Max Lawson — Is Meritocracy the new Aristocracy? And the 11 Tricks that Elites use to capture Politics.

In reading this, it is good to realize that feudalism was justified by the religious paradigm then prevalent in Europe. It was based on the great chain of being, with God (the Lord) at the top and the king as God's earthly simulacrum. This implied the divine right of kings, kings being temporal lords.

Today, the great chain of being has been replaced by naturalism as the overarching paradigm owing to science replacing religion as authoritative. The concept of person has been submerged in the concept of the individual. While individuals are unique, persons are identical in sharing the same human nature.

Human beings have two aspects, particular and universal. Individuals are particular, being unique in their accidental properties and relations. Persons are universal, sharing human nature and consequently human essential properties and relations.

When naturalism and individualism become foundation in the overarching paradigm, meritocracy as rule by the evolutionary winners seems as natural as nobility by birth, which at least contained the notion of noblesse oblige, even if it was not always honored.

What is the basis for equality of persons as the foundation for human rights when individualism eclipses personalism? Then, the matter becomes one of positive law that is arbitrary.

The complement of individualism, which only partially true, is personalism. Personalism was assumed by most of the Enlightenment thinkers upon whose works modern democracy and law and based. Personalism is also a key fundamental of social justice and Catholic social teaching in that is emphasizes the inherent dignity of persons that is inviolable morally. According to Kant, “Act so that you use humanity, as much in your own person as in the person of every other, always at the same time as end and never merely as means.”

This brilliant essay by Peter Adamson, who for many years’ wrote Unicef’s State of the World’s Children report, starts with a very similar story. His argument is a powerful and interesting one. What if meritocracy is simply another form of class oppression, and in some ways an even more dangerous one? It is an excellent, subtle yet powerfully argued paper, and I would really recommend reading the whole thing. He points out that the word meritocracy was originally conceived as negative. It was intended as a warning that the ‘re-stratification of society based on ‘intelligence + application = merit’ would produce a society of arrogant, insensitive winners, and angry desperate losers.

The philosopher john Rawls was very clear on this too: ‘meritocracy still permits the distribution of wealth and income to be determined by the natural distribution of abilities and talents. It is therefore arbitrary from a moral perspective’....

Firstly we know that a huge amount of what we call merit is based on our upbringing, our parents and our home background…
But secondly, we also know, although it remains contentious, that some intelligence is genetic. It remains contentious as it is used by defenders of inequality- people are rich because they are cleverer- that genetic differences in intelligence explain why certain people are in charge. But Adamson’s point is that even if this is true in some instances, it does not make it morally right.…

At least with class or feudalism, the injustice of the system was very clear and based on obviously flimsy foundations like inherited wealth that did not stand up to scrutiny. With meritocracy, the poor are devalued because they are less clever and less able....

This week our team in Latin America and the Caribbean published a great paper, which looks at 13 instances of pro-rich tax and spending policy and political action in the region and dissects the way in which the state has been ‘captured’ by elite interests.

They break down the process of state capture into 11 different methods deployed by elites, and then look at how many of the 13 cases employed these methods....

For me this final one tips over also into the capture of ideas rather than the capture of the state. The use of resources by elites to change the way people think is perhaps the most powerful tool at their disposal.

We all can see the undue power of elites in everyday life, but this level of analysis of methods and dissection of the levers of influence is rare, and very practical if we want to change things for the better....

Oxfam Blogs — From Poverty to Power
Is Meritocracy the new Aristocracy? And the 11 Tricks that Elites use to capture Politics.
Max Lawson, Oxfam GB