Royalty in Need

[Captain Scumbag]

Meritocracy was considered a joke until fairly recently in political history. I think we have to unpack what meritocracy means in real terms. Meritocracy is a pernicious and very new concept in mainstream political circles and it's something that has only entered into common-sense thinking as a key component of neo-liberalism: cultivation of the entrepreneurial subject, competency-based education, the recession of the public sector and the annihilation of the welfare state.

The term has a really intriguing history, doesn't it?

For those who don't know (a group that included me until about 3-4 years ago), it was coined by Michael Young, a left-wing sociologist who co-wrote Labour's 1945 General Election manifesto and subsequently served in Atlee's government. The term first appeared in The Rise of the Meritocracy, a satirical essay Young wrote in the late 1950s. I won't bore everyone with a synopsis. Suffice it to point out that the poor misunderstood sod didn't much like the idea. Crudely put, he thought a truly meritocratic society would perpetuate and exacerbate inequality. For him a fully developed meritocracy was a form of dystopia; his neologism was, to put it mildly, intended as a pejorative. Fast forward 40 years or so (to when I started taking an interest in politics) and it had become a largely unquestioned political ideal, an uncontroversial aspiration shared across the UK political spectrum. Think, for example, about how it underpins almost all discourse about social mobility.

So, sure, there's an amusing irony there.

But I'm not sure I agree with your claim that meritocracy was “considered a joke until fairly recently". No doubt the literary origins of the term (along with the concerns of the author) were more widely known 30-40 years ago, and no doubt neoliberalism has something to do with how little the concept is questioned today; but Young was writing satirically about it back in 1958, a few decades before neoliberalism really became a thing, which suggests it was already a part of intellectual fashion at that time. Wasn’t the idea already deeply entrenched in British society through things like the English grammar school system and plural voting? Isn’t there a whole raft of meritocratic-type ideas that can be traced back to the nineteenth century (at least) and various strands of Social Darwinism.

Toby Young’s dad and a smattering of left-wing intellectuals and activists might have thought the idea a joke (or something at least worth writing a premonitory satire about), but did anyone else?

 

[TheMinsterman]

Whether or not the Tory government would divert these funds isn't really the point. It's ridiculous that public money is being used for the upkeep of a private home. Especially when you consider the personal wealth of the owner. I could see merit in taking the Royal palaces into public ownership and charging a market rent. The upkeep of the historical buildings would be assured and the treasury would see a return which could be spent on the NHS, tax cuts, whatevs.
Obviously I'm still opposed to the very idea of being ruled however nominally by a sovereign but this would be more agreeable than charging me for the privilege.

I wouldn't disagree, I'm neither strongly pro or anti the Royals, it's more the notion that "we should be spending it on x" outrage... fact is, we wouldn't be, we all know we wouldn't be, its the same faux outrage over "overseas aid" as if suddenly it'd go on helping the needy and the poor.

I do think the royals should be paying for it, if they had done so over time it'd not need such extensive work doing to it in the first place.

 

[Martino Knockavelli]

Architectural/aesthetic merit is a pretty narrow lens to view historical value though. I mean, Buckingham Palace is as much as anything the seat of a empire that spanned a quarter of the globe. That renders it historically important imo.

Maybe we should turn it to a memorial/museum to colonial genocide.

True dat, fair point. Could spend it on summat that ticks both boxes though. Ie Palace of Westminster. Or the BHS mural in Hull.

 

[johnnytodd]

I thought my posts were a bit shit, fuck me Jonny T. Politicking forum is now more or less unreadable, cheers JT.

Your welcome mate merry xmas.

 

[Jockney]

But I'm not sure I agree with your claim that meritocracy was “considered a joke until fairly recently". No doubt the literary origins of the term (along with the concerns of the author) were more widely known 30-40 years ago, and no doubt neoliberalism has something to do with how little the concept is questioned today; but Young was writing satirically about it back in 1958, a few decades before neoliberalism really became a thing, which suggests it was already a part of intellectual fashion at that time. Wasn’t the idea already deeply entrenched in British society through things like the English grammar school system and plural voting? Isn’t there a whole raft of meritocratic-type ideas that can be traced back to the nineteenth century (at least) and various strands of Social Darwinism.

Toby Young’s dad and a smattering of left-wing intellectuals and activists might have thought the idea a joke (or something at least worth writing a premonitory satire about), but did anyone else?

The idea has always had some traction. I'm not inclined to do any real research into how prevalent the concept was in mainstream political discourse (it is something I would like to know more about, I just don't have the time), but to mind the 1950s was the decade of Ayn Rand and the conception of the Mont Pellerin society, and more broadly coming off the back of a post-war social-political settlement that completely reconfigured the approach of the political right. I imagine it had it had its political genesis there but only in marginal political circles. I don't think that notion was taken particularly seriously at the time, though (at least not in terms of public policy), especially not in an era that still had extant unapologetically discriminatory structures in place. The idea only really became accepted as being basically true in the late-70s with the slow death of collectivism: the dying throes of Fordism and the rise to power of a neo-liberal consensus that begins with Thatcher and is later solidified by Third Way-ism in the late-90s.