Against Meritocracy

Without even having to get into specifics we can already debunk Friedman's claims. We live in a class based society, and like any other class based society, there will always have to be a slave, serf, peon, proletariat, or otherwise lower class for the society to function. Society cannot function if everyone owns the means of production now can it? Therefore it doesn't really matter that 'there's a lot of class mobility' in our society. It ignores the reality that there will always have to be a lower class for the society to function.

In essence, the reason why not everyone is going to get to become a bourgeoisie or otherwise live a good life is because A) we don't live in pure meritocracy, so not everyone is going to be able to get success from hard work and B) our capitalist mode of production would not be able to function if everyone was one class.

The reactionary counter argument would be, I guess, 'well maybe if these lazy moochers worked hard enough they'd become the next President or the next CEO of Wal Mart!' but I reject this because to say that 30% - 35%[1] of the population, millions of people mind you, are just lazy and this is the reason why they're not living upper class lives is absurd in my opinion. This also ignores the very real systems of exploitation and oppression and the many obstacles present in a class society to prevent class mobility. If you want, I can elaborate on some of these obstacles. But generally these obstacles include the problem of wage theft and surplus value, the fact that capitalism is shit at resource distribution as it places profit and property rights over human lives, and of course oppression from the State in the form of the police, military, NSA, CIA, FBI, and all the other organs which work to protect the bourgeoisie, bourgeois democracy, and bourgeois freedom, and keep the working class oppressed, crushed, and inarticulate. Not to mention again this does not address the fact that capitalism could not function if everyone was a bourgeoisie.

It is therefore my belief that this 'bootstraps argument' ('if only you'd pull yourself up by your own bootstraps you could have success') is one that is quite flawed because it is not true to the reality of our society, and instead is more representative of an idealist meritocratic society as seen through the lenses of privileged people who don't have to work as hard as disenfranchised or poor people in order to achieve the same success. In essence, I'm sure it's easy for a privileged person to say, 'why not just pull yourself up by your own bootstraps you lazy moocher, if only you worked hard enough you could be the President' But this viewpoint is simply a bullshit idealist one, again, not true to our society, only parroted by people benefiting from the capitalist mode of production.

Ultimately our society is not one based on meritocracy. More often than not, success is based on luck and privilege rather than genuine hard work. You have to be lucky enough to be born with good genetics to a good family with good wealth in a good environment with good opportunities, good education, good people, good government, good infrastructure, and so on. And if you're not, well have fun struggling your entire life. I'm fairly confident that a child slave in Africa mining for the materials used to create iPhones works far more harder than his boss. I'm also confident that a sweatshop worker creating clothing for Nike works far more harder than his boss. Yet as we see, the amount of work one puts in is quite disproportionate to the amount of success one achieves.

To clarify, I do not believe that you cannot become successful through hard work. There are many examples of rags-to-rich stories wherein people are able to ascend to the next class based on their own hard work. However, I think that, especially for people who aren't meant to be, there are quite many obstacles inherent in capitalist societies that keep lower class people from transitioning to higher classes and thus better lives. I don't see how this reactionary argument you're positing to me solves this issue. If anything it just completely ignores the fact that not everyone is going to get to live good lives through hard work. Furthermore, in order to become successful in capitalist society (ie, in order to become a bourgeoisie) there is a certain point where you have to begin exploiting others. Let's say someone starts a business with the hope that it one day becomes a powerful company, the essence of the American Dream. Well as the company expands and grows, the founder will eventually begin hiring more workers, and acquiring more means of production. The capitalist will acquire the surplus value the workers generate to create profit. Of course, this is theft and exploitation. But the capitalist cannot ignore this or try to side step it, otherwise he will not generate profit and will not be able to become bourgeoisie. Therefore, in order to become higher class, you HAVE to exploit others.

Friedman's next points in the video, about 'equality over liberty' are flawed because communists aren't out to create liberty (aka bourgeois freedom, the idea that the bourgeoisie deserve certain freedoms), they're out to destroy liberty in order to give everyone freedom. Liberty only gives freedom to the bourgeoisie. As I've proved before with the analysis of the State[2], the working class do not actually have liberty, or freedom, so long as the capitalist mode of production persists. Socialism elevates the working class to a position of upper class, but it is only a communist society which gives everyone freedom. The reason why is because there is no longer any class antagonism or oppression -- there is no longer an upper class to oppress a lower class. Thus everyone is free, everyone has 'liberty' in essence.

Also, I really hope I don't have to explain the irony of a fascist using a libertarian like Milton Friedman to debunk an analysis of material conditions. As a fascist you're probably more inclined to dislike Friedman and his ideas of liberty than support them. You're probably also more inclined to agree with everything I wrote here, but instead chalk it up as 'this is the way it needs to be' rather than completely ignoring it like a libertarian would. Fascists recognize that there are systems which exploit people, but they believe in consolidating and empowering these systems in order to give the bourgeoisie even more power. I'm not necessarily saying you're a fascist, I'm just giving you some perspective. On the other hand, Marxists also believe in consolidating or otherwise allowing these systems to thrive, but instead using them to oppress the bourgeoisie rather than the proletariat, until there is no more class struggle.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_class_in_the_United_States
[2]https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateCommunism/comments/731l06/serious_can_we_all_agree_that_we_all_hate_the/dnna0ne/?context=3