what social classes owe to each other summary and analysis

Anyone who believes that any good thing on this earth can be got without those virtues may believe in the philosopher's stone or the fountain of youth. Consequently society was dependent, throughout all its details, on status, and the tie, or bond, was sentimental. William Graham Sumner. William Graham Sumner was one of the founding fathers of American sociology. I have never seen a defense of the employer. When the people whose claims we are considering are told to apply themselves to these tasks they become irritated and feel almost insulted. Laborers may strike and emigrate, or, in this country, take to the land. The "Bohemian" who determines to realize some sort of liberty of this kind accomplishes his purpose only by sacrificing most of the rights and turning his back on most of the duties of a civilized man, while filching as much as he can of the advantages of living in a civilized state. The employees have no means of information which is as good and legitimate as association, and it is fair and necessary that their action should be united in behalf of their interests. In the third place, nobody ever saw a body fall as the philosophers say it will fall, because they can accomplish nothing unless they study forces separately, and allow for their combined action in all concrete and actual phenomena. I cannot see the sense of spending time to read and write observations, such as I find in the writings of many men of great attainments and of great influence, of which the following might be a general type: If the statesmen could attain to the requisite knowledge and wisdom, it is conceivable that the state might perform important regulative functions in the production and distribution of wealth, against which no positive and sweeping theoretical objection could be made from the side of economic science; but statesmen never can acquire the requisite knowledge and wisdom. For if a time ever comes when there are men of this kind, the men of that age will arrange their affairs accordingly. There is a great deal of it in the professions. The cases already mentioned involve no legislation. The Forgotten Man never gets into control. The truth is that this great cooperative effort is one of the great products of civilizationone of its costliest products and highest refinements, because here, more than anywhere else, intelligence comes in, but intelligence so clear and correct that it does not need expression. We are to see the development of the country pushed forward at an unprecedented rate by an aggregation of capital, and a systematic application of it under the direction of competent men. We shall find that, in our efforts to eliminate the old vices of class government, we are impeded and defeated by new products of the worst class theory. Home / / what social classes owe to each other summary and analysis This latter is the Forgotten Man. Instant access to millions of Study Resources, Course Notes, Test Prep, 24/7 Homework Help, Tutors, and more. The plan of electing men to represent us who systematically surrender public to private interests, and then trying to cure the mischief by newspaper and platform declamation against capital and corporations, is an entire failure. In days when men acted by ecclesiastical rules these prejudices produced waste of capital, and helped mightily to replunge Europe into barbarism. They "support a great many people," they "make work," they "give employment to other industries." His treatment of the workings of group relations fits well with Rothbard's analysis of power. I once heard a little boy of four years say to his mother, "Why is not this pencil mine now? But we have inherited a vast number of social ills which never came from nature. The relation of parents and children is the only case of sacrifice in nature. Under the names of the poor and the weak, the negligent, shiftless, inefficient, silly, and imprudent are fastened upon the industrious and prudent as a responsibility and a duty. The combination between them is automatic and instinctive. During the hard times, when Congress had a real chance to make or mar the public welfare, the final adjournment of that body was hailed year after year with cries of relief from a great anxiety. The system of interference is a complete failure to the ends it aims at, and sooner or later it will fall of its own expense and be swept away. If they want to be protected they must protect themselves. If they do not win, it proves that they were wrong to strike. If those who are in that position are related to him as employers to employee, that tie will be recognized as giving him an especial claim. Whether the state which Bismarck is molding will fit the notion is at best a matter of faith and hope. It is positive, practical, and actual. He wants to be equal to his fellows, as all sovereigns are equal. His answer, in brief, is that, the minute we suggest that social classes owe anything to eachother is the minute that some become the dictators of others and . What shall we do with Neighbor A? Notre passion a tout point de vue. Think, for instance, of a journal which makes it its special business to denounce monopolies, yet favors a protective tariff, and has not a word to say against trade unions or patents! They note great inequality of social position and social chances. This development will be for the benefit of all, and it will enable each one of us, in his measure and way, to increase his wealth. Such is the work of civilization. Furthermore, it often turns out in practice that "the State" is not even the known and accredited servants of the state, but, as has been well said, is only some obscure clerk, hidden in the recesses of a government bureau, into whose power the chance has fallen for the moment to pull one of the stops which control the government machine. As we would expect, income is a powerful determinant of the social class into which people place themselves, as is, to a lesser degree, education. The system of providing for these things by boards and inspectors throws the cost of it, not on the interested parties, but on the tax-payers. To the capital in existence all must come for their subsistence and their tools. My notion of the state has dwindled with growing experience of life. Rights should be equal, because they pertain to chances, and all ought to have equal chances so far as chances are provided or limited by the action of society. Employers formerly made use of guilds to secure common action for a common interest. In the fourth place, any natural philosopher who should stop, after stating the law of falling bodies, to warn mothers not to let their children fall out of the window, would make himself ridiculous. Two things here work against it. You do not reflect that it may be a beautiful little child falling from a window. Therefore, when we say that we owe it to each other to guarantee rights we only say that we ought to prosecute and improve our political science. Add any text here or remove it. I do not know what the comparative wealth of the two writers is, but it is interesting to notice that there is a wide margin between their ideas of how rich they would allow their fellow citizens to become, and of the point at which they ("the State," of course) would step in to rob a man of his earnings. 1 Review. But the army, or police, or posse comitatus, is more or less All-of-us, and the capital in the treasury is the product of the labor and saving of All-of-us. The second administered the medicine and saved the father's life. On the side of political machinery there is no ground for hope, but only for fear. If he fails in this he throws burdens on others. If charters have been given which confer undue powers, who gave them? It then appears that the public wealth has been diminished, and that the danger of a trade war, like the danger of a revolution, is a constant reduction of the well-being of all. "What Social Classes Owe to Each Other" by William Gardner Sumner. They therefore ignore entirely the source from which they must draw all the energy which they employ in their remedies, and they ignore all the effects on other members of society than the ones they have in view. It is right that they should be so used. Hence we have an unlimited supply of reformers, philanthropists, humanitarians, and would-be managers-in-general of society. It is as impossible to deny it as it is silly to affirm it. Those who are trying to reason out any issue from this tangle of false notions of society and of history are only involving themselves in hopeless absurdities and contradictions. The half-way menthe professional socialistsjoin him. Sumner champions the rights of the individual over the state and organized pressure groups. These are very wearisome and commonplace tasks. If an individual workman is not bold enough to protest against a wrong to laborers, the agent of a trade union might with propriety do it on behalf of the body of workmen. The problem itself seems to be, How shall the latter be made as comfortable as the former? Here we are, then, once more back at the old doctrinelaissez faire. The common notion, however, seems to be that one has a duty to society, as a special and separate thing, and that this duty consists in considering and deciding what other people ought to do. Hence there is another party in interestthe person who supplies productive services. No one will come to help us out of them. Almost all legislative effort to prevent vice is really protective of vice, because all such legislation saves the vicious man from the penalty of his vice. We must not overlook the fact that the Forgotten Man is not infrequently a woman. Borrowers strike when the rates for capital are so high that they cannot employ it to advantage and pay those rates. It is assumed that he is provided for and out of the account. An elective judiciary is a device so much in the interest of plutocracy, that it must be regarded as a striking proof of the toughness of the judicial institution that it has resisted the corruption so much as it has. Suppose that another man, coming that way and finding him there, should, instead of hastening to give or to bring aid, begin to lecture on the law of gravitation, taking the tree as an illustration. In this country they are in constant danger of being used by political schemersa fact which does more than anything else to disparage them in the eyes of the best workmen. There is a plain tendency of all civilized governments toward plutocracy. That is what we are trying to do by many of our proposed remedies. Neither is there any possible definition of "the weak." It is a pure misfortune to the community, and one which will redound to its injury, if any man has been endowed with political power who is a heavier burden then than he was before; but it cannot be said that there is any new duty created for the good citizens toward the bad by the fact that the bad citizens are a harm to the state. Economically speaking, aggregated capital will be more and more essential to the performance of our social tasks. Much of the loose thinking also which troubles us in our social discussions arises from the fact that men do not distinguish the elements of status and of contract which may be found in our society. Sometimes they claim that they have a right to everything of which they feel the need for their happiness on earth. Beyond the man who was so far superior to the brutes that he knew how to use fire and had the use of flints we cannot go. On the contrary, he only accumulates obligations toward them; and if he is allowed to make his deficiencies a ground of new claims, he passes over into the position of a privileged or petted personemancipated from duties, endowed with claims. Through various grades of slavery, serfdom, villeinage, and through various organizations of castes and guilds, the industrial organization has been modified and developed up to the modern system. Now, the people who are most uncomfortable in this world (for if we should tell all our troubles it would not be found to be a very comfortable world for anybody) are those who have neglected their duties, and consequently have failed to get their rights. It is a prophecy. The old constitutional guarantees were all aimed against king and nobles. The man struck by the falling tree has, perhaps, been careless. It is automatic and instinctive in its operation. Capital is force, human energy stored or accumulated, and very few people ever come to appreciate its importance to civilized life. It is not his duty. Those who have neither capital nor land unquestionably have a closer class interest than landlords or capitalists. All the denunciations and declamations which have been referred to are made in the interest of "the poor man."