Hitchens on the death of meritocracy | SpectatorTV

[Music] thank you first up Bloomberg's Adrian Wooldridge writes this week's cover story about the death of meritocracy a new Progressive aristocracy is taking over Britain and America he says to explain he joins me now alongside journalist Peter Hitchens Adrian Peter thanks for joining me on spectator TV Adrian you write the cover for this week's magazine where you look at a new kind of attack on meritocracy what do you say I say I sent you this that the in the in the pre-modern world we had a society which was hierarchical and in which people were judged according to their membership of groups rather than their individual abilities um so if you're a woman or if you're a member of the lower classes you were ipso facto subordinate and we had since then since about the middle of the 19th century but before that we had a liberal Revolution which said no you must judge people as individuals rather than as members of groups and you should promote them according to their individual merits uh rather than their group identities um and the most um fulfilling version of that was the idea of meritocracy and I think for a long time we had this idea of meritocracy broadening and deepening um and particularly after the second world war we had a sort of period in which meritocracy was in many ways the ruling ideology of the world then we had the left which had done a great deal to promote meritocracy turning against the idea of meritocracy saying that it perverted socialism from an idea ideal of equality to one of uh competition um and that you should get rid of these awful institutions like the 11 plus and grammar schools that anti-meritocratic Revolution happened but it began to run out of steam a bit Mrs Thatcher pushed back against it by saying that we need meritocracy but the the the ideal vehicle of meritocracy is the market rather than the state um and Tony Blair to some extent new labor pushed back against it by accepting League tables and academic schools but now what we have is another big push against meritocracy this time it's being done in the name of woke rather than in the name of uh quality comprehensive schools egalitarianism but it's much more serious this time than it was last time because it presents an alternative hierarchy uh to the world and that hierarchy is a hierarchy of virtue rather than the hierarchy of um Robin equality and what this hierarchy does is to reinvent the pre-modern world uh in some ways to say that we should judge people on the basis of their group identities this is the right way to be looking at the world um but we must invert the old pyramid that oppressed groups should be judged to be virtuous uh in the way that the old ruling class was just to be virtuous and that we must get it get rid of this idea of judging people on individual merits because it's a deceit it's a lie it's a way of perpetuating uh privilege so this is once once a sort of more vigorous attack on meritocracy and an assertion of a different way of organizing the world organizing the world according to according to Virtue as conceived by by the worker leads rather than individual marriage in other words it's the most significant attack we've seen on the liberal idea I think in my lifetime Peter let's break down this concept of meritocracy a little bit it's quite popular to say these days that meritocracy doesn't really exist but hard work doesn't get you anywhere what do you make of the concept of meritocracy do you think one exists in the UK I'm sure concept existed but I think a fact is has probably always existed naturally in the intelligent Society tends towards a certain amount of meritocracy any society which ignores the existence of talent in its midst and doesn't and doesn't bring it on and and make the maximum use of it as a foolish Society I think a lot of occasions during our history when we have overcome snobbery and all kinds of other barriers and said to people they should be promoted on their merits I'm not sure the left by the way was trying to to attack meritocracy when it when it attacked Ground Schools particularly the Michael Young's book on the rise of the meritocracy was was his own quirky view that muratoxy would lead to some hideous Society where people resented the Justice of the position they found themselves in I don't think most people ever felt that the the left foolishly believed that by opening up certificates to everybody they opened up the knowledge they thought to go with them to everybody and so we have a society of of huge numbers of certificates and very little knowledge which is is probably not what they intended but it is what they got Adrian can you talk us through how you think this latest wave started and why you think it's arguably more intense than previous waves well it started in American Academia in many ways um in the 1990s with the development of of of critical race Theory and new waves of feminism um and the the unique thing about these ideas is that they started off with the belief that judging people as individuals and embracing the idea of meritocracy um is a delusion because individuals are caught up in a web of relations which um which are more important than their individual qualities and because Society is structurally unjust so the only way to get about this is not to give in to this Bourgeois ideal of meritocracy but to look at these structural um problems and overcome them through group Collective action rather than individual action so it was it was a university idea that's very strangely has permeated the whole of society and particularly it's made this strange transition from quite radical University departments uh or in some ways what seemed like when Marshall University developments to the heart of the corporation through human resource departments um and human resource most corporations now particularly in the United States but spreading right right across the world are committed to something called Dei diversity equity and inclusion and this word Equity is an extraordinarily powerful word because it says that what we should be aiming at in business is not a quality of opportunity which is the old meritocratic ideal but in some ways the quality of results and some strange people believe in the quality of results but it's a very radical reinterpretation of what Society should be about and one of the strangest things that's happened is that a lot of radicals have come to the conclusion that the best way to pursue their ends is not by overturning capitalism but by transforming capitalism from within capturing things like uh like human resource departments and working within corporations to Define their ends in very new ways Peter Adrian mentions academics there and University campuses where he thinks it started to Bubble Up in his piece he talks about Cambridge academic priyamvada gopal who has said things like abolish whiteness what do you make of this I mean should we really be too worried about some Rogue comments that are said from academics on University campuses well it does seem to spread quite quickly out of the universities doesn't it so we should worry about it because it obviously has an appeal I think the appeal it has is the one which Adrian mentioned in the beginning the people virtue that we live in a society where the the old concepts of virtue which were based on Christianity have more or less died away it's not it's not known or understood as a religion or as a set of principles or as a moral system by millions of people who find themselves even so craving as I think almost everybody does for some sort of guidance as to how to be good and here here we have a whole new set of beliefs which provides a set of guidance in how to be good and it's unrecognizable and mysterious to me because I grew up in a different one but I think we have to understand that fundamentally it's it's it's however much damage it does it's born on on the wings of a desire which most of us can understand as reasonable the problem is it's wrong that they've not got they've not got it right but they've become obsessed with with climate change they've become obsessed with sexual politics and they've also become obsessed and this I think is the result of a definite campaign rather than a collapse of of the Christian religion they've become obsessed with with getting rid of the patriarchy end of uh of actually making a profound and final attack on what we used to view as the family I think the real sufferer in all this is the family and the real gainer in the end will be the state but as with so many disastrous developments in modern civilization it's based on a on a benevolent wish but unfortunately the benevolent wish will not turn out to to be as benevolent in practice as it was in theory and Adrian a new cover piece you add another element to this and you say it's one of the biggest aspects of this new attack on meritocracy and that of course is race what do you think has changed in our conversations in the West about race over these past few years I think what's happened with with the the this new this version of work that we now have is that race has become much more Central they've sort of thrown race into the very center of these things um and they've added to throwing race into the center of these things a sort of Deceit because the notion is that the problems the very real problems of racial inequality can only be solved through Collective action and through the identification of of people with their their racial identity rather than with any any other sort of identity I would say that within the meritocratic framework we had already taken very significant steps towards um removing um barriers to uh ethnic minorities um for being successful you know in this country we have many members of the of ethnic minorities in the cabinet many members of ethnic minority is doing extremely well at school perhaps the most successful School in the country is the Brampton Manor Academy in uh in East London um so we were through meritocracy um addressing uh long-term inequalities of opportunity but what the the won't do is to say that that's an impossibility you can't do that that the meritocracy is inherently racist it's saturated with uh with with racism and the only way to overcome Injustice is not to not to look at individual ability or individual efforts but to have Collective uh categories Collective struggles and a collective focus on these hidden forces of racism which are which are everywhere in societies so they have as well they've come in at a time when when when you know people have never been Freer certainly in in advanced countries of of racial Prejudice and said no no no no you're wrong you're not free you're absolutely all of these things are very deeply involved in what you think what you do in society and it's only through a process of collective action um doing the work that we can solve these problems Peter one of the things I found really interesting about Adrian's cover piece is that he doesn't let the right off the hook he talks about the right's own assault on meritocracy calling it the form of populist rage rather than high Tory worry about social Mobility what do you make of that do you think the right is just as complicit in this attack well there isn't really a right left is that themselves to be on the right who are in many cases just Market liberals who have no real social theory at all who've long ago Left Behind the precepts of Christianity who aren't socially or morally particularly conservative and who are happy for society to be extremely relaxed on those on those matters and so they haven't really got an argument half the problem with the supposed rice in this country is that it has long ago accepted or failed to challenge and therefore come to live with the things which the left had been demanding particularly in the in the areas of sexual politics and of the again the the strength and importance of the of the married family they've just given in they have nothing particular to say except let's have more let's let's have more markets let's have more free trade how is how is this any kind of answer to the enormous if slightly confused and in some cases bizarre moral array of the new of the new left which we've faced you're describing the class wing of the Tory party which I would argue has really actually dwindled over the years but that's that's One Wing of course there's another Wing which I think atrian is referring to although he can jump in here and correct me if I'm wrong which does to have that more populous take actually they might be more economically liberal more socially conservative but crucially are quite happy to engage in the culture wars well I I don't see much trace of it honesty I don't think that the the occasional Jordan Peterson Outburst makes much difference to the enormous preponderance of the other point of view particularly on campuses or has really much of an answer to it if you if you didn't fight as the as the conservative parties of the of the western Nations did not fight the cultural and moral Wars of the 1950s and 1960s you haven't got much left to say when this when when we arrive at this stage because you've given in over so many of the earlier battles that you really have no position from which to stand I think there's maybe there's a realization which I I think everybody who's on the conservative side of society needs to make that we've lost and that there's very little chance of giving anything back and that is probably the only realistic position to take but the reasons why we lost was a lion in battles long ago I would say that really and truly if you wanted to combat these developments you needed to come them back in the in the late 1950s and early 1960s when the other side were thinking very hard about them indeed people like Roy Jenkins and Natalie crosstons begin with and then after that the the theorists who brought us to what what is what became called political correctness a huge revolution in the way we behaved and organized our society which the supposed right had no answer to except more Market Adrian is interesting to me in your piece that you say that the conservatives essentially should feel shame for the rise of the woke eratocracy under their control I mean in this country they have been in power for well over a decade uh absolutely I would say I would say about the populist right I think the populist writers is a very significant Force primarily in the United States this sort of Jacksonian tradition uh that is embodied by by Trump and that's a uh uh as a populist sentiment which is really against Elites of various sorts but particularly against the sort of the pointy headed Elites of universities and and bureaucracies and we see elements of that in the in the conservative part party here that's uh you know the the the Nadine Doris talking about Posh boys who don't know the price of milk and uh and and all the rest of it these are they're saying that these people are out of touch with the the common people and their great Common Sense uh and that they're somehow um deluded people I think brexit was a manifestation of that sort of populist anger against Trump uh obviously so I think in the question of the um the fight against wokery and the laziness of the conservative party I think wokery is the wrong answer to some real questions uh the real questions are why are certain groups in this country um trapped in poverty why do other groups continue to dominate uh society and continue to get an unfair share of the rewards of that society and I think there are certain answers to that question which can be delivered by looking at the meritocratic tradition and modifying it improving it for for for the modern world I think the Brampton Manor Academy various academically selective schools that try and reach out to poorer people are examples of that but we haven't pushed far enough on that we've talked about leveling up but we haven't talked anything like enough about spreading Excellence throughout the country and increasing opportunities about the country and so workers has a risen party as Peter has said as a way of slaking our our appetite for for virtue but partly as incorrect solutions to very very real uh problems and I think that we have to try harder not only to address these problems but uh you know almost a crow that we are addressing uh addressing them or we will have the workers doing what what I think they're doing which is to smuggle in a pre-modern way of thinking about the world into into into modernity a pretty liberal way of looking at the world which I think is profoundly unhelpful Peter and Adrian thanks for joining me [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: The Spectator

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Length: 17min 48sec (1068 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 17 2023