Meritocracy, Liberalism and the logic of denial

''The myth of the self-made man, has to be profoundly hypocritical: it is the self-serving demonstration that a lie is the truth'' - Ernesto Che Guevara 1965

Those of us on the left are familiar with the liberal tendency to downplay the significance of class stratification. However I feel that this tendency is the result of a fundamental contradiction within liberal philosophy and ought to be examined as such. While liberalism holds that society ought to be predicated upon certain rights of property and trade, it does - in an attempt to differentiate itself from feudal nepotism hold that equality of opportunity is essential. Equality of opportunity acts as a pre-requisite to genuine meritocracy. The liberal justification of class stratification therefore rests upon the notion that unequal distributions of wealth/social power are largely the result of individual merit.

It doesn't take long to realize the problem with this line of reason within the context of modern capitalism. If liberalism holds as a central tenant, that individual rights of accumulation are sacrosanct - then the invariable concentration of wealth/power that occurs under conditions of market competition negate any possibility that opportunity will be equal. The wealthy, are placed in an advantageous position in terms of resources accumulated over time, both material and intellectual. This constitutes the basis of class re-production, seeing as upper class parents generally provide more resources towards their children's education ect.

Example: Participation rates in third level 2004 show us that the offspring of semi-unskilled workers accounted for 0.33-0.40%, while those from backgrounds designated as higher professional accounted for 1.25-1.36%. Likewise the dep of education and science highlight in a 1998 report that only 4.1% of those categorized as being from unskilled manual backgrounds achieved 5 honers or more on the leaving cert - as opposed to 52.9% for those from higher professional backgrounds. To cement the point: these stats on third level enrollment according to Dublin postal codes are revealing: http://www.education.ie/images/8.4_graph.gif

This understood - how can contemporary liberal apologists argue that wealth (in the main) is based on merit ? Put simply, they cant. Liberals must in order to justify their advocacy of capitalism, downplay the significance of class . If their argument is that inequality is legitimate so far as competition is fair, then the fact that competition is tilted in the favor of the wealthy needs to be swept under the carpet. This idealogical contradiction often manifests itself in nefarious attempts to argue that while there is correlation between class-occupation ect. no actual connection can be established. Additionally, we have claims that social mobility acts to justify structural inequality. In other words, its ok to provide the fastest cars with a 15 min head start in all races due to the fact that slow cars win every decade or so. All such arguments are designed to downplay the significance of social structure in the determination of human action.

While more socially conscious liberals might argue that checks and balances can serve as a solution - this perspective poses a fundamental problem. For instance, if you want to increase tax on the wealthy to the extent that there exists a level playing field, then you will need to infringe upon certain rights of accumulation. Considering rights of material exchange are central to liberalism - it is argued that policy conductive to equality would negate more fundamental rights. As such, liberalism proves itself to be nothing more than self-defeating nonsense. The sooner it is projected as such by socialists in the mainstay - the better.