Meritocracy

Pierre Poilievre and the Conservative Party under his leadership want to abolish DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) programs, and bring back what they call 'the merit principle; I discuss, from my point of view, exactly what that entails.

Sources:


https://vernonmorningstar.com/2025/10/17/the-turner-files-poilievres-war-on-dei-isnt-about-merits-its-about-power/

https://people.acciona.com/organizational-culture/meritocracy-organisations-paradox#:~:text=Implementing%20meritocracy%20requires%20a%20facelift,they%20call%20%E2%80%9Cmoral%20credentials%E2%80%9D.

https://www.noemamag.com/the-dark-side-of-meritocracy/

https://press.princeton.edu/ideas/a-belief-in-meritocracy-is-not-only-false-its-bad-for-you?srsltid=AfmBOorefTcqxRgpG1MR-i_55BExqXC9Pvyg0lNryaW0MwDoOZgDkEEa

https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/10/21/20897021/meritocracy-economic-mobility-daniel-markovits

https://deconch30.medium.com/the-myth-of-meritocracy-30229d316dcb

https://archive.discoversociety.org/2018/10/02/meritocracy-as-neoliberal-mantra/

https://citizen-network.org/library/the-rise-of-the-meritocracy.html

The words I use in the recording may not match the words in the transcript.

Transcript

Meritocracy

In recent months, Canada's Conservative Party, through its leader, Pierre Poilievre, released a petition to do away with DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) programs and bring back what they call 'the merit principle.' After quite a bit of research and thought, I've decided to take some time to unpack what the Conservative Party really wants to do here.

Meritocracy is the idea that people who have demonstrated merit, talent, and skill occupy the highest positions in society, and thus deserve to be in those positions--and all the perks that come with them. Compared to aristocracy and caste systems, the idea of meritocracy is a nice idea, as, in principle, it promotes social equality, as anyone with talent and skill can move upward in society.

However, there is something darker going on here.

The idea that the principle of meritocracy promotes is that society is a level playing field, and anyone can 'make it' despite where they start; this idea has a 'blame the victim' effect, as it implies that those who don't reach the upper echelons of society are just lazy or don't have what it takes--while not defining or spelling out 'what it takes.' People who promote the 'merit principle' ignore and sweep under the rug the fact that, since not everyone starts at the same place, not everyone has access to the same resources; rather, everyone in society starts from different cultural, social, and economic levels, and thus have easier or harder roads to travel and more or less obstacles to overcome, depending on where they start. As E.D. Gibson states in the medium.com article, 'The Myth of Meritocracy,' "meritocracy does not reward merit; it rewards the performance of merit in a language only the privileged are taught to speak" and that "meritocracy, without structural equity, is an elegant fiction." And as Clifton Mark points out in his article on press.princeton.edu, "...in addition to legitimation, meritocracy also offers flattery. Where success is determined by merit, each win can be viewed as a reflection of one’s own virtue and worth. Meritocracy is the most self-congratulatory of distribution principles...worldly failures become signs of personal defects, providing a reason why those at the bottom of the social hierarchy deserve to remain there." In other words, meritocracy--as an idea, a philosophy, a concept, and a principle--is just another way to moralize, while serving as yet another tool the ruling classes of the world use to justify upholding and perpetuating the status quo--and for conservatives to use to try to turn the clock back to the days when able-bodied wealthy WASP (and WASP-adjacent) cis heterosexual men ruled society and acted with impunity.

Which brings me to my next point: Meritocracy is just another way of guaranteeing that the entities who run the show don't have to change the way they do anything while convincing everyone that the society they live in is 'equal' and 'fair.' It's what MIT professor Emilio Castilla calls 'the paradox of meritocracy': in an article on people.acciona.com, Castilla states that the paradox of meritocracy 'consists of showing more bias in companies that explicitly present themselves as meritocratic, (which) can be explained by what they call "moral credentials;"' the article also states that '(it) is more likely to discriminate when it has been made explicit that we are fair or meritocratic, as this explicitness makes individuals in the organization believe that they are already impartial, which reduces or discourages the individual from closely examining their behaviour for possible bias.' But the truth is, 'those in power still show greater bias towards those who have the most privilege in society.' In the noemamag.org article, 'The Dark Side of Meritocracy,' Michael Sandel states that, 'What began as a principle that seemed to offer an alternative to inequality has instead become a justification for inequality,' and distinguishes between 'merit understood as competence...from meritocracy, which is a system of rule, a way of allocating income and wealth and power and honor (sic) according to what people are said to deserve' and between meritocracy and 'simply aligning people's skills with social roles for which they are qualified' with the idea of what he calls 'moral deservingness.' He points out that 'When we think of aristocratic and caste societies, meritocracy seems like a liberating idea.' To further illustrate this point, Jo Littler, in her article on archive.discoversociety.org, states that, 'A key part of the problem is that meritocracy has always involved those who ‘succeed’ and rise to the top of the social hierarchy being given copious financial rewards. This element makes meritocracy a structural impossibility, as it creates the exact opposite of a level playing field. The co-existence of meritocracy with dramatic economic inequality was always a problem for those on the Left' and, 'Unlike ‘equal opportunities’, ‘equality of outcome’, or ‘anti-discrimination’, the concept of meritocracy has always been inseparable from capitalism, as noted in the 1950s by social theorists and philosophers including (Alan) Fox, Hannah Arendt and Raymond Williams;' Littler further states that '...neoliberal meritocracy has also been characterised by drawing, highly selectively, on the language of social justice – particularly anti-racism, feminism and gay rights – which expanded from the 1960s and by flipping it on its head. Anyone can make it, we are told, and we are offered parables of progress in the form of luminous media examples of the few who actually manage to ‘make it’ and travel up what is a really long social ladder. And it is those who are least privileged and most affected by what we might call a ‘meritocratic deficit’ who are the most intensely incited to work hard and to believe in achievement, that nothing stands in their way but graft and self-belief (Chapman). Women are encouraged to ‘lean in’, mothers to solve the work/childcare problem themselves by becoming mumpreneurs who set up their own businesses from home, and underprivileged young people to hustle and be ‘entrepreneurial’. This is the ‘meritocratic’ way: to make the ever-lengthening ladder harder to access in the first place, and to instruct the least privileged to blame themselves rather than tackling the structures that continually fail them' and 'Meritocracy is an obfuscatory neoliberal mantra which has been used for decades to powerful effect, providing a key justification for increasing privatization and inequality in the interests of a few.'

And then there's the effect that the principle of meritocracy has on those who reap the most benefits from it.

In his article on press.princeton.edu, Clifton Mark declares that, 'Just having the idea of skill in mind makes people more tolerant of unequal outcomes...By contrast, research on gratitude indicates that remembering the role of luck increases generosity.' In an interview conducted by Sean Illing on vox.com, Daniel Markovitz illustrates how the idea of meritocracy also hurts those with the most privilege; he tells Illing that, 'It takes enormous effort to win and keep winning in this competition, so elite schooling has become enormously more intensive than it was 20 or 50 years ago. And elite jobs have become enormously more intensive. The toll that this takes is quite heavy and I think it’s destructive of human well-being.' In other words, those who benefit the most from the 'merit principle' develop a sense of entitlement, but also have to endure a lot of pressure to keep their respective positions in neoliberal capitalist-dominated society. 

One major thing to keep in mind is that sociologist and left-wing politician Michael (Dunlop) Young, author of The Rise of the Meritocracy, 1870-2033, wrote the book as a satirical dystopian story--and coined the term 'meritocracy' in 1958, meaning the term to be disparaging (and Alan Fox used it in such a manner), and the novel as a warning; however, the word 'meritocracy' was adopted into the English language without the negative connotations Young intended it to have--in fact, any politicians who adopt policies influenced by the concept of meritocracy are unironically bringing the story to life--much like Kim Il Sung did with the George Orwell novel 1984 (which was also intended to be a cautionary tale).

In short, Canada's Conservative Party, under Pierre Poilievre, want Canada to be a society that discriminates against anyone who isn't an able-bodied cis heterosexual WASP or WASP-adjacent male--preferably of means--and keeps anyone who doesn't fit their preferred mold as low as possible while directing us to blame ourselves for not reaching the pinnacle of neoliberal capitalist society, instead of challenging the political structures that have failed us time and again.

The concept of meritocracy, on the surface, seems like a great idea to level the playing field; however, it's actually a form of gatekeeping, as those in power can shift the goalposts to ensure that only those they want to hire or otherwise include get in, while convincing everyone that every process is fair, and everyone has an equal shot of 'making it.' But, to repeat what E.D. Gibson said, meritocracy, without structural equity, is an elegant fiction--and one that keeps those in power and those who reap the most benefits from meritocracy comfortable, without having to acknowledge the challenges those less fortunate still have to face just to survive, much less rise above their circumstances. If we really want to adhere to what Pierre Poilievre's Conservatives call the 'merit principle,' then society has to recognize that everyone starts at different places, and better accommodate those who don't have access to all of the resources on offer--then, and only then, can we be a society that truly rewards talent, skill, and hard work, regardless of where anyone starts in life.

Sources:


https://vernonmorningstar.com/2025/10/17/the-turner-files-poilievres-war-on-dei-isnt-about-merits-its-about-power/

https://people.acciona.com/organizational-culture/meritocracy-organisations-paradox#:~:text=Implementing%20meritocracy%20requires%20a%20facelift,they%20call%20%E2%80%9Cmoral%20credentials%E2%80%9D.

https://www.noemamag.com/the-dark-side-of-meritocracy/

https://press.princeton.edu/ideas/a-belief-in-meritocracy-is-not-only-false-its-bad-for-you?srsltid=AfmBOorefTcqxRgpG1MR-i_55BExqXC9Pvyg0lNryaW0MwDoOZgDkEEa

https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/10/21/20897021/meritocracy-economic-mobility-daniel-markovits

https://deconch30.medium.com/the-myth-of-meritocracy-30229d316dcb

https://archive.discoversociety.org/2018/10/02/meritocracy-as-neoliberal-mantra/

https://citizen-network.org/library/the-rise-of-the-meritocracy.html