A ‘society … divisible into the blessed and the unblessed’: Michael Young and Meritocracy in Postwar Britain

Stephen Meredith

doi:10.1111/1467-923x.12837

Abstract

Abstract‘Meritocracy’ continues to unfold as both core conceptual framework and political ideal of the language of social mobility. In recent decades, politicians of various hues have declared it a sine qua non of the so‐called ‘classless society’. The longer trajectory of postwar discourses of equality reveal a more chequered conceptual past. Its origins in the forums of revisionist social democracy of the 1950s, and subsequently popularised in the writings of social democratic polymath, Michael Young, are much more circumspect. The article considers pivotal contributions and developments of this conceptual history and trajectory. It considers the origins and emergence of meritocracy as a dimension of discourses of equality in the 1950s, and the formative contribution of Michael Young, reaction and responses on the left to his 1958 seminal work, The Rise of the Meritocracy, and the subsequent ‘meritocratic turn’. In spite of its satirical origins and warnings of dire social consequences, meritocracy presently enjoys a confirmatory position as a concept of opportunity and social mobility, as an embedded ideal of social organisation and means of allocating differential rewards.

Highlights

In spite of its satirical origins and warnings of dire social consequences, meritocracy presently enjoys a confirmatory position as a concept of opportunity and social mobility, as an embedded ideal of social organisation and means of allocating differential rewards
DEBATES CONCERNING the centrality of meritocracy to contemporary discourses and policies of social mobility have been reheated recently by Theresa May’s plans to reconsider an embargo on new grammar schools
And politically, Young’s originally dissonant concept has enjoyed a comeback, this time as a ‘positive’—pervasive and persuasive—means by which to market the language of mobility and attendant financial and social rewards, differentials of which are increasingly and palpably visible. Young intended his original satirical concept to presage the dangers of the rise of a new elitism based on a ‘narrow band of values’, a warning he believed has been lost on, or unheeded by, politicians who have not read his book

Summary

STEPHEN MEREDITH

Abstract ‘Meritocracy’ continues to unfold as both core conceptual framework and political ideal of the language of social mobility. The longer trajectory of postwar discourses of equality reveal a more chequered conceptual past. Its origins in the forums of revisionist social democracy of the 1950s, and subsequently popularised in the writings of social democratic polymath, Michael Young, are much more circumspect. The article considers pivotal contributions and developments of this conceptual history and trajectory. It considers the origins and emergence of meritocracy as a dimension of discourses of equality in the 1950s, and the formative contribution of Michael Young, reaction and responses on the left to his 1958 seminal work, The Rise of the Meritocracy, and the subsequent ‘meritocratic turn’.

Introduction

Conclusion