If the appointment of Gabriel Attal to the rank of second person in the State is highlighted by some as an admirable rise, others, citing his Parisian and bourgeois pedigree, recognize it on the contrary as a sign of an absence of meritocracy. These criticisms echo the irony demonstrated by LFI MP Ersilia Soudais, a few days ago, in reaction to the appointment of one of Bernard Arnault’s sons as head of the new watch division of the LVMH group. “The famous meritocracy“, she commented on would be the result of a game where the dice are loaded.
Where Soudais and his acolytes get close to the truth is that France is hardly a paradise for social mobility; however, it is not hell either. Above all, it is not aberrant that the social situation of individuals, whether measured according to educational level, socio-professional category or income, depends on the conditions of their original environment. The opposite case would imply that children are raised by complete strangers in strictly egalitarian conditions – which incidentally would not abolish the natural differences in talent – or that the leveling down of conditions (this never occurs by the top) is showing excessive severity, which would be as unjust as it is inhumane. On the other hand, these differences in economic and cultural heritage should not prevent upward or downward mobility – and, in this regard, not all societies offer the same opportunities for social ascension or decline.
Social mobility from one generation to another is not easily measured and results can vary depending on the criteria and methods used. Overall, France belongs to a group of European and “continental” countries which shows a poor level of mobility. L’OECD noted in 2018 that France was in the upper average of Western countries in terms of upward mobility, doing worse than the United States or the Nordic countries but better than the large European countries (Germany, Italy, Spain). As for theInsee, it showed in 2022 that social mobility was found to be stronger in France than in the United States but less strong than in the Nordic countries, Canada and Switzerland. Still according to the OECD, France is one of the countries where the influence of social origins on success is most clearly seen.
A lack of equal opportunities
Another French characteristic which manifests itself particularly in the business world, the insufficiency of downward mobility, that is to say the persistence, from one generation to the next, of the same families in the best places, making it difficult for new entrants to rise in the income hierarchy. As the economist Guillaume Bazot points out in The neoliberal Scarecrow, a very French evil (PUF), “the income hierarchy is found in the DNA of our educational and professional system”.
This observation should be compared to the impressive professional mobility observed among the richest Americans. Erwan Le Noan, in The Egalitarian Obsession (Presses de la Cité), reports that according to the magazine Forbes, which publishes such a ranking every year, the 400 greatest fortunes are in the majority self made, that is to say that they do not depend on a family inheritance, and that this share has continued to grow. In 1984, less than half of the “Forbes 400” were; in 2014, they represented 69% of the ranking and in 2021, 70.5%. According to one study published by economists Joshua Rauh and Steven Kaplan, in 2011, 32% of the “Forbes 400” came from a family that was itself already rich; in 1982, they were 60%. Le Noan, citing an entire body of recent scientific literature, explains that most 21st century capitalists are not rentiers but innovators or entrepreneurs, “first rewarded for their talent [et] fully registered in a hypercompetitive economy linked to the digital revolution and globalization”. Most of them, we understand, work in the United States.
France’s average position in terms of social mobility is largely explained by the weakness of the factors of social promotion and decline, such as the effectiveness of the education system, internal promotion within companies, the flexibility of the labor market, the liveliness of competition and, of course, growth. Low downward mobility can also be explained, explains Bazot, by socio-economic centralization, the overlap between large national companies, major schools and administration, the prevalence of business transfers through inheritance and the importance of parental ties in the distribution of management functions in family businesses.
In other words, whether it concerns opportunities for ascension or descent, France suffers from a lack of what we call equality of opportunity, which must be understood not as an equalization of conditions but like the provision, to everyone, of numerous and ideally similar opportunities. As the OECD notes in the same report, “contrary to what is often stated, France suffers not from too little redistribution, but from inequality of opportunity which perpetuates economic and social situations from generation to generation “.
Egalitarianism and the spirit of caste
More precisely, two trends combine to explain this deficiency: egalitarianism and the spirit of caste. As Le Noan writes, France, “having little growth, […] promised citizens that if they failed to progress they would not regress and would live in an egalitarian society […] ; on the other hand, there is little social mobility and few opportunities for promotion in society. Even more, the most dynamic elements are sanctioned there […].” Egalitarianism and the spirit of caste both prove to be contrary to the promotion of merit, whether educational or economic, the first advocating leveling down, while the second maintains presence in the highest functions of an elite not always deserving.
However, the left, socialist yesterday, “LFIist” today, may well condemn social reproduction, but it remains passive when it comes to counterbalancing it. In power, the socialists, little contradicted by the right, have never ceased, in the name of the dreamed equality of conditions, to sacrifice that of opportunities. By denouncing the social reproduction of “heirs” by a school modeled on bourgeois culture and by vilifying the market as a tool of oppression, it has discredited the very means which allow everyone to improve their lot. Because, in a society with hierarchical functions, it is necessary to differentiate individuals in one way or another. Selection by school and the market, in this case, continues to be used by those who know its value. In response, the left is now trying to introduce other selection criteria based on belonging to dominated identities. The woke movement, in this context, undoubtedly appears as a means of circumventing meritocracy.
After sawing off the branch on which we are sitting, the left concludes, in the final analysis, that the rich, the very people whose power it has consolidated by preventing their renewal, must pay and that they must be taxed as best they can. better, thereby reducing the incentives to become rich for all those who, to paraphrase Beaumarchais, were not content to be born as such. It is not a question of elevating but, again and again, of leveling. We cannot advocate egalitarianism while lamenting the absence of meritocracy. Otherwise, we find ourselves deploring the effects whose causes we cherish.
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