The concept ‘meritocracy’ first appeared in a book by the sociologist Michael Young entitled The Rise of the Meritocracy (1958). In a meritocracy, power and privilege are obtained by those who earn them, rather than being a result of inherited wealth and social class. Young used the formula ‘IQ + Effort = Merit’. While a meritocracy is now widely regarded as something positive and desirable, Young’s book was a dystopian satire, and he envisaged that a meritocracy would actually perpetuate inequalities, and would result in a society divided into a small ‘merited’ elite and a disenfranchised underclass.
What has been called the ‘myth of meritocracy’ suggests that upward social mobility can be achieved through one’s own talent and efforts, unhampered by existing inequalities of class, ethnicity, gender and power. Many argue that this is simply unattainable under a system of neoliberal free market capitalism.
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