Promotion

Over the past few years, much credence has been given to the idea of meritocracy. It is argued that this is a fair way for a society to be structured: those who want to get ahead in life are given the opportunity to do so and those who just expect a free ride won't get it. This appears to be a generous as anyone is willing to get these days. I wonder what Nye Bevan would have made of it.
Anyway given that it's the default caring sharing attitude of no-wing politics, we should have a think about what it really means and whether it really delivers social justice (whatever that means).
I think one of the 'useful' things about the idea of meritocracy is that it is fairly nebulous, and can therefore appeal to a broad spectrum of society. In this case, it is simply a sound-bite, deployed by politicians keen to appeal to as many voters as possible. If this is all it is, I think there is even more need to pin it down in terms of actual meaning: politicians already get away with too much vagueness in my opinion.
Option 1: Capitalism As Meritocracy
Obviously this is the favourite of the current bogeymen, the bankers. It is basically the argument that they deploy to justify their stratospheric remuneration packages. Basically, people get paid what they're worth, the argument goes, so only the best rise to the top, resulting in the spectacularly well run financial sector that we see pulling this country out of recession by the bootstraps. Oh, hang on...
Anyway, the argument continues by pointing out that the fabulous wealth generated by these ubermensch trickles down to us mere mortals, allowing us to pay for education that may allow us one day to be as clever as them. It also allows us to pay into the pension schemes, ISAs, etc. that enable the people at the top to gamble on the economies of nations or the debts of homeowners. 

It may be fairly apparent that I do not think too much of this model. I don't, largely because it is not meritocratic. Whilst I am not for one moment suggesting that the City does not contain a large number of intelligent people, it is simply not the case that the brightest and best rise to the top. Promotion is due to a combination of luck and being bolshy enough. I personally don't consider having an over-inflated sense of self worth to be a skill. Also, whilst the City indisputably generates money, it does so using wealth created by other people elsewhere, who receive as their reward for generating this wealth only the standard returns of their ISA or pension scheme, and then only when the masters of the universe do their jobs well; even though they get paid regardless. Again it could be argued that this is a distortion of capitalism anyway, because only the investors lose out through poor performance, whilst the company itself, and certainly its employees remain largely shielded from the negative effects. So it's possible that I'm more in favour of capitalism as meritocracy than I first thought, it's just that for it to work the same rules need to apply to all. It is in the manner in which the playing field is levelled that his is where another conception of meritocracy comes into play. 

Option 2: Free education as meritocracy
Clearly this option is no longer quite as popular as it once was, as we only get free education up to the age of 18 these days. University education is however available to nearly anyone willing to pay for it, making it less meritocratic, and more afflucratic. When higher education was free, considerably fewer people gained undergraduate degrees than they do now, meaning that they carried some weight in the real world. Now the proliferation of degrees has utterly devalued them, they are simply being turned into vocational training for whichever employer is willing to partially fund them. I am not for one minute saying that 30 year's ago, the system was entirely egalitarian and the old-boys network played no part in it, but through the commoditisation of the the bachelor degree we have created a system firmly weighted in the favour of those who are willing to bet against their future earnings. Such a position is easier if you have a backstop to your debt, such as the wealth of your parents. The argument for the current fee-based system of higher education for all who can afford it is that it is more egalitarian. If we assume everyone is starting from the same position, then they will incur the same level of debt. However, as everyone is not starting from the same position, it is disingenuous to call it egalitarian. Anyway we're dealing with meritocracy here, and a system of free higher education for fewer people is more meritocratic than the current system. Yes, it is elitist, but meritocracy is elitist. Perceptions of elitism could be mitigated by the provision of meaningful vocational further education, partially sponsored by employers (just don't call them degrees). Alternatively, everyone gets a degree and it means nothing except that they are less creditworthy. Nothing is more meritocratic than equal access to an elitist system, and in dismantling some of the perception of elitism, we have not made it any more meritocratic.
Option 3 - the welfare state as meritocracy
The welfare state can't be meritocratic surely, it's the cushion of the lazy and un-ambitious. How does one find merit in listless inactivity? These are not my opinions, but I imagine they are some of the philosophical challenges facing those who wish to make the welfare state a more meritocratic place to be. Of course there is nothing wrong with making the system a bit more meritocratic if you see it as a hierarchical system. I don't, I see the welfare state as a safety net. The fact that some people do genuinely 'work the system' is a shame, mostly for them: you cannot have a massive sense of self-worth if you believe your greatest earning potential to come from meagre state handouts. However, it appears that the meritocratisation of the welfare state is aimed at such people and others for whom getting back into employment could lead to a drop in income. The idea is that people will be encouraged to take work by never being worse off (presumably though some sort of graded benefit system). All very laudable, except for two things.
Firstly, there is nothing much meritocratic about telling someone to take a job, any job just because it's there. One could argue that it is meritocratic because they are worth any job more than unemployment, but that removes the meritocratic element of rewarding those who choose to take measures to increase their employability, by choosing to undertake training whilst unemployed for example.
Secondly, for it to be truly meritocratic, people would always have to be better off from an improvement in personal wealth. Every welfare reform, including the current bunch, has a cliff-edge, so there is always a point at which it is worse to be better off. For some people, that point is achieving an above average salary each for one of a couple with children, for others it is having survived cancer for a certain period of time. 

Here we encounter one of the biggest obstacles to establishing a truly meritocratic society: what merits to promote. As a rule, moderate financial success is seen as merit worthy, but excessive financial gain is not. Who should define what is meritorious? Should we have an index of merit, like the RPI? Would it be possible in future to get people to vote on what they consider worthy of merit on a regular basis? Would this not be open to extremes and swings in public attitudes fuelled by tabloid horror stories? This is clearly unworkable. Obviously in practice it is the government of the time that decides what is merit worthy, guided by public opinion and the vested interests they represent.
So meritocracy is not an absolute, it can have any number of meanings, but basically it usually means 'rewarding people like me'. How generous and selfless. What a giving society we have become. 

There is one other major problem with attempting to make the whole of society a meritocracy: by definition it has to have losers. For one person to achieve through 'merit' (however you define it), others must fail. When rewards and benefits are based on a system of competition that by its nature guarantees a number of losers per winner, surely we should be looking at ways we can eliminate the losing element rather than how we create more winners (and therefore by definition more losers). Surely the very concept of meritocracy is simply another way in which the language of the selfish has come to define our terms of reference. If the language of one group defines our terms of reference, then it frames our debate, limiting it to a set of outcomes largely predetermined by the terms of reference.