Friedrich von Hayek and the liberal critique of meritocracy
Hayek's critique of meritocracy as an ideal of justice
9' min read
9' min read
The idea of meritocracy, let us say right away with Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen, 'has many merits but not that of clarity'. The term, first of all, denotes at least two different ideas: first, the 'government of the meritorious', i.e. a political and social order in which those who stand out for some quality, virtue or competence are placed in charge of making decisions that will influence the lives of everyone else. At the same time, and this is the second meaning of the term, meritocracy indicates an idea of justice: the deserving, whatever metric is used to determine their merit, are to be rewarded with fame, prestige, popularity or money, relatively more than those who have shown relatively less merit.
The meritocratic ideal is based on two premises: the first assumes that merit is something clear, transparent and easy to measure, and the second that the market with its competitive logic represents the most congenial environment for the best, the most deserving, to emerge and be rewarded.
Both premises, as well as the idea of meritocracy that derives from them, are cornerstones of the conservative thought that from across the Atlantic has come to influence debate and political choices in Europe and in recent years also in Italy, perhaps more as a rhetorical exercise than as a convinced adhesion to a thought ideal. The interesting thing is that among the most convinced critics of the meritocratic ideal we find not only communitarist thinkers like Micheal Sandel or egalitarian liberals like John Rawls, but also figures like Friedrich von Hayek, the founding father of contemporary neo-liberalism, the one who has certainly been the most fierce defender of the free market in the last century. It is true that meritocratic rhetoric has infected different parts of the political spectrum, from the right to the left, but it certainly represents an essential feature of the narrative of conservatism. And this is perhaps why the Hayekian critique of merit as an ideal of justice is often perceived as anomalous. In reality it is in full continuity with liberal thought and is consistent with his defence of freedom and the market. Because for Hayek, the market order and meritocracy are not only not functional to each other, but the application of merit as a criterion for the allocation of wages would lead, as Pierluigi Barrotta rightly reminds us "to the destruction of the market order" (The Demerits of Merit. Una critica liberale alla meritocrazia, Rubettino, 1999, p. 29).
Let us return to the two assumptions on which meritocracy is based: measurability of merit and the role of the market. Regarding the first assumption Hayek is peremptory. He writes in The Free Society: 'No man or group of men has the capacity to decide, conclusively, the potentialities of other human beings and (...) we should certainly never entrust to anyone, invariably, the exercise of such a faculty'. For epistemological reasons, linked to the partiality and fallibility of our knowledge, assessing individual merit is logically impossible. As for the second point, then, this would mean that the wages that the market recognises for each individual are a function of the value of the good or service that he or she produces for the community, and that this value is linked to the talent and commitment that each individual puts into what he or she does. Those who are more committed and talented, it is then argued, are able to produce greater value than those who, for whatever reason, are less talented and less willing to commit themselves.
The mistakes of the 'meritocrats'
.On this point too, according to Hayek, the 'meritocrats' fall into a fundamental error. While, in fact, the merit given by the combination of talent and commitment is an attribute of the individual, the value of his contribution to society is a social fact. In fact, in a market logic, it depends on innumerable factors. In particular, on the interplay between supply and demand, i.e., as Barrotta writes 'the tastes and preferences of all other people, along with their talents and the way they choose to use them' (p. 31). What merit is there in being an influencer today in a society that idolises image, or what demerit can there be in knowing how to fix electronic devices now that nobody gets them repaired anymore? "Compensation for merit," Hayek writes, "is compensation for obeying the wills of others, not compensation for the benefits we have procured for others by doing what we thought best. What counts in determining the value recognised by the market is the ability of different individuals to satisfy with the product of their labour the needs of other individuals, whatever origin they have and whatever form they take. Merit and market value are distinct things and to try to combine them would simply lead to a collapse of its spontaneous order. Hayek again writes in The Free Society, 'Perhaps we would contribute more to human happiness if, instead of attempting the adjustment of rewards to merit, we made it clearer how uncertain the relationship between merit and value is. We are probably all too ready to attribute personal merit where in fact there is only a higher value' (p. 122).
