The merit system

A society which is based strictly on merit cannot be a society where everyone is equal. This is a perfectly obvious truism, yet I have the impression that people here use the term "meritocracy" as a synonym for "egalitarian." Even Dr Bhoe Tewarie, one of the few truly smart people we have in this place, expressed this view when, speaking at the Principles of Fairness launch last week, he said, "There is no contradiction between the principles of merit and equality. Both must be supported simultaneously."

Tewarie is quite right in saying both principles must be supported, but he is wrong in asserting that there is no contradiction between the two. The contradiction is, in fact, fundamental. In a meritocracy, each citizen has equal access to the instruments needed for advancement. Such instruments include adequate nutrition and health care, shelter, opportunities for employment, and education. But, in such a system, hierarchies will actually be more marked than in a system that is less meritocratic. This is because every individual has certain innate advantages and disadvantages. The most obvious is beauty: most people are average, and good-looking people are more popular and are more likely to be get jobs than physically unattractive people. Now you could of course take measures to prevent this bias: but the second you do so, you're no longer functioning in a meritocracy.

It could be argued, though, that beauty is not a true criterion of meritocracy. (It would be a weak argument, but it could be made.) But such an argument can hardly be applied to intelligence, and there is strong evidence that intelligence itself is innate. Many people are uncomfortable this fact, because they assume that if intelligence is innate then stupidity must be innate, too. Actually, that doesn't necessarily follow, but it is in any case irrelevant to this topic. The research on intelligence suggests that people are born with different intellectual capacities. What that means is that, in a meritocracy, where everyone had equal access to education, those of superior intelligence would rise to the top. They would have more status and earn more money and have more privileges. This might seem fair, but bear in mind that these persons are being rewarded for a trait they were born with. Is it fair that people be given a socioeconomic advantage for being lucky in the genetic draw? 

This is where the egalitarian social order differs from the meritocratic one. In a meritocracy, people are rewarded for their innate advantages of intellect, personality, and appearance. In an egalitarian society, people with innate and historical disadvantages are compensated for their shortcomings. It is the latter kind of social order which Selwyn Cudjoe claims to be fighting for, while Sat Maharaj says he stands for the former. Both of them are insincere but, even they weren't, their positions would be wrong. For one thing, such systems are pure theory, in the sense that ideal meritocracies and ideal egalitarian orders do not, and probably cannot, exist. Even so, it is useful to use these two concepts as models in deciding what kind of society we want to construct. This is a central issue in a book which I am, very slowly, reading now: Justice as Fairness, by the philosopher John Rawls. Rawls realises that, in the real world of human nature and efficient economies, inequality is inevitable. How, then, can a society be fair?

Rawls's suggested resolution to the contradiction between meritocracy and egalitarianism (though he does not couch it in these terms) is found in his Two Principles of Justice. The first principle is: "Each person has the same indefensible claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme of liberties for all." The second principle, which proposes the least-worst solution to inequality, is "Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: first, they are to be attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and, second, they are to be to the greatest benefit of the least-advantaged members of society." Once we grasp these two principles, we can see the hollowness of people like Cudjoe and Sat. Adherence to the second principle means that Cudjoe's affirmative action plan for UWI — and, indeed, his own position on the Central Bank board — cannot be allowed. In similar fashion, the historical argument in support of affirmative action is quite unwieldy. Slavery was more oppressive than indentureship, but both were historical disadvantages. If one takes a shorter view of history, from 1956, then the historical disadvantage shifts in favour of affirmative action for persons of East Indian descent. As for the innate argument, I doubt even Cudjoe would want to argue that persons of African descent are inherently inferior.

Adherence to the first principle also reveals Sat's hypocrisy. His support of Sr Adrianna Noel against Kalifa Logan shows that he is not truly in favour of meritocracy. In his Guardian column last week, Sat argued that Cathlolic schools discriminate against Hindu students by making them remove tikas and rakshas, asserting that the Maha Sabha has never challenged such actions. Even if this is the case, and ignoring the fact that minor decorations are quite different from a cultivated hairstyle, Maharaj is arguing that his not protesting discrimination against his own group justifies his support of discrimination against another.

The stupidity of this argument is eclipsed only by those persons, like journalist Clevon Raphael, who claim the Logan affair is "a most glaring and horrendous example of the indiscipline that is stalking our land." These people fail to realise that, if a school's discipline can be threatened by a lone student's hairstyle, then that school's discipline is non-existent. True discipline is an internal state which depends only tangentially, if at all, on threat. But it is hardly surprising that the descendants of slaves and masters do not understand this. Such is the brutish state of a society founded on the rejection of both meritocracy and egalitarianism.

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