All human societies have informal social classes or formal social castes that separate groups of people within the same community. Generally speaking, notions of aristocracy and hereditary nobility started on the battlefield. Warrior chiefs of clans became minor kings after killing more rivals without dying themselves. Rather than remaining in a constant state of tribal conflict, the chiefs of other clans bent the knee and became lesser lords. Because kings and lords prefer their heirs to be kings and lords, too, bloodlines afforded children the social status that their ancestors had earned on the battlefield.
A ruling king who provided security and stability earned deference from those under his protection. Over time, tribes combined to become nations. Chieftains cooperated to form royal courts. And the heirs of warrior chiefs adopted customs and traditions that symbolically separated those who rule from those who are ruled.
During social upheavals, the ruling aristocracy is often overthrown. This provides hereditary nobles an incentive not only to quell rebellions quickly but also to find ways to keep the interests of non-nobles aligned with the aristocratic class. Gifts of land, titles, and property buy a certain amount of loyalty. The creation of minor offices apportions power to those deemed “worthy” of holding it. The historic growth of administrative bureaucracies creates a path for non-nobles to exercise their talents in the service of those who rule.
To the consternation of Europe’s aristocratic class, the Great War ushered in a popular revolution against the hereditary order. Several centuries of a growing middle class, increased literacy, industrial innovation, entrepreneurialism, and more widespread property ownership helped to create the social conditions for broad swaths of Europe’s populations to question why bloodlines should matter more than intelligence, talent, and hard work. Many European families who lost fathers and sons during the First World War blamed European nobles for the calamity.
By the time the Second World War had provided an extra helping of self-destructive ruin, many of Europe’s noble houses were no more. Those that had survived were acutely wary of suffering the fates of so many cousins who had been hanged, burned, or shot. For the surviving members of Europe’s aristocracy to endure, they had no choice but to hand considerable political powers to the common people. The twentieth century shepherded government reforms, suffrage for men and women without property, public welfare statutes, and expanded opportunities for common people to become part of the State’s governing bureaucracy.
While these reforms were celebrated as triumphs for “democracy,” it is important to understand that they did not completely supplant the vestiges of European aristocracy. In the United Kingdom, the House of Lords still recognized the inherent right to rule of certain families. Men with noble titles still ran central banks, trading houses, and clandestine agencies. The attachés of those administrative lords still came from the “best families” and attended the “finest schools.” Increasingly, however, the children of middle class families competed for and secured positions within the larger bureaucratic staff.
This twentieth century transition — in which citizens from low social classes were more broadly included in the functions of government — marked the social pivot to what Westerners call “meritocracy.”
No longer would a person’s bloodline serve as the limits of what that person might achieve in this life. Instead, natural intelligence, hard work, and determination could provide a person of any means the opportunity to rise as high as he might wish.
“Meritocracy” was an alluring idea to sell to the common people who had already destroyed so much of the aristocrats’ cherished social order in the first half of the twentieth century.
Out with the nobles! In with the people who deserve to have power! From the point of view of someone in the lower or middle classes, a system that rewards skill, smarts, and determination sounds much fairer.
However, “meritocracy” provides an ancillary benefit to a ruling class seeking to maintain control: It keeps the most ambitious members of the non-noble classes competing against each other for a small number of powerful positions and reinforces the legitimacy of the governing system as a whole. People who study, sacrifice, and struggle to obtain a little power within a governing bureaucracy are not inclined to question, criticize, or delegitimize that system once vested with a modicum of authority inside of it.
With the rise of the “meritocracy,” residual ruling class families found endless opportunities to keep unsuspecting commoners chasing their tails.
Hellbound and Down 