"Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: ‘After the revolution even we will have more, won’t we, dear?’ Then there was another lover of proletarians who used to raise hell with Sunday picknickers on her property.
“I guess the trouble was that we didn’t have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist. Maybe the Communists so closely questioned by the investigation committees were a danger to America, but the ones I knew—at least they claimed to be Communists—couldn’t have disrupted a Sunday-school picnic. Besides they were too busy fighting among themselves.”
He wasn’t saying “the poor are too stupid to see their true interests”. He was saying “most, but not all, of the self-declared communists I met were middle-class poseurs”.
except - exactly as the original coinage meant - even if what you’re stating was the case, that still has nothing to do with actual merit.
what college admissions says is that those with the most privileged backgrounds are going to have the easiest time getting in.
those privileged kids are the ones who got the good public ( or private ) school education, they’re the ones who got preschool, day care, parental attention not split across 2+ jobs, good healthcare, sat study class, etc.
privilege begets privilege. therefore “merit” as some sort of privilege-less metric doesn’t exist in any pure form. that’s the point of the construction, and the situation we still have today
I think that most commenters here would agree that a perfect meritocracy would be great, in the same way a utopia would be great, but that it may be nigh impossible to achieve (same as a utopia.)
But I also think (whether it’s impossible or not), we’re still in favor of advancement of everyone based on merit, but that (as the article suggests) simply using the word meritocracy has become a way to dismiss any call for improving the system, a la “we’re already in a meritocracy, don’t fix what ain’t broke.”
That’s an interesting thought, would it be accurate to say it reflects a more Western concept of feudalism? I know even the concept of family can be more fluid in other feudal societies…
But I guess that’s veering away from the topic too
When all people want to talk about are the rewards of competition, then meritocracy can sound like the best way to get people to behave well. But competion usually creates far more losers than winners.
For all the miraculous medical triumphs, amazing architecture, aerospace brilliance as we hear about in this country, there is far more untreated medical conditions, homelessness,and defense contract corruption going on.
Tipping culture is a meritocracy. Servers want to get paid what they’re worth, they have to hustle.(and no paid sick leave means they have a powerful incentive to serve you your food even when they have contagious disease)
On the other end of the spectum, our elected politicians are no longer expected to act in the interests of the people who voted for them, a vote means nothing. Its who contributes to their election campaigns who can expect service.
Meanwhile, an entire generation is being poisoned with lead in their drinking water, because somebody who had “earned” their position, decided they hadn’t earned clean water to drink.
As the atmosphere degrades, no doubt the rich will decide they deserve to live at the higher latitudes, and breath canned air, since the lower classes haven’t demonstrated their worth for such things…
Are you arguing that the lineage system of the medieval period means that the medieval period was not feudal, or that contemporary wealthy elites do not operate a system of vassalage where loyalty is the only virtue?
Yeah. I just want an answer to the question, “So do what then?” Aside from identifying a new signal-word through which we can recognize The Other I’m not sure what’s accomplished with this information. Even with respect to college admissions prior to the recent scandal, everyone had legacy admissions and racial quota systems by which to recognize that the system isn’t fully meritocratic in practice. People have been calling for various improvements to the college admissions process for as long as I’ve been alive.
Seems pretty obvious to me: the information itself can be used to wake people up from their propagandized stupor, and eventually to encourage them to get organized and start fighting back.
“All of us”? Let’s not get carried away. How about “those of us living in wealthy countries”.
I mean, yes, ethical levels of taxation might be 90% above $10K spread across the global poor, but I’m way too greedy for that level of ethical. 50% at 75K to support services in my country is about as ethical as I can stomach.
Suspect math aside, we don’t have a global government so talking about a taxation system that would fairly distribute weath across the world’s population is kind of silly anyway.
Median world household income is about $10K. I take ethical to mean we’re all in it together.
I sure as heck don’t believe it’s meritocracy that keeps my earnings at about 10x the Indian fellow doing much the same work as I am. If he’s earning $6-7K, it’s pretty heard to figure I ethically deserve my $60-70K. After all, there’s nothing meritocratic about being born with the right citizenship.
So, yea, 90% tax above median seems ethical in an absolute sense to me. I’m just not that ethical.
Now as I said, I’m for a more equal society. But I like to be self-aware enough to recognize that I’m yet another privileged SOB who mostly wants to not feel guilty about being in the North American middle class by keeping those I can actually identify with (my fellow countrymen) out of extreme poverty (as long as I don’t have to make any real sacrifices). Throw in my token vote to increase our immigration levels (which are about 2.5x American levels) so I can feel I’m not totally ignoring the global poor.
Proof of my commitment to a cause is what I am willing to sacrifice to that cause, not what I demand others sacrifice. And reality has shown that what I’m willing to sacrifice isa bit painful, but nothing truly significant (bump my marginal tax rate by 5 or 10% - quelle horreur!). Certainly not enough to qualify as ethical in any realistic sense.
There’s some truth to the old adage is “happiness is earning 5% more than your brother-in-law”. I don’t need to feel I’m actually ethical to be happy. I just need to feel a tiny bit more ethical than the right-wingers. Not enough to feel righteous (that would be hypocrisy). Just enough to feel some smug satisfaction.
But that doesn’t diminish what ethical actually is or what I think I should be fighting for if I’m going to claim to be ethical. Which is why I call what I am willing to fight for “a tiny bit more ethical than the right-wingers”. It’s not terribly catchy, but it does feel honest. (And it keeps me from tossing stones in my glass house.)
ETA: sorry for derailment, if perceived. But this topic is already a train of thoughts wreck, if you ask me. So forgive me if I jump the bandwagon.
I don’t think that’s more than lip service. And everyone in academia knows this.
Also, it is rather a recent development, looking at academia as a whole. Cultural differences between regions aside, there are whole academic “schools”, based on who was your supervisor. Names on papers do, in a way, perpetuate this, and have not much to do with “merits” you would check or notice.
(Filling a position at a faculty based on the Hirsch factor or IF, however - different story. But see my remarks below.)
I think besides that academics like to celebrate “heroes” (much less heroines) and often follow the cult of the genius (which both leads to "school"s, mind! Think of Gauss!), most of your perception may be based on funding.
Post-modern third party funding has changed that. That whole façade of market liberalism is a scam, and academia is playing along. You know the type if you witness people arguing with publication record, and citing IF or Hirsch factor when filling positions (see above) when pushing for their candidate in a faculty meeting. That’s still no meritocracy, but the ideology, I concede, has taken root.
Lately, at least in my field, the ones who lived and researched only by a different system are … well… late academics. Pushing up the dasies. They are stiff.
I’m not a medievalist although I do like the shiny horsies…
But as such I’d say my understanding is that exactly how ‘feudal’ a given medieval society was flucuated.
Like any political system, there’s the ideal version which exists exactly nowhere and then there are the various practical realities which diverge from that ideal and at some point are so different that everyone agrees it’s no longer the same thing. But along the way? There’s all sorts of different systems that most people would still say are the same thing. Just like ‘democracy’ now. Is it what the ancient Greeks would have called democracry? No.
Is US democracy the same as UK democracy or German or French, etc, etc.?
But we generally agree those are all democracies because they share certain features. So it is with feudalism. There’s a basic structure on top of which all sorts of other stuff gets grafted.
As for the lineage issues, certainly for Britain, that was never quite that straightforward and primogeniture was only ever the theoretical method for determining the expectation of who the next King would be. There was still the requirement for oaths of various kinds at each change of monarch.
That still happens. The monarch swears to uphold laws and customs, various bigwigs swear fealty and pay homage and allegiance.
And we swear oaths of allegiance on various occasions and for various purposes.
Which is why there are no Sinn Féin MPs sitting at Westminster. They refuse to swear the Oath of Allegiance to the Crown.
So is modern Britain a feudal monarchy, a democracy or what? The answer is - both (or neither).
As for:
I’d say what’s missing is the implication that loyalty is expected to go both ways and the formalised system of establishing the vassalage.
The first part of that may be closer to the reality of feudal life but even there my understanding of contemporary sources is that people did expect the mutual obligations to be observed or at least acknowledged even if breached more often than not.
That does not seem to be the case today.
The kleptocrat expects utter subservience but not loyalty and offers none himself. The bagman serves at the richer man’s pleasure and expects to be discarded when no longer considered useful.
