Of right-wing and ‘left-wing’: (on Salvatore Cingari, La meritocrazia, Ediesse, Rome, 2020, pp. 249)

Abstract

The recent book La meritocrazia by Salvatore Cingari is the most in-depth attempt so far, not only in Italy, to reconstruct the debate between supporters and critics – intellectuals and politicians – of the meritocracy. The countries most closely studied are Great Britain, United States, Italy and France.

The book narrates that the word «meritocracy» was coined in England in the second half of the fifties with a meaning which is just the opposite of that implied by the common sense: pejorative, distopyc, satiric, antiegualitarian, sexist. Then the book narrates that the original meaning of the word has been completely reversed, first of all in the States of the sixties and seventies, and has become synonimous, at the same time, of efficiency, equality, justice.

This reversed meaning of the common sense is paradoxical, because quite often those who invoke more meritocracy do not realise that they are not invoking more legality or honesty, but more inequality, maybe at one’s own expense