A meritocracy it is a social system that gained prominence throughout history, mainly in the context of the liberal revolts of the 18th century. In this system, success and rewards are distributed based on individual merits, such as knowledge and effort, through selection processes that encourage competition. The word meritocracy is a neologism composed of meritum, which means “merit” in Latin, and cracy, derived from Kratos, in Greek, meaning “government” or “power”. In meritocracy, the merit of each individual is decisive for their chances of social mobility.
Today, the word meritocracy is often used to justify one's economic or social position. It is, in short, the idea that if that person got where they are, occupying a good job, with a good salary, it was exclusively through individual merit. However, the practical application of meritocracy is not always successful, especially in countries with high levels of inequality. society, such as Brazil, where the lack of equal opportunities makes it difficult to assess fair merit and perpetuates disparities social.
Read too: Social status — each person's position in the structure of society
summary on meritocracy
- Meritocracy is a social system in which the success of the individual depends mainly on the results presented by him.
- The term meritocracy literally means “rule by merit” and goes back to the ancient Greeks.
- Education systems around the world, especially in England, are heavily influenced by it.
- The popularization of the word happened after the publication of a literature book by a British sociology professor, Michael Young.
- The property theory of John Locke, a liberal philosopher, is an important basis for meritocracy.
- In Brazil and other highly unequal countries, meritocracy works better as an ideology of success than as a social system.
- It is closely linked to social inequalities, as they can influence the assessment of individual merit.
- While egalitarianism is a conception that opposes privileges and defends equality between individuals, meritocracy is a social system that values the individual merits of each person. They can be compatible in a society.
- The emergence of meritocracy, a social system based on personal merits, opposed aristocracy, a social system based on hereditary privileges.
What is meritocracy?
Meritocracy is a social system in which the success of the individual depends mainly on the results obtained by him. The results of each one are evaluated in selection processes that stimulate competition and take into account people's knowledge, skills and even effort. In a meritocratic society, rewards, positions of power, social resources and privileges are distributed taking into account these results and the merit of each person.
The word meritocracy is a neologism. It was built on the basis of two Latin terms: meritum, which means “merit”, and cracy, which comes from the Greek, Kratos, and means “government” or “power”. Therefore, it can be defined as: merit-based society in which each individual's abilities determine his or her chances of social mobility.
examples of meritocracy
There are several examples of meritocracy in everyday life and throughout history. For example, when someone applies for a job vacancy, the stage of comparing the CVs of the candidates assess the merits of candidates. O admission to public universities passes through the vestibules. A choice of civil servants, done through competitions, is the oldest known example of meritocracy.
In certain periods of the history of imperial China, especially during the Han dynasties (206 BC. c.-220 d. C.) and Tang (618-907 d. C.), imperial examinations were established to select civil servants on the basis of their academic merit. The exams tested candidates' knowledge and skills in topics such as classical literature, philosophy, and business. Those who excelled in these exams could obtain government positions, regardless of their social background.
Currently, in China, at the lowest hierarchical levels, there are elections, which means that, in cities and towns, people vote and elect their representatives. However, to reach the highest levels of the communist party, the only one to run the Chinese government, you have to go through a kind of meritocratic process. It's a combination of performance at the lowest levels of government with assessments and exams, and it can take up to 40 years.
The idea of meritocracy served as a guideline for change in the education system in England from the Education Act of 1870 to government reforms. by Margaret Thatcher. Her term as prime minister, from 1979 to 1990, was marked by a series of significant changes in the country's educational system. These changes reflected Thatcher's political and ideological vision, which sought to apply market principles and promote greater autonomy and competitiveness in the education sector.
It introduced competition and market mechanisms into the educational system. A school choice system has been established, allowing parents to select their children's school, including charter schools and selective state schools. This was accompanied by the creation of a funding system based on the number of students enrolled, which encouraged schools to attract more students to secure additional funding.
Thatcher's reforms emphasized school outcomes and performance standards. The importance of accountability and results in the education system has been reinforced through performance evaluation and the publication of ranking tables that compared the academic performance of schools. These measures were intended to encourage the improvement of teaching standards and create an environment of competition between schools.
Examples of meritocracy are present in everyday life and in the history of countries as different as Brazil, China and England. The adoption of merit and individual ability criteria emerged as a fight against the privileges of certain social groups that monopolized public offices, positions of power and vacancies in the best schools.
Origin of meritocracy
The popularization of the term meritocracy is due to the book, published in 1958, by the British sociologist Michael Young and entitled The rise of the meritocracy (The rise of meritocracy). The book used the term to describe a society of the future in which social positions and privileges are distributed with based on individual merit, as opposed to the past, when the principle of selection by family determined who would be the powerful.
In Young's narrative dystopia, the British leaders, around 1870, begin to select, among the population mass, the individuals of greater merit, to occupy political offices and professions with greater social impact, observing coefficients of intelligence and effort individual.
Around 2033, the system becomes so effective that it creates a world of work in which jobs are distributed according to these coefficients. The stratification defined by economic power, previously based on blood ties, is now supported by individual merit. Thus was reached the state of “just social inequality” against which, at the end of the book, a great popular revolt arises.
Another important theoretical foundation for meritocracy can be found in political philosophy by liberal John Locke. The English philosopher was a physician and descended from bourgeois merchants. In the context of the struggle against the absolutist State, he was persecuted and forced to take refuge in Holland, from where he returned on the same ship on which William of Orange, responsible for the consolidation of the parliamentary monarchy, traveled English. His ideas fertilized the foundations of liberalism, among which we can mention the theory of property.
For Locke, private property already existed in the state of nature, and, being an institution prior to society, it is a natural right of the individual and cannot be violated by the State. Man, first of all, is the owner of his body and his work, being free to use them in order to appropriate the land. The earth was "given" by God in common to all men.
However, that individual who works the raw material found in the natural state, to make it productive, establishes a right over it of his own from which all others are excluded. According to Locke, “By work we take [goods] out of the hands of nature, where they were common and belonged equally to all. [...] He who, in obedience to this order of God, dominated, plowed and sowed part of the earth, thereby annexed to it something that belonged to him, to which no other had a right”.|1|
So the argument is: whoever works to produce deserves the right of private property over the good produced. For example, there is a river and there are many fish swimming freely in it, but if someone takes the trouble to work to go to this river to fish, so she is the legitimate owner of the fish she manages to extract from the waters.
The idea of meritocracy, then, originated in England. If Michel Young's book popularized meritocracy in literature, John Locke's theory assigned a moral value to the work that came to exert a decisive influence on the currents of thought that happened. The criterion of merit, of the result obtained by individual effort, according to Locke, would be one of those that would confirm the right to private property.
Meritocracy in Brazil
In Brazil, individual merit is insufficient to overcome the inequalities that permeate society. From the point of view of various indicators, international or national, Brazil is among the countries in the world where economic and social inequalities are most prevalent.
By the Gini Index, an international parameter used to measure income concentration, from 177 countries, Brazil is among the 10 most unequal countries, surpassed only by countries such as South Africa, Namibia, Haiti, Sierra Leone, Haiti and Honduras. This happens because income concentration in Brazil is extreme. In 2022, the average income of the top 1% of the population (monthly per capita household income of BRL 17,447) was 32.5 times greater than the average income of the bottom 50% (BRL 537). In 2021, this ratio was 38.4 times.|2|
If it is applied in its entirety in the Brazilian reality, without people having equal conditions and opportunities, meritocracy could feed the vicious cycle of inequality existing in Brazil, as treating unequals equally is perpetuating inequality.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Meritocracy
Let's start by addressing the opinions of those who defend meritocracy. Many defenders argue that she is a fair system compared to others social stratification systems, which adopt criteria such as birth.
Advocates of merit believe in the possibility of differentiating people by observing only their individual results, disregarding the intersections of gender, race, status or wealth. If the focus is exclusively on individual performance, people will put in enough effort to achieve their goals, which would stimulate competition and increase the efficiency of social systems.
Among the defenders of meritocracy, there are the most radical ones, who try to transform it into the ideology of success. They often tell moving stories about people who, despite the obstacles on the way, did not give up and achieved success, a job vacancy or a rich life. If that person was able to get it, there is the beliefthat others can also strive and achieve their goals.
Among the disadvantages of meritocracy is the justification of social inequality as if it were a result of unequal merit, and not prejudice, discrimination and social oppression. This kind of ideology is a disadvantage of meritocracy. If not accompanied by a vision critique of social class and about inequalities, the idea that work makes you rich, and that it's up to you to build a rich life, can even be dangerous for people's mental health.
Living under pressure to have exceptional performance and results, excessive self-demand, work culture uninterrupted work, insecurity, anxiety and impaired self-esteem are factors that can lead to physical exhaustion and mental. This is what the South Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han argues in his impressive book The weariness society (2010). The thesis of the book is that contemporary society is characterized by an excess of positivity, productivity and self-exploitation.
Byung-Chul Han argues that, unlike the disciplinary societies of the past, which employed coercive methods to control individuals, today's society operates through a system of voluntary self-exploitation, in which people become their own executioners by submitting themselves to a logic of incessant work, maximum productivity and constant search for success.
This logic of self-exploration and relentless pursuit of success is closely related to the ideology of meritocracy as a path to success. Meritocracy preaches that success and social rewards must be achieved based on individual merit, effort and ability of each individual. With that, there is creation of a culture that values competition, personal excellence and the relentless pursuit of results.
Despite this, in practice, initial conditions and social contexts can significantly influence access to opportunities and resources. For example, a person who is born into a low-income family with limited access to education and health may face significant disadvantages compared to another person with more privileged. Even if both people try hard, the opportunities and resources available can be very different, making social ascension and achieving success difficult for people with disadvantaged.
Socioeconomic, educational, ethnic, gender, and other inequalities can create significant disparities between individuals even before any assessment of merit takes place. For example, a person who is born into a low-income family with limited access to education and health may face significant disadvantages compared to another person with more privileged. Even if both people have talent and effort, the opportunities and resources available can be very different, making it difficult for people with different backgrounds to rise socially and achieve success. disadvantaged.
Meritocracy is beneficial as a quest for fairness and valid methods of measuring individual merit in order to provide equal opportunities. However, if it is converted into an ideology of success, it ends up silencing the social causes of inequalities. This ends up favoring new privileged groups, placing the lower classes and minorities in an underprivileged situation.
Meritocracy and social inequalities
The meritocratic conception of society is closely linked to the problem of social inequalities. In the context of the liberal revolts of the 18th century, when the fight was for equal rights, the attempt to justify inequalities based on merit individual rather than birth, was an attempt to replace hereditary privileges with other privileges that would be earned during the life of the individual. individual.
The revolutions contemplated the interests of class of the bourgeoisie, but the other subordinate classes, “the people”, also adhered to the ideology of merit. Formally replacing the idea of birth by divine right, the notions of equality, merit, aptitude, competence and individual responsibility became the elements of an ideology that became popular for one important reason: the promise of popular instruction and social ascension. Each individual would have a status earned, rather than being ceded by inheritance.
However, once having suppressed, for its own benefit, the hereditary social inequalities that getting in the way, the bourgeoisie recreated for its own benefit another social hierarchy and new political, economic and social inequalities. and social. In France, on the occasion of the Revolution of 1789, the proposal for universal suffrage excluded women and domestic servants. The consecration of the private property regime, along the lines of John Locke, resulted in new economic inequalities.
In turn, popular education, which would be universal, the most seductive promise of the Enlightenment, resulted in new social inequalities, for example: the difference in opportunities for access to education. This means that the educational system, the greatest social mechanism created to distribute individuals in the structure occupational training based on talent rather than birth works better for some social classes than for others. others.
Despite liberal promises, the fact is that social inequalities continue to manifest themselves. Differentiated access to opportunities and rights — due to economic, race, gender, physical aptitude or belief issues — makes inequalities persist. Highly unequal societies (such as Brazil, India or South Africa) present an enormous challenge to the discourse of meritocracy.
See too: Social minorities — social groups that live on the margins of society and power centers
Meritocracy and egalitarianism
Egalitarianism is a conception that opposes privileges and defends equality between individuals.. For example, egalitarians are against the special rights of children born into the richest classes and favor equal opportunities.
However, many egalitarians tolerate inequality, without falling into inconsistency, when the consequence of the privilege in question is beneficial to society. This is the case of John Rawls's theory of justice as fairness. your book A theory of justice, from 1971, is widely considered the most important work in political theory published since the World War II (1939-1945).
According to the conception of John Rawls, the society that aims for justice as fairness should adjust its basic structure in two principles. From this, the first principle is that of freedom. It asserts that each person shall have an equal right to the most extensive system of basic liberties—freedom of expression, of worship, of conscience—that is compatible with a similar system of freedoms for others.
The second principle is that of difference. He states that social and economic inequalities are acceptable as long as they benefit the least favored in society. This inequality must be structured in such a way that it is advantageous for the less privileged; and be linked to positions and positions open to all under conditions of equal opportunity.
Thus, by bringing the two principles of justice together, the theory of justice as fairness argues that all primary social goods—liberty and opportunity, income and health, the foundations of self-esteem—should be equitably distributed, unless an unequal distribution of any of them would be advantageous to the least advantaged.
Rawls is not an advocate of absolute egalitarianism, but of a form of relative egalitarianism. He believes that inequality can be justified as long as it benefits the least advantaged members of society. The key idea is that: if some people have more resources or social position, it should be to the benefit of the whole community, especially the most disadvantaged.
Meritocracy is a social system in which the success of the individual depends mainly on the results presented by him. This conception can also be accommodated within Rawls's theory, as long as equality of opportunities is guaranteed. If positions and opportunities are distributed fairly, based on individual merit and abilities, and if resultant inequalities benefit the least advantaged, this would be in line with the conception of justice of Rawls
Finally, if egalitarian government seeks to ensure equitable access to social resources and opportunities, meritocracy can function fairly. For this, we need to reduce the effects of social, economic, ethnic, gender or any other personal characteristics in the distribution of wealth, power and prestige for individuals.
Meritocracy and egalitarianism are compatible in societies that offer as much equality of opportunity as possible and, at the same time, recognize and value the best individual performances. In this way, a society could have inequalities without being stratified, that is, free from the social process that systematizes inequality in the distribution of wealth, power and prestige.
Meritocracy and aristocracy
the aristocracy it is a social system that has ancient roots, going back to ancient societies such as Greece and Rome. In aristocracy, power and wealth are concentrated in the hands of a hereditary elite, which is usually based on the lineage and status of noble families.. Access to positions of power and privilege is determined by inheritance rather than individual merit. The reaction to this type of system can also be found in antiquity.
In the book Nicomachean Ethics,Aristotle distinguishes the concept of distributive justice, which concerns the correct way of attributing benefits and obligations to citizens. According to Aristotle, principles such as “to each according to his need”, “to each according to his merit” are correct examples of distributive justice. Therefore, the Greek thinker agreed with the distribution of rewards based on merit, provided that equal opportunities were granted to all.
Centuries later, during the Enlightenment period and the struggles against the Ancien Régime, significant tensions arose between the emerging idea of meritocracy and the established system of aristocracy. In meritocracy, success and rewards are distributed based on individual merits by encouraging competition.. This social system opposes aristocracy, which is based on heredity.
the enlightenment was an intellectual movement that flourished during the 17th and 18th centuries, valuing reason, scientific knowledge and the pursuit of individual freedom. He questioned absolutist and hierarchical systems of government, including the aristocracy, and championed ideas of equality and justice as fundamental to a progressive society.
In that context, aristocracy was a social system in which authority and power were transmitted by heredity, that is, they belonged to a privileged elite of noble families, regardless of merit or ability of individuals. Furthermore, the aristocracy perpetuated a rigid and hierarchical social structure, in which few had access to power and wealth, while the majority of the population was subordinated and without real chances of mobility Social.
Thus, from Enlightenment thinkers, the idea of meritocracy represented a challenge to the established order. Enlightenmentists argued that all individuals should have the opportunity to develop their skills and talents, and that access to power and resources should be granted on the basis of a fair competition.
In short, in the context of struggles against the Old Regime, tensions between the idea of meritocracy and the system of aristocracy were evident, with the Enlightenment defending the valuation of personal merit as an alternative to the aristocratic system based on privileges hereditary. These tensions played an important role in the political and social transformation of the time, contributing to the emergence of ideas and values that sought a more just and egalitarian society.
Grades
|1| Locke, John. Second Treatise about Government (Collection The Thinkers: Locke 3rd ed.). São Paulo: Abril Cultural, 1984.
|2| IBGE. Continuous PNAD: Continuous National Household Sample Survey (2022 Yields). Available in: https://www.ibge.gov.br/estatisticas/sociais/trabalho/17270-pnad-continua.html? edition=36796&t=results.
Sources
Barbosa, L. Equality and meritocracy. 4th ed. Rio de Janeiro: Editora FGV, 2006.
IBGE. Continuous PNAD: Continuous National Household Sample Survey (2022 Yields). Available in: https://www.ibge.gov.br/estatisticas/sociais/trabalho/17270-pnad-continua.html? edition=36796&t=results.
Johnson, A. G. dictionary of sociology: practical guide to sociological language. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 1997.
Locke, J. Second Treatise about Government (Collection The Thinkers: Locke 3rd ed.). São Paulo: Abril Cultural, 1984.
Mazza, M. G. Meritocracy: origins of the term and developments in the educational system in the United Kingdom. Magazine Pro-positions, Campinas, v. 32, 2021.
Rawls, J. A Theory of Justice. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2000.
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/sociologia/meritocracia.htm
