Meritocratic Tyranny: Big, If True

“But Sandel’s critique of meritocracy runs deeper than lamenting the obvious gap between meritocratic ideals and reality; Sandel takes issue with the ideal of meritocracy itself.”

Writing in the second volume of Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville put his finger on the downside—the dark underbelly—of American meritocracy: “When all the privileges of birth and fortune are abolished, when all professions are accessible to all, and a man’s own energies may place him at the top of any one of them,” wrote Tocqueville, “universal competition,” “feverish ardor,” and restless striving can ensue.

In Tocqueville’s eyes, America’s “equality of conditions” held out the promise of knocking down unnatural and unjust barriers to social mobility and human flourishing, but it also could lead to unsavory developments like widespread, exhausted grasping and strained civic bonds. With Michael Sandel’s recent publication of The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?, we now have a lengthy, modern version of Tocqueville’s warnings: That American meritocracy might not be an unmitigated good.

While Sandel’s gripes with meritocratic tyranny are powerful and worthy of our consideration, the upshot of it all is not especially radical, nor should it be. Meritocracy, thankfully, is here to stay. The question is whether we can mend it in a manner that is more just and more conducive to forging the civic solidarity that we sorely lack in America today.

A Harvard University professor and prominent philosopher, Sandel makes a number of compelling arguments against American meritocracy—the idea that all should be able to go as far in life as their talents may take them and, thus, that the well-educated and advantaged deserve their successes, and those failing to get ahead deserve their lesser lot in life.