Meritocracy vs Mediocracy

This is a serious one. Strap yourselves in: you have to be able to hold two rival systems in your mind at once.

I am going to say something about meritocracy and also mediocracy.

The great Michael Young published The Rise of the Meritocracy in 1958. This was a satire or fantasy. Within a few years it made the word ‘meritocracy’ a word of world-historical significance. Not many of us will ever invent a wholly new word. Shakespeare managed to do it, many times. Milton too. Bentham coined a few words. The chap who invented ‘virtue-signalling’ did very well. So did Young. The word ‘meritocracy’ expressed something everyone wanted to express, and, immediately made sense to everyone who heard it, even though they had not heard it before. A bit later on, the Australian secularist David Tribe published a similarly titled book The Rise of the Mediocracy in 1975. This word ‘mediocracy’ is a less well known, but should be as well known. It seems that Tribe did not invent the word: but certainly propelled it into our own time as something to think about.

What these admirable sociologists were concerned with was modern society. And there were others. An American, William J. Goode, in an academic lecture, ‘The Protection of the Inept’ (American Sociological Review 32 (1967), pp. 5-19) observed that meritocracy created a problem. As well as creating a class that possessed merit, it also created of a class of those who lacked merit, the ‘inept’. So he wrote about the way in which society, especially meritocratic society, found ways to protect the inept. Later on, in fact only a decade ago, Joseph C. Hermanowicz wrote an academic article, ‘The Culture of Mediocrity’ (Minerva 51 (2013), pp. 363-387) — an article I read yesterday and strongly recommend. He observed that Goode had missed something. The protection of the inept created yet another problem. This was the marginalisation of the ‘adept’. Goode, perhaps innocently, confident of the hegemony of the adept, had not noticed this problem. Hermanowicz, with great elegance, suggested that what he called ‘mediocrity’ and what Tribe would have called ‘mediocracy’ was an “alternative system of rewards” to the system of rewards evident in meritocracy. So, on the one hand, we had a system of rewards for those who had merit. On the other hand, we had the emergence of a rival system of rewards for those who lacked merit. On the one hand, meritocracy; and, on the other, mediocracy. The argument was that within a meritocracy, the inept, who always outnumber the adept, are forced to find elaborate ways of perpetuating themselves. They do this through a heavy strategy of recruitment of the less able into the institutions they can commandeer (i.e., bureaucratically), and also by the creation of a culture which enforces the codes of the mediocre over those of merit (i.e., ideologically). Does this sound familiar? In this situation, if the adept among us attempt to restore the old meritocratic standards, they themselves are marginalised. They are called mavericks or complainers, said Hermanowicz — or, we should now add, sceptics or deniers.

The logical sequence here is magnificent:

First, we have the establishment of a system of meritocracy.
Meritocracy, in rewarding the adept, marginalises the inept.
The inept require protection, and so, within a meritocracy, systems of protection are generated. Noblesse oblige and all that.
But these systems of protection have a logic of their own: so that, against the first meritocratic system of values, a second mediocratic system of values emerges.
Mediocracy establishes itself through the recruitment of the inept by the successful representatives of the inept within institutions, and by the creation of a language which subtly or unsubtly celebrates ineptitude.
And thus the adept are to some extent – but never, some of us hope, entirely – marginalised.

At all points, our system — which we might have made the mistake of thinking was a mature meritocratic system — is, in fact, an uneasy co-existence of two rival systems of values within the same order: a meritocratic system and a mediocratic system.

Now let us slow down and think about them a bit.

Meritocracy = a system of values in which everyone has equality of opportunity, and therefore there is only one reason for distinguishing persons: this is that some are more able than others. Everyone can be placed along a line running from the most able to the least. Within this system, those who are more able are promoted. Those with merit rule. It is a fantasy. But it is a fantasy we have come to take seriously. In Britain, since the late 19th century we have had competitive examinations for civil servants. In France and Turkey and possibly elsewhere, every year an entire nation of students is examined and ranked prior to being sent into higher education.
Mediocracy = a system of values which is antithetical to meritocracy. Here, there is no external reason for distinguishing persons: therefore there are no ‘examinations’ in the sense of exams. On the contrary, all of life becomes an examination — an examination of how well one fits in: and the most successful class is the class of those not with the most merit but those who can somehow commandeer the antimeritocratic imperatives of mediocracy. The fittest are, simply, those who fit in the best. There is no line of ability. The ruling class is composed out of those who find a way of distinguishing themselves by being undistinguished (though in an apparently effective way).

In fact, we should perhaps admit that there are three rival systems. For there is no such thing as pure meritocracy or pure mediocracy. Not only do they co-exist as rivals but they are imposed on an older and more dignified system of values — a third system. This is where a society is divided into classes, castes, estates, guilds and dynasties – some of which are superior, some inferior, all of which are concrete and particular. Here there is no such thing as generalised equality. One is born to a particular station and the good life is carrying out the duties appropriate to that station. The English philosopher F.H. Bradley in the 19th century called this ‘My Station and Its Duties’. It is Platonic, if designed, and let’s say Feudal, if inherited. In order to contrast it effectively with the other two systems I shall call it, clumsily, but memorably, ‘mystationanditsdutiesocracy’. The logic of this system is ‘know your place’.

We live, now, in a once great country which was mostly run as a ‘mystationanditsdutiesocracy’. In its last glow of greatness, in the late 19th century, it attempted to become a ‘meritocracy’. So it was, perhaps, for a century: a meritocracy imposed on a mystationanditsdutiesocracy. But in the last 70 years a third system, a ‘mediocracy’ has arisen and entrenched itself. It has never wholly eliminated ‘mystationanditsdutiesocracy’ or ‘meritocracy’, but now — with all the battalions of the Civil Servants, the Lawyers, the Teachers, the Doctors, and the Administrators in its employ — it is ruling without any regard either for a sense of duty or for an awareness of merit.

I’d like to serve this argument up with a squeeze of lemon, some white pepper and a glass of champagne to the leaders of the various political parties. Perhaps it would make them feel guilty and a bit ashamed. The Tories have presided hypocritically — ‘Levelling Up’, anyone? — over the perpetuation of mediocracy. But now the shrewder and more brutal – because conscientiously mediocre – Labores, if I may call them this, are about to preside moralistically and self-satisfiedly over the final official entrenchment of the heightened and singularised Attlee-Blair system of mediocracy. (Prediction: the next great leader of Labour will have a surname beginning with a ‘C’.)

Let us also say this, since we are approaching the General Election. Historically, the role of the Conservative party was to defend ‘my station and its duties’. Historically, the role of the Liberal party was to defend ‘meritocracy’. Historically, the role of the Labour party was to defend ‘mediocracy’. Fair enough. But consider. The historic Conservative party and the historic Liberal party have collapsed: they have become nothing more than the cynical and idealistic wings of the Labour party. Even Reform seems to just be some spatchcocked nostalgia designed to appeal to those who remember the fine old days of the 1970s, when ‘my station and its duties’ still had some prestige and ‘meritocracy’ still had most of the glory.

How about this, as an explanation for why politicians are now so mediocre?

Dr. James Alexander is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Turkey.