Michael Sandel: 'The populist backlash has been a revolt against the tyranny of merit' | Michael Sandel | The Guardian - 0 views
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meritocracy merit individualism inequality resentment working class culture crisis politics economics
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But as an age of violently polarised, partisan and poisonous politics has taken hold, it is that early encounter with Reagan that has begun to play on his mind. “It taught me a lot about the importance of the ability to listen attentively,” he says, “which matters as much as the rigours of the argument. It taught me about mutual respect and inclusion in the public square.”
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As American commentators warn of an “Armageddon” election in a divided country, how can a less resentful, less rancorous, more generous public life be revived?
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The starting point, uncomfortably, turns out to be a bonfire of the vanities that sustained a generation of progressives.
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The Tyranny of Merit is Sandel’s response to Brexit and the election of Donald Trump
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By championing an “age of merit” as the solution to the challenges of globalisation, inequality and deindustrialisation, the Democratic party and its European equivalents, Sandel argues, hung the western working-class and its values out to dry – with disastrous consequences for the common good.
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Sandel charts the rise of what he sees as a corrosive leftwing individualism: “The solution to problems of globalisation and inequality – and we heard this on both sides of the Atlantic – was that those who work hard and play by the rules should be able to rise as far as their effort and talents will take them
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It became an article of faith, a seemingly uncontroversial trope
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We will make a truly level playing field, it was said by the centre-left, so that everyone has an equal chance. And if we do, and so far as we do, then those who rise by dint of effort, talent, hard work will deserve their place, will have earned it.”
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The recommended way to “rise” has been to get a higher education. Or, as the Blair mantra had it: “Education, education, education.
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For those willing to make the requisite effort, there was the promise that: “This country will always be a place where you can make it if you try.”
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First, and most obvious, the fabled “level playing field” remains a chimera. Although he says more and more of his own Harvard students are now convinced that their success is a result of their own effort, two-thirds of them come from the top fifth of the income scale.
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social mobility has been stalled for decades. “Americans born to poor parents tend to stay poor as adults.”
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Even a perfect meritocracy, he says, would be a bad thing. “The book tries to show that there is a dark side, a demoralising side to that,” he says. “The implication is that those who do not rise will have no one to blame but themselves.
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Centre-left elites abandoned old class loyalties and took on a new role as moralising life-coaches, dedicated to helping working-class individuals shape up to a world in which they were on their own.
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“On globalisation,” says Sandel, “these parties said the choice was no longer between left and right, but between ‘open’ and ‘closed’. Open meant free flow of capital, goods and people across borders.” Not only was this state of affairs seen as irreversible, it was also presented as laudable. “To object in any way to that was to be closed-minded, prejudiced and hostile to cosmopolitan identities.”
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A relentless success ethic permeated the culture: “Those at the top deserved their place but so too did those who were left behind. They hadn’t striven as effectively.
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As centre-left parties and their representatives became more and more middle-class, the focus on upward mobility intensified. “They became reliant on the professional classes as their constituency, and in the US as a source of campaign finance.
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Blue-collar workers were in effect given a double-edged invitation to “better” themselves or carry the burden of their own failure
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Many took their votes elsewhere, nursing a sense of betrayal. “The populist backlash of recent years has been a revolt against the tyranny of merit, as it has been experienced by those who feel humiliated by meritocracy and by this entire political project.”
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Does he empathise, then, with Trumpism?
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my book conveys a sympathetic understanding of the people who voted for him. For all the thousands and thousands of lies Trump tells, the one authentic thing about him is his deep sense of insecurity and resentment against elites
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Am I tough on the Democrats? Yes, because it was their uncritical embrace of market assumptions and meritocracy that prepared the way for Trump.
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the Democratic party will not succeed unless it redefines its mission to be more attentive to legitimate grievances and resentment, to which progressive politics contributed during the era of globalisation.”
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The only way out of the crisis, Sandel believes, is to dismantle the meritocratic assumptions that have morally rubber-stamped a society of winners and losers
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“This is a moment to begin a debate about the dignity of work; about the rewards of work both in terms of pay but also in terms of esteem.
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There must be a radical re-evaluation of how contributions to the common good are judged and rewarded.
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The money to be earned in the City or on Wall Street, for example, is out of all proportion with the contribution of speculative finance to the real economy. A financial transactions tax would allow funds to be channelled more equably.
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the word “honour” is as important as the question of pay. There needs to be a redistribution of esteem as well as money, and more of it needs to go to the millions doing work that does not require a college degree.
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“We need to rethink the role of universities as arbiters of opportunity,” he says, “which is something we have come to take for granted. Credentialism has become the last acceptable prejudice
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Greater investment is important not only to support the ability of people without an advanced degree to make a living. The public recognition it conveys can help shift attitudes towards a better appreciation of the contribution to the common good made by people who haven’t been to university.”
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A new respect and status for the non-credentialed, he says, should be accompanied by a belated humility on the part of the winners in the supposedly meritocratic race
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To those who, like many of his Harvard students, believe that they are simply the deserving recipients of their own success, Sandel offers the wisdom of Ecclesiastes: “I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift
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“Humility is a civic virtue essential to this moment,” he says, “because it’s a necessary antidote to the meritocratic hubris that has driven us apart.”
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The Tyranny of Merit is the latest salvo in Sandel’s lifelong intellectual struggle against a creeping individualism that, since the Reagan and Thatcher era, has become pervasive in western democracies
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“To regard oneself as self-made and self-sufficient. This picture of the self exerts a powerful attraction because it seems on the face of it to be empowering – we can make it on our own, we can make it if we try.
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It’s a certain picture of freedom but it’s flawed. It leads to a competitive market meritocracy that deepens divides and corrodes solidarity.”
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Sandel draws on a vocabulary that challenges liberal notions of autonomy in a way that has been unfashionable for decades. Words such as “dependency”, “indebtedness”, “mystery”, “humility” and “luck” recur in his book.
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vulnerability and mutual recognition can become the basis of a renewed sense of belonging and community. It is a vision of society that is the very opposite of what came to be known as Thatcherism, with its emphasis on self-reliance as a principal virtue.
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There are, he believes, optimistic sign
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“The Black Lives Matter movement has given moral energy to progressive politics. It has become a multiracial, multigenerational movement and is opening up space for a public reckoning with injustice. It shows that the remedy for inequality is not simply to remove barriers to meritocratic achievement.”
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“The moral of Henry Aaron’s story is not that we should love meritocracy but that we should despise a system of racial injustice that can only be escaped by hitting home runs.”
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“Tawney argued that equality of opportunity was at best a partial ideal. His alternative was not an oppressive equality of results. It was a broad, democratic ‘equality of condition’ that enables citizens of all walks of life to hold their heads up high and to consider themselves participants in a common venture.
