Is meritocracy more than being a member of the lucky sperm club?

One of the many things I’m grateful to my father for is inventing the word ‘meritocracy’. He coined it in 1958 to describe a society in which social status is determined by ‘merit’, which he defined as a combination of intelligence and effort. As a member of the Labour party, he thought that such a society was thoroughly undesirable because it was every bit as hierarchical as a feudal society, but in some ways even worse, because its pyramid-like structure was thought to be fair. In other words, it legitimised inequality and, for that reason, all good socialists had a duty to oppose it. He did his bit by writing a dystopian satire called The Rise of the Meritocracy, in which he described just what the meritocratic society of the future would look like. It wasn’t pretty.

The reason I’m grateful is because whenever a public figure brings up the subject of meritocracy — which is quite often — I get asked to comment and am usually paid to do so.