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The Rise of the Meritocracy

The Rise of the Meritocracy
A blue background with simple line drawings on top of a man smiling and the caption 1870–2033
Cover of the Pelican Books edition
AuthorMichael Young
LanguageEnglish
GenreDystopia, political fiction
Publication date
1958
Publication placeUnited Kingdom

The Rise of the Meritocracy is a book by British sociologist and politician Michael Dunlop Young which was first published in 1958.[1] It describes a dystopian society in a future United Kingdom in which merit (defined as IQ + effort) has become the central tenet of society, replacing previous divisions of social class and creating a society stratified between a meritorious power-holding elite and a disenfranchised underclass of the less meritorious. The essay satirised the Tripartite System of education that was being practised at the time.[2] The narrative of the book ends in 2034 with a revolt against the meritocratic elite by the "Populists". [3]

The book was rejected by the Fabian Society and then by 11 publishers before being accepted by Thames and Hudson.[4]

Meritocracy is the political philosophy in which political influence and power is concentrated in those with "merit", according to the intellectual talent and achievement of the individual. The word is formed by combining the Latin root "mereō" and Ancient Greek suffix "cracy". In his essay, Michael Young describes and ridicules such a society, the selective education system that was the Tripartite System, and the philosophy in general.[2] Michael Young is widely credited with coining the term "meritocracy" in the essay,[1] but it was first used (pejoratively) by sociologist Alan Fox in 1956.[5]

The word was adopted into the English language without of the negative connotations that Young intended it to have and was embraced by supporters of the philosophy. Young expressed his disappointment in the embrace of this word and philosophy by the Labour Party under Tony Blair in The Guardian in an article in 2001, where he states:

It is good sense to appoint individual people to jobs on their merit. It is the opposite when those who are judged to have merit of a particular kind harden into a new social class without room in it for others.[2]

Journalist and writer Paul Barker points out that "irony is a dangerous freight to carry" and suggests that in the 1960s and '70s it was read "as a simple attack on the rampant meritocrats", whereas he suggests it should be read "as sociological analysis in the form of satire".[6]

In 2006 The Rise and Rise of Meritocracy commented that The Rise of the Meritocracy "was intended to help turn Labour away from meritocracy, by reminding it of the importance of communitarian values. Curiously, though, half a century later we have a Labour government declaring the promotion of meritocracy as one its primary objectives."[7]

In 2018, to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the publication of The Rise of the Meritocracy, The Young Foundation, named after Michael Young, launched Beyond Meritocracy,[8] an competition to answer the questions "What lies beyond Meritocracy?" and "What might be the equation for the 21st century?" The Rise of the Meritocracy did not say what came after the challenge to meritocracy by the Populists that it predicted in 2034. Coming after the rise of populists in 2016 such as Donald Trump in the USA and Nigel Farage in the UK some of the essays suggested that the dire predictions in the book were proving prescient, and earlier than predicted.

  1. ^ a b Fox, Margalit (25 January 2002). "Michael Young, 86, Scholar; Coined, Mocked 'Meritocracy'". New York Times. Retrieved 11 July 2018.
  2. ^ a b c Young, Michael (28 June 2001). "Down with meritocracy". The Guardian. Retrieved 27 April 2017.
  3. ^ Young, Michael D (1994). The Rise of the Meritocracy. New Brunswick (USA) and London (UK).: Transaction Publishers. ISBN 1-56000-704-4.
  4. ^ Obituary: Lord Young of Dartington, The Guardian 16 January 2002
  5. ^ Littler, Jo (2018). Against Meritocracy: Culture, Power, and Myths of Mobility. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. p. 32. ISBN 978-1-138-88954-5.
  6. ^ Barker, Paul (2005) [1995]. "The Ups and Downs of the Meritocracy". In Geoff Dench; et al. (eds.). Young at Eighty. London: Carcanet. p. 158. ISBN 9781857542431. Retrieved Mar 5, 2016.
  7. ^ Dench, Geoff (2006). The Rise and Rise of Meritocracy. Oxford: Blackwell.
  8. ^ "The Young Foundation: Beyond Meritocracy". Retrieved 2024-05-09.

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