There is something incoherent about a renowned political theorist and best-selling author assessing the reasons why the ‘basket of deplorables’ have become disenfranchised with the predominantly ‘liberal elite’ in the United States and the United Kingdom.
Sandel is a composed, rational, and reasoned writer. His earlier books, Democracy’s Discontent and Public Philosophy, indicated a willingness to pursue some of the questions that have become more pressing in recent years with the election of Donald Trump and the Brexit referendum before they became a source of ‘concern’ for the analysts of populism. What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets (2012) was a digestible foray into the popular political philosophy market.
His most recent book, The Tyranny of Merit is another adventure into this genre. It is reasonably accessible for the non-academic reader. At 288 pages it is not intimidating. More pleasing for many is that the paperback version can fit neatly into a jacket pocket.
Unfortunately, the content does not do justice to the title. Anticipating a broad analysis of the tyranny of merit, the author focuses excessively through the middle part of the book on the admissions criteria to Ivy League universities, and the impact in the United States of the Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SATs), as an indicator on both the hubris of the successful and the resentment of those left behind – a problem that affects an infinitesimally small portion of the population.
Bookended by an engaging attempted but limited analysis of what he considers to be a politics of grievance from those being left behind in a changing US (and to a lesser extent the UK) at the start of the book, and finishing with a very brief and unsuccessful effort at navigating a way forward, what starts off strongly ends ultimately with some disappointment.
That is not to say this book is not worth reading. Since 2016, there have been many attempts by the educated, the well-to-do, the leadership of various establishments, to try to make sense of their rejection by near majorities in their countries. This, as with many others, attempts to analyse without actually engaging the malcontents. This is the real problem with many such attempts.
And in many ways it is the real problem of what they are grappling with. Sandel, like others, assumes Trump and his equivalents across the world, are tapping into a culture of grievance – often among the lower educated, blue collar types, who have been left behind in an increasingly office-based, white collar, perceivably parasitical tertiary economy. They are probably right.
But still, many fail to move past a cerebral, theoretical, analysis of their subjects. They attempt to observe them; to assess them; to make sense of their thinking. But they don’t do very much – or in this case any – talking to them.
The fulcrum of Sandel’s argument is that by embedding a perception – or the reality – of merit into the have’s and have not’s, the system now tells those that are successful that it is all down to their own hard work, talents (and superiority). And conversely, those that fall behind – their failure is of totally of their own doing. They have no one else to blame but themselves.
He understands well that this creates hubris and resentment in turn that is greater than the hubris and resentment that exists in an aristocratic society. The successful are the new aristocrats.
Instead of those who are succeeding considering that some, or a large part, of this is due to the fortune of circumstance and counting their blessing, and those failing having the solace of circumstance to tell them that their position in life is not wholly of their own doing, the attribution of merit as the reason for the haves and the have nots, hardens the divisions.
It may well be said that, from the view of personal responsibility, this holds up. But the statistics that Sandel puts out there, show that social mobility – the ease of moving between ‘classes’ or income quintiles, has reduced over time rather than increased.
The narrative of equality of opportunity favours those who already have advantages in life – no matter the attempts at levelling in society, well off parents tend to result in well off children and the poorer parents rear poor children and all the social supports in the world seem not to change this. Short of tearing up the family structure which is the strongest indicator of future possibilities, Sandel admits at not having a well thought out answer.
He touches on the need to return recognition and value to the blue-collar worker but struggles to provide a solution as to how this can be done. He suggests a restricted lottery for places in the Ivy League colleges so that those who are successful put some of this success down to fortune rather than assuming their own greatness. He briefly references the need to invest in technical and community colleges.
The Case for Working with Your Hands: Or Why Office Work is Bad for Us and Fixing Things Feels Good by Matthew Crawford, an ode to craftmanship and manual labour, offers a more practical solace than the Sandel’s academic analysis. Peter Hitchen’s The Abolition of Liberty sees the same problems in the attitude toward the ‘bobby on the beat’ whose critical role in community safety and crime prevention was gradually eroded by the haughtiness of graduates in criminology, social theory who viewed such ‘bobbies’ and their work as the bottom rung of the ladder – boring, tedious, difficult and ultimately indicative of failure. The successes were the ones in the elite squads or designing policy and paperwork.
Yes, Sandel, like others, start to see the problem, but are very far removed from finding a solution. Trying to solve the problem people is the problem. These people are not a problem to be solved. The solution is not manufacturing a system for them – and in fact, the book has little more reference to the common good than suggesting a state-sponsored system. The start is coming out from the ivory league towers and from behind the fences and having a conversation and a shared experience.
Dualta Roughneen hails from Mayo and writes from Dublin.