Maybe "dogged determination, drive, and the ability to plan ahead" are also traits that some of us are short-changed of at birth, like health, strength or intelligence--or luck; through no fault of our own. No one would condemn a man for his congenital blindness, yet we often smugly dismiss him for lack of courage, ambition, or natural cunning.

One of the problems of living in a meritocracy is that lack of merit becomes a personal shortcoming, when it may very well just be the luck of the draw, not just in our genes, but in our upbringing and history. The achievement of merit, however, is always a personal triumph, its lack, therefore, must be a moral shortcoming. When the lucky man does well, we always say, "yes, but if he didn't have something going for him his luck would have run out eventually". But to those who are crushed by happenstance, we too often say "yes, but others have overcome their bad luck, why can't he?"

And when this feeling of the inevitable righteousness of success, (or should I say the success of righteousness!) is denied to those who think they are entitled to it due to their own imagined determination, drive and foresight, they rarely see it as a personal shortcoming. Nor do they accept the fact that perhaps they just were unlucky, because this undermines the whole concept of meritocracy. So very often, this personal failure is blamed on shadowy conspiracies, external enemies and domestic traitors. It is easier to accept that one is a victim than that one is incompetent, or even unlucky. It is no coincidence that revolutionary leaders, of both right and left, are often members of the very classes they despise.

This is what I interpret Fowles as trying to say here, and what I think you have also glimpsed: the inevitability of inequality. As for what we can do about this, we are actually quite limited. We can remove injustice, level the playing field, protect the weak, limit the strong, but we can no more legislate fairness than we can legislate morality. All we can do is show humanity and compassion, and most of all, humility.