I’ve just written an essay for Quadrant, an Australian periodical, in which I propose a controversial solution to the problem of entrenched inequality: free designer babies for the poor. Yes, yes, I know. It sounds like a 21st-century version of Swift’s ‘Modest Proposal’ and, at first, I rejected it as being too far-fetched. But the more I thought about it, the more sense it seemed to make.
So how did I get there? The essay starts by discussing one of the long-term problems with meritocracy, which is that it ends up replacing one hereditary elite with another. This shortcoming was first pointed out by my father, who invented the word ‘meritocracy’ in the 1950s to describe the sort of society he thought Britain was becoming. He intended it to be a term of opprobrium rather than approval and it was a source of great irritation to him that it was taken up by politicians like Tony Blair to denote something desirable. As a lifelong socialist, he was opposed to equality of opportunity on the grounds that it granted an air of legitimacy to the social and economic inequalities thrown up by capitalism.
Now, as a classical liberal, I rather like meritocracy for precisely that reason. I’m deeply sceptical of egalitarianism as a political creed because it’s nigh-on impossible to create end-state equality without a massive escalation in state power. If the history of the 20th century teaches us anything, it is that the dream of creating a socialist utopia can easily lead to the suppression of free speech, the imprisonment of large sections of the population and, in extreme cases, state-organised mass murder (see Russia, China, Cambodia, North Korea etc). If meritocracy serves as a bulwark against this poisonous ideology, so much the better.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in