a challenge to meritocracy

Every once in a while you will come across a piece of writing that is able to frame an alternate worldview for you in a way that it provides a whole new lens through which to view any number of things. Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve realized Anne Applebaums recent essay in The Atlantic, titled “A Warning from Europe: The Worst Is Yet To Come” is one of those pieces.

Using the backdrop of Poland from the last nineties until today, Applebaum’s central thesis is, I think, captured in this line:

“Given the right conditions, any society can turn against democracy. Indeed, if history is anything to go by, all societies eventually will.”

While that was what struck me most the first time reading the piece, the part that’s been popping into my brain time and time again reading the news is her attempt at explaining why this is the case. Most valuably, she challenges the idea that everyone, naturally, believes in meritocracy.

“A rigged and uncompetitive system sounds bad if you want to live in a society run by the talented. But if that isn’t your primary interest, then what’s wrong with it?

“If you believe, as my old friends now believe, that Poland will be better off if it is ruled by people who deserve to rule—because they loudly proclaim a certain kind of patriotism, because they are loyal to the party leader, or because they are, echoing the words of Kaczyński himself, a ‘better sort of Pole’—then a one-party state is actually more fair than a competitive democracy. Why should different parties be allowed to compete on an even playing field if only one of them has the moral right to form the government? Why should businesses be allowed to compete in a free market if only some of them are loyal to the party and therefore deserving of wealth?”
S

I’ll let you draw your own parallel here.

Applebaum goes on to write that unlike North America, where we seem to take progress as an inevitable march of history, parts of Europe tend to view history as circular– liberal democracy to oligarchy to liberal democracy to oligarchy, with shades of difference but nevertheless swinging back and forth. I don’t know if she’s right, but looking at the world as it is now, it’s tough to argue she’s wrong.