by Daniel Bell
The question of labelling and redress leads back to a more general contradiction, the relation of equality to a principle of universalism. One of the historical gains of equality was the establishment of a principle of universalism so that a rule—as in the rule of law— applied equally to all, and thus avoided the administrative determination between persons. As in the Constitution, this meant the outlawing of bills of attainder which are aimed at one person; a law has to be written with a sufficient degree of generality so as to coyer all persons within a category. In criminal law, we apply equal punishment to those who have violated the same law, regardless of the ability to bear punishment, and two men convicted of speeding are fined twenty-five dollars each though one is a millionaire and the other a pauper. The law does not inquire into their status differences; there is equal liability. And the court is enjoined from so prying in order to avoid the enlargement of judicial power which would enable the judge to make determinations between persons; his function is solely to find out whether they are guilty or not.
Yet, in instances where wealth and income are concerned, we have gone far in the opposite direction. Under the income-tax law, which was adopted in this century, not only do individuals not pay an equal amount (e.g. $500 each), they do not even pay equal proportions (e.g. 10 percent each, which would lead to different absolute amounts on varying incomes). In principle they pay progressively higher proportions, as incomes rise. Here ability—the ability to pay—becomes the measure. It may well be that in the area of wealth and income one wants to establish the principle “from each according to his ability to each in accordance with another’s needs”; the principle of justice here applies because marginal amounts must be compared. (If two persons pay the same amount, in one case it comes to half his income, in the other case only a tenth, and the same principle is at work in proportionate taxes.) But, in the larger context, the wholesale adoption of the principle of fairness in all areas of social values shifts the entire slope of society from a principle of equal liability and universalism to one of unequal burden and administrative determination.
The ground of fairness, says Rawls, is a generalized social norm founded on a social contract. It is based on the theory of rational choice whereby individuals declare their own preferences, subject to the principle of redress and the principle of difference; and this rational choice would push the societal balance toward the social norm. Now, utility theory can order the preference of an individual and define the rational conduct of that individual; and in utility theory society is rightly arranged when we have a net balance of individual gains or losses on the basis of the persons’ own preferences in free exchange. But here we run up against a difficulty. If rationality is the basis of the social norm, can we have a social-welfare function that amalgamates the discordant preferences of individuals into a combined choice which recapitulates the rationality of the individual choice? If one accepts the theoretical argument of the Arrow impossibility theorem (observing the conditions of democracy and majority choice), we cannot have such a social-welfare function.101 What the social norm is to be then becomes a political question, subject to either consensus or to conflict—extortion by the most threatening, or collective bargaining in which people eventually accept some idea of trade-off. But if the decision is political, there are then no clear theoretical determinations, set by principles of rational choice, of what the social norm should be—unless, in the Rousseauian sense, the body politic is a “single” personality. We may want a social norm for reasons of fairness, but in the structure of rational choice procedures we cannot define one.
If the definition of a social norm, then, is essentially a political one, the principle of helping the least fortunate as the prior social obligation may mean—in a sociological as well as statistical sense—a regression toward the mean. If it is assumed that we have reached a post-scarcity stage of full abundance, this may be a desirable social policy. But if this is not so—and it is questionable whether it can ever be so—and if one defines society, as Rawls does, “as a cooperative venture for mutual advantage,” why not, just as logically, allow greater incentives for those who can expand the total social output and use this larger “social pie” for the mutual (yet differential) advantage of all?
It is quite striking that the one society in modern history which consciously began with a principle of almost complete equality (including almost no wage differentials)—the Soviet Union—gradually abandoned that policy, not because it was restoring capitalism but because it found that differential wages and privileges served as incentives and were also a more rational “rationing” of time. (If a manager’s time is worth more than that of an unskilled worker, since he has to make more decisions, should he be expected to wait in line for a crowded tram or be given a car of his own to get to work?) Even those societies which have had relatively small differentials in income and incentives in the post-World War II years, such as Israel and Yugoslavia, have gradually widened these differences in order to stimulate productivity. And one of the chief pieces of advice which sympathetic economists have given to Fidel Castro to restore his stumbling economy (which has been largely organized on the basis of moral exhortation and the donation of extra labor time) is to make greater use of material incentives and wage differentials.102 In the United States, the major period when social programs could be most easily financed was from 1960 to 1965, when the increase in the rate of economic growth, not the redistribution of income, provided a fiscal surplus for such programs.103
The United States today is not a meritocracy; but this does not discredit the principle. The idea of equality of opportunity is a just one, and the problem is to realize it fairly. The focus, then, has to be on the barriers to such equality. The redress of discrimination by representation introduces arbitrary, particularistic criteria which can only be destructive of universalism, the historic principle, won under great difficulty, of treating each person as a person in his own right.
The difficult and thorny question, in the end, is not just priority—who should be helped first—but the degree of disparity among persons. How much difference should there be in income between the head of a corporation and a common laborer, between a professor at the top of the scale and an instructor? The differences in pay in a business firm are on the order of 30:1, in a hospital of 10:1, and a university of 5:1. What is the rationale for these differences? What is fair? Traditionally, the market was the arbiter of differential reward, based on scarcity or on demand. But as economic decisions become politicized, and the market replaced by social decisions, what is the principle of fair reward and fair differences? Clearly this will be one of the most vexing questions in a post-industrial society.
A striking fact of Western society over the past two hundred years has been the steady decrease in the disparity among persons—not by distribution policies and judgments about fairness, but by technology, which has cheapened the cost of products and made more things available to more people.104 The irony, of course, is that as disparities have decreased, as democracy has become more tangible, the expectations of equality have increased even faster, and people make more invidious comparisons (“people may suffer less but their sensibility is exacerbated”), a phenomenon now commonly known as the “Tocqueville effect.” 105 The revolution of rising expectations is also the revolution in rising ressentiment.
The real social problem, however, may be not the abstract question of “fairness” but the social character of ressentiment, and the conditions which give rise to it. The fascinating sociological puzzle is why in democratic society, as inequality decreases, ressentiment increases. That, too, is part of the ambiguous legacy of democracy.
IV
A JUST MERITOCRACY
The difficulty with much of this discussion is that inequality has been considered as a unitary circumstance, and a single principle the measure of its redress, whereas in sociological fact there are different kinds of inequality. The problem is not either / or but what kinds of i
nequality lead to what kinds of social and moral differences. There are, we know, different kinds of inequality—differences in income and wealth, in status, power, opportunity (occupational or social), education, services, and the like. There is not one scale but many, and the inequalities in one scale are not coupled completely with inequality in every other.106
We must insist on a basic social equality in that each person is to be given respect and not humiliated on the basis of color, or sexual proclivities, or other personal attributes. This is the basis of the civilrights legislation outlawing modes of public humiliation such as Jim Crow laws, and setting forth the principle of complete equal access to all public places. This principle also makes sexual conduct a purely private matter between consenting adults.
We should reduce invidious distinctions in work, whereby some persons are paid by the piece or the hour and others receive a salary by the month or year, or a system whereby some persons receive a fluctuating wage on the basis of hours or weeks worked and others have a steady, calculable income.
We should assert that each person is entitled to a basic set of services and income which provides him with adequate medical care, housing, and the like. These are matters of security and dignity which must necessarily be the prior concerns of a civilized society.
But one need not impose a rigid, ideological egalitarianism in all matters, if it results in conflict with other social objectives and even becomes self-defeating. Thus, on the question of wage or salary differentials, there may be good market reasons for insisting that the wages of a physician and dentist be greater than those of a nurse or dental technician, for if each cost the patient roughly the same (if one could for the same price have the services of a better qualified person) no one would want to use a nurse or dental technician, even in small matters. The price system, in this case, is a mechanism for the efficient rationing of time. If as a result of differential wages the income spread between the occupations became exceedingly high, one could then use the tax laws to reduce the differences.
But the point is that these questions of inequality have little to do with the issue of meritocracy—if we define the meritocracy as those who have an earned status or have achieved positions of rational authority by competence. Sociologists have made a distinction between power and authority. Power is the ability to command, which is backed up, either implicitly or explicitly, by force. That is why power is the defining principle of politics. Authority is a competence based upon skill, learning, talent, artistry or some similar attribute. Inevitably it leads to distinctions between those who are superior and those who are not. A meritocracy is made up of those who have earned their authority. An unjust meritocracy is one which makes these distinctions invidious and demeans those below.
Contemporary populism, in its desire for wholesale egalitarianism, insists in the end on complete levelling. It is not for fairness, but against elitism; its impulse is not justice but ressentiment. The populists are for power (“to the people”) but against authority—the authority represented in the superior competence of individuals. Since they lack authority, they want power. In the populist sociology, for example, the authority of doctors should be subject to the decisions of a community council, and that of professors to the entire collegiate body (which in the extreme versions include the janitors).
But there cannot be complete democratization in the entire range of human activities. It makes no sense, in the arts, to insist on a democracy of judgment. Which painting, which piece of music, which novel or poem is better than another cannot be subject to popular vote—unless one assumes, as was to some extent evident in the “sensibility of the sixties,” that all art is reducible to experience and each person’s experience is as meaningful to him as anyone else’s.107 In science and scholarship, achievement is measured and ranked on the basis of accomplishment—be it discovery, synthesis, acuity of criticism, comprehensive paradigms, statements of new relationships, and the like. And these are forms of intellectual authority.
All of this underscores a confusion between a technocracy and a meritocracy. Because the technocratic mode reduces social arrangements to the criterion of technological efficiency, it relies principally on credentials as a means of selecting individuals for place in the society. But credentials are mechanical at worst, or specify minimum achievement at best; they are an entry device into the system. Meritocracy, in the context of my usage, is an emphasis on individual achievement and earned status as confirmed by one’s peers.
Rawls has said that the most fundamental good of all is self-respect. But the English sociologist W. G. Runciman has made a useful distinction between respect and praise. While all men are entitled to respect, they are not all entitled to praise.108 The meritocracy, in the best meaning of that word, is made up of those worthy of praise. They are the men who are the best in their fields, as judged by their fellows.
And just as some individuals are worthy of praise, so are certain institutions—e.g. those engaged in the cultivation of achievement, the institutions of science and scholarship, culture and learning. The university is dedicated to the authority of scholarship and learning and to the transmission of knowledge from those who are competent to those who are capable. There is no reason why a university cannot be a meritocracy, without impairing the esteem of other institutions. There is every reason why a university has to be a meritocracy if the resources of the society—for research, for scholarship, for learning—are to be spent for “mutual advantage,” and if a degree of culture is to prevail.
And there is no reason why the principle of meritocracy should not obtain in business and government as well. One wants entrepreneurs and innovators who can expand the amount of productive wealth for society. One wants men in political office who can govern well. The quality of life in any society is determined, in considerable measure, by the quality of leadership. A society that does not have its best men at the head of its leading institutions is a sociological and moral absurdity.
Nor is this in contradiction with the principle of fairness. One can acknowledge, as I would, the priority of the disadvantaged (with all its difficulty of definition) as an axiom of social policy, without diminishing the opportunity for the best to rise to the top through work and effort. The principles of merit, achievement, and universalism are, it seems to me, the necessary foundations for a productive—and cultivated—society. What is important is that the society, to the fullest extent possible, be a genuinely open one.
The question of justice arises when those at the top can convert their authority positions into large, discrepant material and social advantages over others. The sociological problem, then, is how far this convertibility is possible. In every society, there are three fundamental realms of hierarchy—wealth, power, and status. In bourgeois society, wealth could buy power and deference. In aristocratic society, status could command power and wealth (through marriage). In military and estate societies, power could command wealth and status. Today it is uncertain whether the exact relations between the three any longer hold: Income and wealth (even when combined with corporate power) rarely command prestige (who knows the names, or can recognize the faces, of the heads of Standard Oil, American Telephone, or General Motors?); political office does not make a man wealthy; high status (and professors rank among the highest in prestige rankings) does not provide wealth or power. Nor does the existence of a meritocracy preclude the use of other routes—particularly politics—to high position and power in the society.
But even within these realms, the differences can be tempered; and the politics of contemporary society makes this even more likely in the future. Wealth allows a few to enjoy what many cannot have; but this difference can—and will—be mitigated by a social minimum. Power (not authority) allows some men to exercise domination over others; but in the polity at large, and in most institutions, such unilateral power is increasingly checked. The most difficult of all disparities is the one of status, for what is at stake is the desire to be diff
erent and to enjoy the disparity. With his usual acuteness into the passions of the human heart, Rousseau observed: “[It is] the universal desire for reputation, honors and preferences, which devours us all, trains and compares talents and strengths ... stimulates and multiplies passions; and making all men competitors, rivals or rather enemies, how many reverses, successes and catastrophes of all kinds it causes....” 109
Yet, if vanity—or ego—can never be erased, one can still observe the equality of respect due to all, and the differential degree of praise bestowed upon some. As Runciman puts it, “a society in which all inequalities of prestige or esteem were inequalities of praise would to this extent be just.”110 It is in this sense that we can acknowledge differences of achievement between individuals. It is to that extent that a well-tempered meritocracy can be a society if not of equals, then of the just.111
4. The End of Scarcity?
For a number of writers, as I noted in the Introduction, the idea of a post-industrial society is equated with a post-scarcity society. David Riesman, when he first used the term “post-industrial” in 1958, was thinking of a “leisure society” and the sociological problems that might arise when, for the first time in human history, large numbers of persons had to confront the use of leisure time rather than the drudgery of work. Anarchist writers such as Paul Goodman and Murray Bookchin envisage a post-scarcity society as one in which technology has freed men from dependence on material things and thus provides the basis for a “free” relation to, rather than dependence on, nature. The elimination of scarcity, as the condition for abolishing all competitiveness and strife, has been the axial principle of all Utopian thinking.