Title: How (not) to argue against meritocracy
By Lars Vinx (Cambridge University, Law)
Date: Thursday, May 22, 2025
Time: 1530-1700
Room: H232
Abstract: The ideal of meritocracy has recently come under considerable pressure in political theory. Critics of meritocracy like Michael Sandel and Daniel Markovits argue not merely that existing societies fail to live up to meritocratic standards. Like the sociologist Michael Young, who coined the term ‘meritocracy’ in the 1960’s, Markovits and Sandel claim that a society that perfectly realizes the ideal of meritocracy would be a deeply unjust dystopia.
While contemporary critics of meritocracy are right to reject the claim that it is desirable to organize society along meritocratic lines, their arguments for that critical conclusion are insufficiently radical in their rejection of merit as a standard for the distribution of wealth, income and social positions. The problem with meritocracy is not merely that the pursuit of meritocracy has undesirable social consequences, such as the rise of material inequality and the spread of a social ideology that deprives losers of the bases of self-respect. The ideal of meritocracy is itself morally incoherent.
About the speaker: https://www.law.cam.ac.uk/people/academic/l-vinx/78311
