Contradictions of Wage Labor – A Critique of Meritocracy

Abstract

On the one hand, the notion of Meritocracy is vital for the understanding of modern Capitalist Wage Labor. On the other hand, the existing inequalities of such societies cannot seem to be legitimized by this principle. Can the Idea of Meritocratic Wage Labor therefore be criticized as a Dialectic Contradiction? I examine this question by first reconstructing Meritocracy as the normative framework of Wage Labor and efficiency as the principle of market practices; second, I prove contradictions between the Meritocratic and Efficiency principles; I do this by showing that they are incompatible but in the Wage Labor setup necessarily refer to one another. Wage labor and markets can be conceived of as Forms of Life in the sense of Rahel Jaeggi’s theory; that is, as sets of practices structured by a normative framework. The core finding is that markets fall short of their immanent principle of paying wages according to performance – and they do so systematically and inevitably. Market practices are guided by the Efficiency principle; they stand in contradiction to the Meritocratic principle in that they exploit market power and that they cannot measure work effort.