The Shift from Blood to Degrees#
In the mid-20th century, the “Owner-occupied house” and the “Patrimonial middle class” emerged as the new symbols of success. Jules’ world of idle rentiers was replaced by a world that promised that “hard work and study” were the only routes to the top. Inequality was no longer justified by land titles but by “individual talent and effort”—a system known as Meritocracy. Yet, by 2010, Léa realized that Yale University was full of “Legacy Students” who owed their places to their parents. The “Meritocratic hope” had become a “Meritocratic myth,” where social privileges were simply rebranded as “academic success”.
The Thesis of the Multiple Elite#
Modern political conflict is no longer a simple struggle between the “rich” and the “poor” but a competition between two distinct elites: the “Brahmin Left” and the “Merchant Right”. Piketty argues that since the 1990s, the “Brahmin Left” (the party of graduates) has justified its status through diplomas and intellectual knowledge, while the “Merchant Right” (the party of business) justifies its status through professional motivation and “business sense”. This “Return of the Educational Cleavage” has alienated the working class, who feel excluded by both groups, leading to the rise of “social-nativist” identity politics.
The Mechanics of Modern Justification#
The Brahmin Left and the Diplomacy of Degrees#
The Brahmin Left values academic success as a “rational and universal principle”. In this system, the “most qualified” earn the right to command society. However, access to this “merit” is over-determined by parental income. In the US, the probability of attending university is 90% for the children of the richest families, compared to only 20% for the poorest. By framing educational attainment as “neutral,” the Brahmin Left justifies its disproportionate share of “primary income” without acknowledging the systemic head start provided by their social background.
The Merchant Right and the Performance Spur#
The Merchant Right relies on the “Merchant” ideology of professional “negotiations” and risk-taking. Starting with the “Conservative Revolution” of Reagan and Thatcher in the 1980s, they argued that cutting taxes for the top earners was a “spur to performance”. They promoted the “trickle-down” theory: that lower taxes on the wealthy would encourage investment and eventually benefit everyone. In reality, this policy failed to produce growth for the bottom 50%, whose incomes have stagnated since the late 1960s, while the wealth of the top 1% has “exploded”.
The Educational Cleavage and the Social-Nativist Retreat#
As left-wing parties became the “parties of graduates,” the working and lower-middle classes abandoned the ballot box or turned to the far right. This “Return of the Educational Cleavage” means that non-graduates feel excluded from a world where their children cannot find work. This has fueled “Social-Nativism”—a policy based on “national identity” and “throwing out foreigners” to distract from the mathematical drift of wealth concentration. The result is a “solidification” of social classes where “chauvinism of affluence” makes failure a mark of character rather than a result of the rigged game.
The Illusion of Academic Equality#
The state often claims to support equality while actually subsidizing the elite. In France, “prestigious” universities receive far more public funding—sometimes twice as much—as less elitist programs. This helps the privileged “reproduce” their elite status while the “subsistence constraint” keeps the poor in low-wage service jobs.
So what? Meritocracy is the Ownership Society’s most effective update. By changing the justification from “I own this land” to “I earned this degree,” the elite has made inequality look like a choice made by the poor. But as Léa’s discovery of the family secret proves, today’s “merit” is often just yesterday’s “inheritance” with a Yale sticker on it. To fix society, we have to stop asking if the rich “deserve” their wealth and start asking why the system is designed to make $r > g$ a permanent law of nature.
