Worth mentioning, I think, that he absolutely did not consider a meritocracy to be a good thing; contrast with today, where it is casually assumed to be so.
It's become one of those terrible words where people get into debates each using different definitions of the word without being aware of the difference.
"A system of class filtered by meritocracy would, in his view, still be a system of class: it would involve a hierarchy of social respect, granting dignity to those at the top, but denying respect and self-respect to those who did not inherit the talents and the capacity for effort that, combined with proper education, would give them access to the most highly remunerated occupations."
I think you just described more than half of all political debate, as e.g. libertarians and socialists define "capitalism" differently.
When debating these terms I define them and/or add qualifiers, e.g. "voluntarist capitalism" or "non-authoritarian capitalism" for the libertarian concept (which is not what we have!) and "state capitalism" or "corporatism" for what socialists usually mean.
Making matters worse it's become popular to deliberately muddy the waters by attempting to steal or corrupt definitions or use bland meaningless dog whistle terms. The latter I call 'duckspeak' after the term from 1984.
