The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? by Michael J. Sandel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Politics of Humiliation


Anyone familiar with differential calculus can recognise the fundamental logical problem of attributing responsibility for results (pay for performance; test scores; organisation success; etc) to an individual. The contribution of any one factor (person) to a total can only be assessed when all other factors (social background, level of education, genetic composition, ethnicity, etc.) are held constant. So for example, in the question of performance pay, one must be able to discern the relative importance to the salesman’s ‘numbers’ in the context of the entire organisation from the receptionists, secretaries, and researchers, to the scientists, production staff, and managers. Holding these things constant is obviously an impossible task.

Nevertheless we (those blessed for our contributions) seem bent on the idea of assigning personal responsibility for what happens in life. At least when we consider those less well off (and sometimes those better off) than ourselves. We deserve (at least) all that we have. They deserve (and more) exactly what they lack. The psychology and sociology of the meritocracy is pervasive. And the economic, political, and social effects that should have become obvious through masses of academic research over decades have surfaced most acutely in the election of Trump and his takeover of the Republican Party. Hillary Clinton was right - Trump’s followers are indeed the losers in the meritocratic façade. What she didn’t get is that they want to be winners.

Michael Sandel recognises the psychological, social, economic, and political effects of our commitment to merit. But his primary concern is the morality of a merit-based society not its practical consequences. What interests me most about his approach is his identification of Christianity as the source of our effective deification of merit and the main obstacle to our overcoming its tragedies. I think he is justified in doing this; and his brief history of relevant theology is insightful. But I think he is wrong about his inference that personal merit is a Judaeo-Christian idea. Merit is indeed something that appears in Hebrew Scriptures and traditions, but like many other aspects of Judaism, Christianity transformed this idea into something quite unrecognisable in the matrix culture.

The most obvious transformation in Christianity is the notion of personal salvation. In the Hebrew Scriptures, it is Israel, a corporate body not individuals as such, from whom YHWH demands obedience. The individuals mentioned are always tropes for the larger society. Everyone in Israel shares both divine favour and punishment. Early medieval Judaism did develop the idea of the Zachuth Avot, the Merits of the Fathers, through which the ‘goodness’ of Israel’s founders was considered somehow available to all Jews in mitigation of their faults. I suspect that this was in response to the emerging Christian doctrine of the infinite merit achieved by Jesus through his death. But the difference in the two is crucial. The Zachuth is an inter-generational assistance to avoid and atone for fault; Christ’s merit, being infinite, is a complete expiation of fault.

Enter the man, Paul of Tarsus, whose interpretation of what he was told about Jesus is keyed precisely on the idea of the infinitely meritorious death of Christ. If this death wipes out the need for God to punish those who transgress (in later ages called the Atonement Theory), then the only thing necessary to assure one’s eternal salvation is the acceptance of this ‘fact’ as a matter of unshakeable belief. This is uniquely Pauline not Abrahamic. Thus begins the persistent struggle in Christianity to explain the problematic relation Faith/Works. Sandel traces this struggle (with the help of folk like Max Weber) in its various manifestations - Grace/Effort; Providence/Just Deserts; Luck/Character - and shows how its resolution in modern culture is a self-confirming doctrine of Whiggish smugness. Success is a mark of both hard work and divine favour. The meritocracy, in other words, is an institutional embodiment of Christianity. It serves to unite the diverse sects into a greater whole that includes even the most ardent atheists.

Isn’t it interesting that the Trump followers are the most conservative (that is to say, authoritarian, racist, misogynistic, as well as Christian) in the population? Despite their tendency toward violence, they really don’t want a revolution. Their ideal is merely to impose the same kind of humiliation which they have been subject to on the current social winners. They don’t want respect; they want revenge. But ultimately they are trapped in the same doubts about respectability/worth/significance as are their more successful compatriots. Meritocracy makes us all losers. But unless the consequences of Pauline Christianity and its secular residue are owned up to, we’re likely to just keep digging that hole deeper.

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