“We are most fully human when we contribute to the common good and earn the esteem of our fellow citizens for the contributions we make,” he writes. Following Aristotle, Hegel and Catholic social teaching, Sandel implores us to seek the common good. The Tyranny of Merit is original, lively and no mere critique: unlike many others who have written on the “sorting” of society into winners and losers, Sandel produces a persuasive argument about the kind of community we should seek. “The populist complaint is about the tyranny of merit,” he argues in his latest book, “and the complaint is justified.” Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel is the latest thinker to pick up Young’s work. Western elites – convinced they made it by virtue of their own brilliance and hard work – believe they “deserve to belong to a superior class”, and the solidarity and sympathy those elites feel towards their less prosperous fellow citizens is breaking down. Blair was too busy “modernising” the country to heed Young’s argument.īut as the hollowness of those years became apparent, and as the West’s economic, social and political divides widened, Young’s thinking grew fashionable once more.
For Michael Young – academic, politician and author of The Rise of the Meritocracy – had always warned that a meritocratic society would be miserable: shorn of solidarity, responsibility and dignity for millions.
When Tony Blair declared himself a “meritocrat”, the man who coined that term became so frustrated he was moved to put pen to paper to denounce Britain’s then prime minister.
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