as Young presents here, and that’s a good thing.
In spite of Young’s warnings about the ossified society meritocracy brings about, he also is not wholly opposed to it. Merit has the clear and ringing endorsement of people’s natural intuitions of what is just and fair. Again, the introduction gives insight into this nuanced position: “This book was, in other words, intended to present two sides of the case – the case against as well as the case for a meritocracy. It is not a simple matter and was not intended to be… The decision, one way or another, was, and is left to the reader, the hope being that, on the way to making up his or her mind on one of the great issues of modern society, he or she will also have a little fun.”
This is the definitive dystopia for our time.
Written in 1958, this book by sociologist Michael Young features a totally fictional sociologist named Michael Young who, writing on the eve of revolution in 2034, reflects on the past century of human social, political, and economic development in order to explain how things have come to this point. He is comprehensive in his analysis.
The book starts a bit slowly, but I highly recommend reading the author's introduction, which is delightful. Here Young makes it clear that this book is indeed a satire – a point that may have been lost on those who have wholeheartedly embraced the concept of “meritocracy” without any consideration of the potential downsides.
Indeed, "merit" has underpinned many, if not most, economic and social policies of the 20th and 21st centuries, and Young’s depiction of a futuristic meritocratic society is eerily familiar. A non-exhaustive list of things that Young correctly predicted of the late 20th and early 21st centuries includes:
The shift from a manufacturing-based economy to a knowledge-based economy. This may not seem like much of a prediction in 2018, but in 1958 it was hardly clear how profound this shift would be. While Young does not attempt to predict the exact nature of the technology of the 21st century, he accurately predicts that changes in technology will devalue manual labor and shift labor demands to work involving innovation, problem solving, and highly technical knowledge.
The declining role of labor unions and Socialism. Here in the United States, labor unions, which used to represent about 33% of the workforce now represent less than 10% of the workforce. While our libertarian tendencies have always made labor union membership lower here than in Europe, recent declines in unionized labor are due in part because of the difficulty unionizing jobs in the emerging service- and knowledge-based economy, and in part because of our wholesale embrace of competition (as a producer of efficiency and as a system of determining merit), rather than solidarity. Young predicts this as the necessary consequence of the adoption meritocratic policies.
The uncoupling of wages from productivity. Young explicitly discusses this dynamic in which he envisions laborers demanding a share of GDP based on their increased productivity. However, since increases in productivity are no longer gained primarily from people working harder or longer, but rather by improvements in technology and organization, under a meritocratic society the profits from rising productivity should go to those who invented the technology and created more efficient organization – the scientists, inventors, and managers – not to the laborers.
Universal basic income. Because of the dynamic outlined above, Young envisions a shift towards a bare minimum standard income, determined not by a worker’s productivity, but by the bare minimum needed to survive. This is adjusted by CPI each year, and workers who produce higher value for their companies receive compensation above and beyond this bare minimum. While this is not yet a widespread reality, it is gaining traction because of the exact dynamics Young describes.
The increasing importance of education. Because labor demands shift away from brute strength and manual dexterity and towards mental capacity, Young identifies education as the single most important factor in a meritocratic society. In today’s world, despite a renewed call for shop classes and apprenticeships, higher education has steadily become increasingly correlated with both employment and higher earnings, while low educational attainment has become increasingly correlated with unemployment and low earnings. Education is today the single most predictive factor of financial wellbeing, just as Young predicted.
Parenthood as the primary barrier to implementation of meritocratic public policy Young picks up on a dynamic that is one of the oldest themes of political philosophy: the family as a unit of social structure introduces incentives and loyalties that often run counter to public goods or communal needs. In The Republic, Plato addresses this issue by having Socrates suggest a society in which all children are taken from their parents at birth and raised communally, so that parents have an incentive to educate and care for all children, not only their own. We might be aghast at such a suggestion, and yet the damage done by parents working towards their own children's interests, rather than society's interests, is real and profound. In a competitive meritocratic society where education is so highly correlated with financial wellbeing and professional success, any individual parent is incentivized not only to give their child the best education, but to give them a better education than other children receive, even if their own children aren't particularly... smart. This is precisely what we see in America today, where quality educational opportunities are hoarded by the upper class and upper middle class, regardless of their children's actual intelligence or academic aptitude. (Although, of course, any given upper middle class parent would argue that their child is truly exceptional, regardless of evidence to the contrary.) Poor and lower middle class parents can't afford the best education, both in terms of fronting tuition and in terms of the opportunity cost of having a dependent, non-income generating child for an extended period of time. The necessary consequence of this dynamic is that those who receive higher education today are not necessarily the best and brightest; they are simply those most able to afford the costs of educational advancement. This is repugnant to meritocratic ideals: from the standpoint of both individual justice and producing the greatest good for society as a whole, brilliant poor students should be the ones in Harvard, not average rich kids. While Young correctly identified this as a profound issue for the 21st century meritocratic society, he incorrectly predicted that the government would address this issue by standing up to the upper and upper middle classes, limiting the degree to which wealth can determine academic outcomes and increasing public funds to promote the advancement of poor and working class children.
The rise of the technocrats. Young sees a greater role for “experts” in governing in the democracies of the 21st century. In his world, with increasing economic and technological complexity, many representatives elected from among the masses are unable to fully understand or appreciate the issues they’re asked to deal with. Therefore, a class of policy experts and technical administrators rises to help govern and advise. While our current system is not as extreme as the one Young predicts, there has indeed been an explosion of think tanks and policy researchers whose roles are increasingly important in shaping the highly technical legislation required by our modern society.
Rising inequality. Young identifies two factors in increasing inequality: First, as companies become larger and more complex, they necessarily have more “rungs” in the ladder of their organizational structure. If you assume even a minor difference in income between these rungs, having more rungs necessarily increases the spread between the top rung and the bottom rung. Young discusses how there must be differences in income between rungs, because what other incentive is there to have able individuals step up into roles with increased demands, increased responsibilities, and more difficult tasks? Under a meritocratic system, it’s important to get the “best and brightest” into “upper-level” roles, so incentives should not run counter to this. Second, income follows merit in a meritocratic society. With the demands of the knowledge-based economy, Young envisions a scarcity of intellect and an over-abundance of physical skill relative to the demands of the economy. Because of this, it makes sense for organizations to compete more for “top talent,” driving up wages for the most intelligent and educated, while wages for unskilled laborers plunge. It’s basic supply and demand put into the context of a meritocratic, knowledge-based economy, and it is the dynamic we see today: Over the past several decades, "technical" workers, such as doctors, programmers, engineers, and executives have seen the vast majority of wage gains in the economy while wages for unskilled workers have stagnated, and, in some cases, fallen. Inequality has exploded.
Perks as pay. While inequality has been on the rise, it’s probably also under-reported since high-level jobs now include increasing amounts of “benefits” in addition to salaries. These benefits are not always included in measures of economic wellbeing, even though they often significantly increase the value of a worker’s “total compensation package.” Health insurance, child care, tuition reimbursement, 401(k)s with company matching, company contributions to employee 529 plans, free food and drinks, gym memberships, free on-site dry cleaning, free parking, company-sponsored travel, paid sabbaticals, company cars, happy hours: All of these benefits are far more likely to be provided to upper-level employees than to low-level employees or service-sector employees. Young correctly identified this trend as well as the shift towards classifying employee perks as “business costs,” rather than as direct compensation.
The self-segregation of “elites” into an exclusive upper class and declining social mobility. In Young’s meritocratic society, the upper class is no longer composed of those whose wealth or titles were inherited, but rather by those with the highest educational attainment: doctors, lawyers, highly skilled technocrats, and innovators. Because the new upper class attains their status through their own skill and hard work (merit), these people no longer feel any sense of uncertainty about their position. Correspondingly, there is no sense of noblesse oblige, nor any reason whatsoever to associate with people of different classes. Young writes:
“Now that people have become classified by ability, the gap between classes has inevitably become wider. The upper classes are, on the one hand, no longer weakened by self-doubt and self-criticism. Today the eminent know that success is just reward for their own capacity, for their own efforts, and for their own undeniable achievement. They deserve to belong to a superior class… What can they have in common with people whose education stopped at sixteen or seventeen?”
In today’s world, our society has never been more geographically segregated by wealth: the rich live in gated enclaves of mansions, the poor live in ghettos or destitute rural counties. In fact, the rich actively employ zoning restrictions and fees to keep their areas economically inaccessible to the lower classes. Geographic mobility is down, with the poor rarely able to move to more affluent areas. Economic mobility has likewise fallen off since the 1980s, with the vast majority of Americans never rising far from the class in which they were brought up. This is a trend that has only increased in the past several decades. Meanwhile, the upper-middle class and rich seem to feel positively indignant at the idea there is anything wrong with this: they’ve earned it. The problem is less one of attitude, however repugnant; the problem is one of division, and we have increasingly seen the political repercussions of having “two Americas.”
The rise of the service-sector economy, and the corresponding increase in male unemployment relative to female unemployment. This is an interesting prediction made by Young, and one of the most surprising to be more or less correct. Young envisions former factory workers needing to be “retrained” in skills more fitting for the modern economy if they are to remain employed. So, what does society need if not people making things? Young’s answer: Society needs service workers and caregivers. Young describes how a larger percentage of unskilled labor ends up in restaurants, bars, and in “personal service,” like housekeeping, transportation, and childcare, once factory work is no longer needed. Women, he says, make this transition well. Men, however, do not, and their unemployment rises drastically in the new economy, even as women fare relatively well. Young shows his true nature as a sociologist here: Factory work, and other manual labor, has long been dominated by men given our cultural understanding of strength and manual skill being associated with “maleness.” Meanwhile, “women’s work” has long been associated with caregiving and domestic tasks, so the new economy allows them to preserve a traditional cultural sense of identity. Indeed, we have seen male unemployment rise relative to female unemployment over the past decade, and at least part of this has been explained by similar cultural reasoning.
Women becoming doubly burdened under the new economic system. Young underestimates the degree to which society’s norms would change to allow more women into the workplace, but he does accurately predict that women will increasingly take up high-level roles in accordance with their intellectual capacity, becoming surgeons and high-level executives. However, Young notes that these 21st-century women are often forced to choose between a career and a family. Those who chose their careers either opt to not have children or have fewer children, leading to a decline in birthrate. Those who choose to have a family are forced to give up their careers, much to their discontent. Because “merit” is the highest value, being unable to fully realize their merit causes a very real crisis among women. Unfortunately, Young isn’t wrong on this front, although a rapid embrace of feminist ideals is leading to policy shifts to mitigate this dynamic (paid family leave, job protection laws), and changing cultural norms (men being equal partners in childcare and domestic tasks) are allowing for a more truly equitable society than Young dreamed possible.
Women lead the revolution of the future. Young discusses how educated, upper-class women become the ones to partner with the lower-class once they realize the “meritocratic” economy doesn’t work for them given their double burden. This is an uneasy partnership however, because the interests of the two groups aren’t necessarily well aligned. The political manifesto they create together ends up being a hodge-podge of minor demands, since going too far in any given direction will cause the coalition to fall apart. Although the coalition has neither a coherent political platform nor central driving ideology, their resistance to the current order is strongly felt, and the subsequent revolution comes as a complete surprise to those in power. Here I also see echoes of the present day, particularly in the wake of the Me Too movement, in which left-wing reformers are a coalition of uneasy alliances with more rage at the existing power structure than coherent narrative for the future. In a sense, what Young predicts in the end of this book is a rise of identity-based politics in response to a history of politics dominated by questions of economic efficiency.
Young makes some bad predictions too. As noted above, he fails to account for the sweeping changes brought about by feminism. He also overpredicts the degree to which governments act rationally in pursuit of meritocratic ideals. For example, since intelligence and education are in high demand in the new economy, Young believes that policy-makers will choose to spend more public funds on education: raising wages for teachers to attract the best into those ranks and giving not only scholarships, but stipends to low-income gifted students so they are able to continue their education rather than drop out to work. Neither of these things is true in America today, and in some ways, we’ve gone in the opposite direction in recent decades, letting schools crumble and making higher education more burdensome and unobtainable for brilliant low-income students, not less.
The genius of Young’s vision is not solely in its ability to predict the trajectory of social and economic development, but in its exposition of how a focused commitment to a single ideal, merit, can have serious unintended consequences. Social progress involves tradeoffs, and while perhaps everyone is made better off materially by a maximization of efficient use of labor resources, and while the value of merit is unquestionably supported by a sense of justice, there is also an existential desperation that sets in when any given individual’s future is fully determined by factors outside their control. This is the case in Young’s dystopia. Under a perfected meritocracy, the “stupid” will always be “stupid,” and the only thing they can do is accept their lot in life and make do with their meager wages. When “merit” is society’s only guiding ideal, anyone who cannot fully achieve his or her merit becomes hopelessly devalued, as with women forced to give up careers in favor of motherhood.
The solution to Young's dystopia is pretty straight forward: introduce additional values into the metric for forming economic and public policy. Most people hold multiple, if sometimes conflicting values already. Society is largely a balancing act between these values, played out a million times through a million interactions of a billion people. Given that people already hold multiple values, a single-minded commitment to just one is implausible. Life isn’t quite as simple as Young presents here, and that’s a good thing.
In spite of Young’s warnings about the ossified society meritocracy brings about, he also is not wholly opposed to it. Merit has the clear and ringing endorsement of people’s natural intuitions of what is just and fair. Again, the introduction gives insight into this nuanced position: “This book was, in other words, intended to present two sides of the case – the case against as well as the case for a meritocracy. It is not a simple matter and was not intended to be… The decision, one way or another, was, and is left to the reader, the hope being that, on the way to making up his or her mind on one of the great issues of modern society, he or she will also have a little fun.”
This is the definitive dystopia for our time.
November 6, 2016
Lord Young coined the term 'meritocracy' and was a prolific social innovator - founding a plethora of organisations from School for Social Entrepreneurs to Open University. In this satirical essay he writes about a dystopian future where Britain is governed by an elite selected through IQ. It's written from the perspective of an anonymous author & academic who is making the case for this brand of meritocracy. But is juxtaposed throughout with small hints of Young's real thinking. A society based on merit may sound good on paper, but in reality only serves to perpetuate a class structure based on metrics of intelligence and educational qualifications.
There is no absolute measure for merit. Any way we create for measuring it, is going to be biased towards the society which created it, and thus become self perpetuating of the established classes.
It encourages people to adapt and grow into very cookie cutter workforce. You must conform to win or succeed.
Here are some quotes from the book I highlighted:
* 'Britain survived so long because it had repeated blood transfusions from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Canada..'
* 'Within the span of human history age has been the most enduring ruling class'
* 'Women have always been judged more by what they are than by what they do, more for other personal qualities than for their intelligence; more for their warmth of heart, their vivacity, and their charm than for their worldly success. It is therefore understandable that they should wish to stress their own virtues'
There is no absolute measure for merit. Any way we create for measuring it, is going to be biased towards the society which created it, and thus become self perpetuating of the established classes.
It encourages people to adapt and grow into very cookie cutter workforce. You must conform to win or succeed.
Here are some quotes from the book I highlighted:
* 'Britain survived so long because it had repeated blood transfusions from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Canada..'
* 'Within the span of human history age has been the most enduring ruling class'
* 'Women have always been judged more by what they are than by what they do, more for other personal qualities than for their intelligence; more for their warmth of heart, their vivacity, and their charm than for their worldly success. It is therefore understandable that they should wish to stress their own virtues'
October 30, 2018
I read this back in high school, without realizing that it had been intended as a dystopia until about half-way through. It certainly came off as very disturbing and dystopian, though, and helped form some of my early understanding of the problems with capitalism.
November 2, 2022
The line of argument was made more difficult for me to follow by the concept of looking back from a projected future. Very interesting and some really interesting lines of thought but not a book I found easy to follow.
April 21, 2014
I always thought this book was a little gem ... Much overlooked in reviews on dystopian literature ...
December 21, 2018
Using a narrator who writes from a post-2033 fictional retrospective and uses England as a case study, Young argues that the old class division between haves and have-nots has been replaced by a new division of the same. In the older days, the aristocracies of privilege and inherited wealth reaped societal benefits for themselves. That division broke down over time due to a variety of historical factors. Then industry, technology and trade required talent to be competitive, and WWI demanded skills as well as bodies. Extensive intelligence testing came into its own to select the best and brightest to do what needed to be done. Later, under the principle that no child was inherently superior to another, changes in the education system were made to secure talent for the modern world (though, soon, with mixed results, social reformers pushed for equality across the board and “equal opportunity” became “everyone was equal in all respects”).
In time, English society was transformed. Merit-based equal opportunity replaced inherited privilege, which now sorted itself into a new class division: the talented versus “those of lower ability.” The genetics of talent took over from there. The new upper class advanced their position and kept the competition down. Democracy “was run by the cleverest people. It was not an aristocracy of birth, not a plutocracy of wealth, but a true meritocracy of talent.” The lower classes had to be kept in their place. “One man, one vote” was too egalitarian. A say in how society was to be governed had to be based on more than simple existence. “For every man enlivened by excellence, ten are deadened by mediocrity, and the object of good government is to ensure that the latter do not usurp the place in the social order which should belong to their betters.” Society became Plato’s Republic. A sense of natural superiority kicked in. Snobbery became a badge of superiority. Those at the lower end deserved their position because “they were inferior,” and the IQ tests confirmed it.
“What about those who are left behind?” the narrator asks. “Do not the masses, for all their lack of capacity, sometimes behave as though they suffered from a sense of indignity?” Young’s narrator responds with this: “Let us still recognize that those who complain of present injustice think they are talking about something real, and try to understand how it is that nonsense to us makes sense to them.” Only a few crumbs remained for the lower class. Some could succeed by taking the equal opportunity route. Some could achieve status through their “muscle power” (athletic skills). But most suffered their condition stoically, accepting their place. If their “genetic brilliance” showed nonetheless, they still felt inferior, ashamed of their lowly origins because of meritocracy’s defining ethos.
The narrator acknowledges the genetics of talent (the genetics of inequality) and asks, somewhat fruitlessly, “What is superior?” What the narrator does not convey is that talent and IQ in Western culture carry an unfortunate bias from Plato’s legacy. The smart people, those with talent, are regarded as the best. As opposed to the masses who are driven by bodily passion and need to be controlled. Those with good morals, it was believed, were, ipso facto, good people. But just as there is for IQ where “the inferior classes contained almost as high a proportion of superior people as the upper classes themselves,” there’s probably good and bad that range between two character poles: those out for themselves at the expense of others if need be, and those who respect others as well as themselves. Genetically, the best and brightest argument is highly self-serving, as well as being inaccurate. Mind can and does serve nefarious ends if unchecked. The problem is that in an aristocracy of talent, power accrues to those who are well-endowed, and a good many then use power to advance their interest. Even without that dynamic, the good elites invariably do well, but those of lower talent are left behind, valueless, relatively, in self-esteem as well as material well-being.
How much of this explains the U.S.A. Trump phenomenon? Just the terminology itself is offensive. Those with merit means the rest have, what? No merit? One doesn’t have to be an elite to be valued. Regular work needs to be done. Being simple or common is not a bad thing. Being content is a very lofty aspiration. And it’s not like the non-elite are trying themselves to claim the mantle of elitism, without being really elite. This in turn raises a question about what is and what is not elite. A farmer-rancher type might have an opinion on that question vis-à-vis the urban sophisticate. Being valued seems to be a natural enough, hard-wired, desire. Maybe a good part of Trump’s support is a reaction not only to the relative lack of material well-being, but to the disdain felt by those who are regular people (“ordinary”) and are happy enough just being that.
In time, English society was transformed. Merit-based equal opportunity replaced inherited privilege, which now sorted itself into a new class division: the talented versus “those of lower ability.” The genetics of talent took over from there. The new upper class advanced their position and kept the competition down. Democracy “was run by the cleverest people. It was not an aristocracy of birth, not a plutocracy of wealth, but a true meritocracy of talent.” The lower classes had to be kept in their place. “One man, one vote” was too egalitarian. A say in how society was to be governed had to be based on more than simple existence. “For every man enlivened by excellence, ten are deadened by mediocrity, and the object of good government is to ensure that the latter do not usurp the place in the social order which should belong to their betters.” Society became Plato’s Republic. A sense of natural superiority kicked in. Snobbery became a badge of superiority. Those at the lower end deserved their position because “they were inferior,” and the IQ tests confirmed it.
“What about those who are left behind?” the narrator asks. “Do not the masses, for all their lack of capacity, sometimes behave as though they suffered from a sense of indignity?” Young’s narrator responds with this: “Let us still recognize that those who complain of present injustice think they are talking about something real, and try to understand how it is that nonsense to us makes sense to them.” Only a few crumbs remained for the lower class. Some could succeed by taking the equal opportunity route. Some could achieve status through their “muscle power” (athletic skills). But most suffered their condition stoically, accepting their place. If their “genetic brilliance” showed nonetheless, they still felt inferior, ashamed of their lowly origins because of meritocracy’s defining ethos.
The narrator acknowledges the genetics of talent (the genetics of inequality) and asks, somewhat fruitlessly, “What is superior?” What the narrator does not convey is that talent and IQ in Western culture carry an unfortunate bias from Plato’s legacy. The smart people, those with talent, are regarded as the best. As opposed to the masses who are driven by bodily passion and need to be controlled. Those with good morals, it was believed, were, ipso facto, good people. But just as there is for IQ where “the inferior classes contained almost as high a proportion of superior people as the upper classes themselves,” there’s probably good and bad that range between two character poles: those out for themselves at the expense of others if need be, and those who respect others as well as themselves. Genetically, the best and brightest argument is highly self-serving, as well as being inaccurate. Mind can and does serve nefarious ends if unchecked. The problem is that in an aristocracy of talent, power accrues to those who are well-endowed, and a good many then use power to advance their interest. Even without that dynamic, the good elites invariably do well, but those of lower talent are left behind, valueless, relatively, in self-esteem as well as material well-being.
How much of this explains the U.S.A. Trump phenomenon? Just the terminology itself is offensive. Those with merit means the rest have, what? No merit? One doesn’t have to be an elite to be valued. Regular work needs to be done. Being simple or common is not a bad thing. Being content is a very lofty aspiration. And it’s not like the non-elite are trying themselves to claim the mantle of elitism, without being really elite. This in turn raises a question about what is and what is not elite. A farmer-rancher type might have an opinion on that question vis-à-vis the urban sophisticate. Being valued seems to be a natural enough, hard-wired, desire. Maybe a good part of Trump’s support is a reaction not only to the relative lack of material well-being, but to the disdain felt by those who are regular people (“ordinary”) and are happy enough just being that.
August 25, 2018
In February this year, Bagehot, The Economist's Britain columnist, penned an article about the importance today of Young's book from about 60 years ago. For Young, and that is rare case not only in today's Isles, but also in Europe and the world, meritocracy, even at its most egalitarian moment, risks not only to miss her actual value, but also to deepen the antagonisms between classes. Young, a Labor member, and one of the Party's foremost ideologues was prescient in recognizing this as a drama that will affect the future generations. That is also why the book has a futuristic tinge, the author "a sociologist" writing from 2033, where the IQ elite which holds almost all power, cannot control a population which did not had the same intelligence as those up above the ladder.
His theory fixates two of today's realities: that the masses will not change their mind even in the face of overwhelming evidence against their convictions, hating even more the facts which contradict their wrong suppositions and decisions (see Brexit then vs. Brexit today), and also the smugness of those being in the right(for whom lover IQ is always a laughing matter). And secondly, that is wrong to fixate the lover masses in the box on a lover social hierarchy, just because they did not get a fighting chance for the right money, parents or school. Those two parts of the same coin reinforce the old culture wars, a fight between one side who considers the other as being the template for movies as "Idiocracy", the latter seeing the former as a smug know-it all clan which seems more that a caste than an actual social group.
Young also sees new contradictions in an almost NeoHegelian way: what about a Genius parent, beneficiary of a great social status, and prestige, with a lover IQ children. What about the genius of some creating automation that will displace the job of most manual workers. And finally, what about the venerable employee, aged and ready for retirement, surpasses in a year by a new, much younger colleague. These three parts: kinship, automation, age, are traits on which today's society only gets a small grasp of it's future effects. Young nails that too. A nice read, even more real today as it was then.
His theory fixates two of today's realities: that the masses will not change their mind even in the face of overwhelming evidence against their convictions, hating even more the facts which contradict their wrong suppositions and decisions (see Brexit then vs. Brexit today), and also the smugness of those being in the right(for whom lover IQ is always a laughing matter). And secondly, that is wrong to fixate the lover masses in the box on a lover social hierarchy, just because they did not get a fighting chance for the right money, parents or school. Those two parts of the same coin reinforce the old culture wars, a fight between one side who considers the other as being the template for movies as "Idiocracy", the latter seeing the former as a smug know-it all clan which seems more that a caste than an actual social group.
Young also sees new contradictions in an almost NeoHegelian way: what about a Genius parent, beneficiary of a great social status, and prestige, with a lover IQ children. What about the genius of some creating automation that will displace the job of most manual workers. And finally, what about the venerable employee, aged and ready for retirement, surpasses in a year by a new, much younger colleague. These three parts: kinship, automation, age, are traits on which today's society only gets a small grasp of it's future effects. Young nails that too. A nice read, even more real today as it was then.
May 22, 2024
The Rise of the Meritocracy (1958) by Michael Young is a curious book. Written as an exploration of a sort of dystopia the term it promoted became one of praise.
The problem with the book is that the actual narrative is super dry to the point where when reading it your mind wanders. The book was rejected by over ten different publishers. It’s not hard to see why. The book starts as a series of essays on the imagined evolution of the meritocracy. Toward the end it explores more of the oncoming imagined history.
It’s worth a read and it makes you ponder how our society has evolved instead of the one described in the book. The book assumes that intelligence plus effort gives the best results always. It leaves out that people often believe things that are nonsense and that clever, hardworking people often fool themselves about what works. It’s strange to ponder how in our world some of the cleverest, hardest working people spend years getting a PhD only to find that post-docs pay less than far easier positions in private and public bureaucracies.
The Rise of the Meritocracy is an interesting book and if you can stomach reading it then it’s worthwhile, but presumably many people have started the book and given up due to boredom.
The problem with the book is that the actual narrative is super dry to the point where when reading it your mind wanders. The book was rejected by over ten different publishers. It’s not hard to see why. The book starts as a series of essays on the imagined evolution of the meritocracy. Toward the end it explores more of the oncoming imagined history.
It’s worth a read and it makes you ponder how our society has evolved instead of the one described in the book. The book assumes that intelligence plus effort gives the best results always. It leaves out that people often believe things that are nonsense and that clever, hardworking people often fool themselves about what works. It’s strange to ponder how in our world some of the cleverest, hardest working people spend years getting a PhD only to find that post-docs pay less than far easier positions in private and public bureaucracies.
The Rise of the Meritocracy is an interesting book and if you can stomach reading it then it’s worthwhile, but presumably many people have started the book and given up due to boredom.
January 10, 2024
Was een goed boek, maar wel het laatste wat ik op Goodreads zal updaten. Ik stap over naar Storygraph, omdat dat een onafhankelijk bedrijf is terwijl Goodreads van Amazon is (en Amazon is zo’n bizar onethisch bedrijf dat ik de schande niet in tien monologen zou kunnen overbrengen). Als je m’n updates wilt volgen (no idea why but sure it’s fun I guess) moet je ook overstappen naar Storygraph. Het geeft je ook echt een analyse van hoe je boeken zijn en recommendations op basis van wat je leest (jeej!! Nu zitten we zelfs qua leesvoer in een bubbel! Leve het algoritme!) en is gewoon niet van Amazon. See you there!
December 29, 2019
Remember the days when you have to compete with other kids in school to be on the top for grades? Or when people or your own family pressure you to study hard and do well in life because with success comes rewards and merit. What people forget is that not everyone is born with certain privileges that allows them a boost in life compared to others. However, our world now is different than what Young wrote when he published this book.
The Rise of Meritocracy by Michael Young is about that kind of world. Oh, fun fact: the word ‘meritocracy’ was coined by him in this book.
The society focuses on merits, and those who are intelligent can go far in life; so of course people with high intelligence will have power over those who are not. In this novel, it ridicules that. Contrary to our modern age, it is better that those who have merit and proven skills can hold a position of power in which the field is what they are expert at. We wouldn’t want someone who does not have knowledge or skills in medical field to hold the knife as a surgeon now would we?
Michael Young iterates that those who have merit should not hold any positions of power. In his book, this can cause the society to have separate classes in which if you do not succeed in what you do, you won’t succeed in life. In my opinion, he has a valid point. Seeing from a sociology point of view, you are rewarded with the same amount of effort you put in. However, he misses the fact that there are those who are born with a silver spoon. He forgot to take into consideration that those who have access to better education and other resources are able to get better quality of life. We still have that kind of problem today, but not as bad as back then in the 1960s.
Even though he wrote a satirical tale, it is still a tale worth reading to discuss about today’s education system.
The Rise of Meritocracy by Michael Young is about that kind of world. Oh, fun fact: the word ‘meritocracy’ was coined by him in this book.
The society focuses on merits, and those who are intelligent can go far in life; so of course people with high intelligence will have power over those who are not. In this novel, it ridicules that. Contrary to our modern age, it is better that those who have merit and proven skills can hold a position of power in which the field is what they are expert at. We wouldn’t want someone who does not have knowledge or skills in medical field to hold the knife as a surgeon now would we?
Michael Young iterates that those who have merit should not hold any positions of power. In his book, this can cause the society to have separate classes in which if you do not succeed in what you do, you won’t succeed in life. In my opinion, he has a valid point. Seeing from a sociology point of view, you are rewarded with the same amount of effort you put in. However, he misses the fact that there are those who are born with a silver spoon. He forgot to take into consideration that those who have access to better education and other resources are able to get better quality of life. We still have that kind of problem today, but not as bad as back then in the 1960s.
Even though he wrote a satirical tale, it is still a tale worth reading to discuss about today’s education system.
December 23, 2025
If you've read Tyranny of Merit and want to check out this as the source code, not worth it IMO.
3.5 stars because he came up with the term Meritocracy, but as for this essay itself, it is such a slog to get through at times. It's a halfway house between fiction and non-fiction, doesn't have any characters and at times goes through painstaking detail on made up educational institutions and academies. It’s super dry, and you can get the same idea by imagining yourself how grim this world would be.
Mixed in with all that, there's still worthwhile parts, and still gets to the heart of what makes it so yucky to have a perfect meritocracy - logically it's a good thing to have IQ+Effort as society's deciding factor but it still makes you feel squeamish spiritually. My favourite quote on this from Peter Singer:
“When we pay people high salaries for programming computers and low salaries for cleaning offices, we are, in effect, paying people for having a high IQ, and this means that we are paying people for something determined in part before they are born and almost wholly determined before they reach an age at which they are responsible for their actions. From the point of view of justice and utility there is something wrong here.”
I also feel like this book perfectly surmises the MAGA-popularist movement that Trump or whoever behind the scenes acutely understood in 2016 captured in people's minds left behind by gloablisation and quaternary industry:
"Men who have lost their self-respect are liable to lose their inner vitality (especially if they are inferior to their own parents and fall correspondingly in the social scale) and may only too easily cease to be either good citizens or good technicians. The common man is liable to sulk for his fig-leaf."
3.5 stars because he came up with the term Meritocracy, but as for this essay itself, it is such a slog to get through at times. It's a halfway house between fiction and non-fiction, doesn't have any characters and at times goes through painstaking detail on made up educational institutions and academies. It’s super dry, and you can get the same idea by imagining yourself how grim this world would be.
Mixed in with all that, there's still worthwhile parts, and still gets to the heart of what makes it so yucky to have a perfect meritocracy - logically it's a good thing to have IQ+Effort as society's deciding factor but it still makes you feel squeamish spiritually. My favourite quote on this from Peter Singer:
“When we pay people high salaries for programming computers and low salaries for cleaning offices, we are, in effect, paying people for having a high IQ, and this means that we are paying people for something determined in part before they are born and almost wholly determined before they reach an age at which they are responsible for their actions. From the point of view of justice and utility there is something wrong here.”
I also feel like this book perfectly surmises the MAGA-popularist movement that Trump or whoever behind the scenes acutely understood in 2016 captured in people's minds left behind by gloablisation and quaternary industry:
"Men who have lost their self-respect are liable to lose their inner vitality (especially if they are inferior to their own parents and fall correspondingly in the social scale) and may only too easily cease to be either good citizens or good technicians. The common man is liable to sulk for his fig-leaf."
June 26, 2019
An interesting read with an unusual approach to show a problem in the society. This book is an essay on the English society shaped by a new form of social rulers, the meritocracy. Set in dystopian 2033, it told the story in chronological steps from the new Act which allowed the basis of The Labour Party and the socialism to be formed from 1870 to 2033. Reading this book in 2019, some of the predictions which Michael Young has prophesied in 1958 rang true.
This book argues on how dangerous the rise of the meritocracy in the society. How the people who rose through merits quickly became the new elites, replacing the old elite system during feudal age which is based on hereditary system. However I find it quite disappointing that Michael Young doesn't seem to provide a hopeful conclusion to make up for a solution to the problems which he have presented greatly in this book. I can imagine how mind blowing it is to read this book in 1958, however I must give it 3 stars for the missing conclusion.
This book argues on how dangerous the rise of the meritocracy in the society. How the people who rose through merits quickly became the new elites, replacing the old elite system during feudal age which is based on hereditary system. However I find it quite disappointing that Michael Young doesn't seem to provide a hopeful conclusion to make up for a solution to the problems which he have presented greatly in this book. I can imagine how mind blowing it is to read this book in 1958, however I must give it 3 stars for the missing conclusion.
June 20, 2007
This is Lord Young's infamous book in which he coins the word 'meritocracy' and writes about the dystopian future where Britain is run by an elite picked out by intellectual strength measured by IQ. Young argues that such a society is far from egalitarian, but merely creates a class structure based on educational qualifications and metrics of intelligence.
September 20, 2017
Deliciously satirical with a karmic ending.
"Within the span of human history age has been the most enduring ruling class: once established, every aristocracy, every plutocracy, every bureaucracy, has also been a gerontocracy; and even under democracy, government by the people, of the people, for the people, meant government by old people, of young people, for old people."
"Within the span of human history age has been the most enduring ruling class: once established, every aristocracy, every plutocracy, every bureaucracy, has also been a gerontocracy; and even under democracy, government by the people, of the people, for the people, meant government by old people, of young people, for old people."
April 19, 2022
Too dated. Would have been better with a straightforward non-fictional presentation of the ideas, some of which are useful to think of.
Read
January 9, 2025Como exercicio esta ben é interesante ver como se formaría unha futura sociedade e a súa mirada cara atrás pero bue non me acabou de convencer.
May 8, 2025
fascinating and realistic but the writing style was terribly dull
November 10, 2025
I could not bring myself to finish this book. it is full of useless details and it just feels pointless.
February 1, 2025
First published in 1958, Young coined the term 'meritocracy' for this book in order to satirize a tendency he saw forming in British society:
Unfortunately it seems many of his readers took the work not as satire, but as a guidebook:
Overall the book is perhaps a bit heavy handed:
But ultimately it's an eerily prescient exploration of a meritocratic dystopia, though in no way does it exhaust its subject. But all this is not to say it doesn't also have some moments of a certain kind of eloquence in its satirical "justifications:"
And also:
If you replace the word "socialist" with "liberal" above then you have a pretty sound definition of our "meritocracy" today. Also:
Not satire at this late date!
Why should it have caught on? It must have been partly the title. I had doubts about the key word which I made up. A friend, a classical scholar, said I would be breaking the rules of good usage to invent a new word out of one Latin and one Greek word [Latin: meritum, due or reward; Greek: krat, suffix cracy, power or rule]. I would, she said, be laughed to scorn if I did.
Unfortunately it seems many of his readers took the work not as satire, but as a guidebook:
They have neglected, or not noticed, the fact that the book is satirical, and although sociology, and therefore properly earnest, it is also in an older tradition of English satire. [ ... ] I wanted to show how overweening a meritocracy could be, and, indeed, people generally who thought they belonged to it, including the author to whom the book was attributed.
That author was meant to be vulnerable. He was, as it were inadvertently, the mouthpiece 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 believe 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 pursuing their own advantage.
Overall the book is perhaps a bit heavy handed:
Now that people are classified by ability, the gap between the classes has inevitably become wider. The upper classes are, on the one hand, no longer weakened by self-doubt and self-criticism. Today the eminent know that success is just reward for their own capacity, for their own efforts, and for their own undeniable achievement. They deserve to belong to a superior class. They know, too, that not only are they of higher calibre to start with, but that a first-class education has been built upon their native gifts.
But ultimately it's an eerily prescient exploration of a meritocratic dystopia, though in no way does it exhaust its subject. But all this is not to say it doesn't also have some moments of a certain kind of eloquence in its satirical "justifications:"
Once all the geniuses are amongst the elite, and all the morons amongst the workers, what meaning can equality have? What ideal can be upheld except the principle of equal status for equal intelligence? What is the purpose of abolishing inequalities in nurture except to reveal and make more pronounced the inescapable inequalities of Nature?
And also:
When opportunity was coupled with equality it was made more than respectable; it became the Holy Grail. Socialists did not see that, as it was applied in practice, equality of opportunity meant equality of opportunity to be unequal. This structural blindness was necessary if the socialists were to concentrate with vigour upon opening wide the doors to talent.
If you replace the word "socialist" with "liberal" above then you have a pretty sound definition of our "meritocracy" today. Also:
In the old days technicians [workers] used to claim that their 'wages' should go up with productivity. Since, they said, they had produced more, so should they benefit. This was obviously wrong: economic progress is due not to manual workers - they do not even work harder - but to the inventors and organizers who devise new techniques. If anyone is entitled to the increment, it is the meritocracy. Anyway, increases in productivity must be spent on increasing productivity still further and not frittered away on ordinary people.
Not satire at this late date!
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