what social classes owe to each other summary and analysis

Whatever may be one's private sentiments, the fear of appearing cold and hard-hearted causes these conventional theories of social duty and these assumptions of social fact to pass unchallenged. A society based on contract, therefore, gives the utmost room and chance for individual development, and for all the self-reliance and dignity of a free man. The little group of public servants who, as I have said, constitute the state, when the state determines on anything, could not do much for themselves or anybody else by their own force. Among the metaphors which partially illustrate capitalall of which, however, are imperfect and inadequatethe snow-ball is useful to show some facts about capital. Every improvement in education, science, art, or government expands the chances of man on earth. If, then, the question is raised, What ought the state to do for labor, for trade, for manufactures, for the poor, for the learned professions? Here is a great and important need, and, instead of applying suitable and adequate means to supply it, we have demagogues declaiming, trade union officers resolving, and government inspectors drawing salaries, while little or nothing is done. If they strike with the market against them, they fail. This term also is used, by a figure of speech, and in a collective sense, for the persons who possess capital, and who come into the industrial organization to get their living by using capital for profit. The schemes for improving the condition of the working classes interfere in the competition of workmen with each other. They will commit abuse, if they can and dare, just as others have done. When did he ever get the benefit of any of the numberless efforts in his behalf? We cannot build a school, a hospital, a church, or employ a missionary society, without capital, any more than we could build a palace or a factory without capital. The third used his glass to see what was going on at home: he saw his father ill in bed. The state gives equal rights and equal chances just because it does not mean to give anything else. He has no superior. This carries us back to the other illustration with which we started. The yearning after equality is the offspring of envy and covetousness, and there is no possible plan for satisfying that yearning which can do aught else than rob A to give to B; consequently all such plans nourish some of the meanest vices of human nature, waste capital, and overthrow civilization. 000+ postings in Wayzata, MN and other big cities in USA. It is not formal and regulated by rule. What Social Classes Owe to Each Other. The question whether voluntary charity is mischievous or not is one thing; the question whether legislation which forces one man to aid another is right and wise, as well as economically beneficial, is quite another question. It would be extreme folly to say that nothing of that sort ought to be done, but I fully believe that today the next pernicious thing to vice is charity in its broad and popular sense. WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES OWE TO EACH OTHER (1884) BY WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER Read by Morgan A. The dogmatic radicals who assail "on principle" the inherited social notions and distinctions are not serving civilization. It is not a scientific principle, and does not admit of such generalization or interpretation that A can tell B what this law enjoins on B to do. "What Social Classes Owe to Each Other" by William Gardner Sumner. Probably the popular notion is that liberty means doing as one has a mind to, and that it is a metaphysical or sentimental good. In the other case we must assume that some at least of those who were forced to give aid did so unwillingly. There can be no rights against nature, except to get out of her whatever we can, which is only the fact of the struggle for existence stated over again. Correspondence, travel, newspapers, circulars, and telegrams bring to employers and capitalists the information which they need for the defense of their interests. They pertain to the conditions of the struggle for existence, not to any of the results of it; to the pursuit of happiness, not to the possession of happiness. These it has to defend against crime. "What Social Classes Owe to Each Other" Analysis- 11/22/11 As social Darwinism gained supporters all across America, some felt that those with money to spare should help individuals who were struggling to survive. toda la actualidad de la regin patagnica Yet who is there whom the statesman, economist, and social philosopher ought to think of before this man? Poverty, pain, disease, and misfortune surround our existence. On the other hand, democracy is rooted in the physical, economic, and social circumstances of the United States. He passes by and is never noticed, because he has behaved himself, fulfilled his contracts, and asked for nothing. He could get meat food. So from the first step that man made above the brute the thing which made his civilization possible was capital. I cannot believe that a strike for wages ever is expedient. To go on and plan what a whole class of people ought to do is to feel oneself a power on earth, to win a public position, to clothe oneself in dignity. December 23, 2010. Anyone, therefore, who cares for the Forgotten Man will be sure to be considered a friend of the capitalist and an enemy of the poor man. In all these schemes and projects the organized intervention of society through the state is either planned or hoped for, and the state is thus made to become the protector and guardian of certain classes. It does not seem possible that man could have taken that stride without intelligent reflection, and everything we know about the primitive man shows us that he did not reflect. Whatever you think of William Graham Sumner's argument, he expresses classical Social Darwinist theory quite eloquently. If the question is one of degree only, and it is right to be rich up to a certain point and wrong to be richer, how shall we find the point? All this is more or less truculently set forth. 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. Especially in a new country, where many tasks are waiting, where resources are strained to the utmost all the time, the judgment, courage, and perseverance required to organize new enterprises and carry them to success are sometimes heroic. People constantly assume that there is something metaphysical and sentimental about government. They seem to think that interference is good if only they interfere. If he knows chemistry, physics, geology, and other sciences, he will know what he must encounter of obstacle or help in nature in what he proposes to do. He will be found to be worthy, industrious, independent, and self-supporting. Probably no such thing is possible so long as landlords especially remain as a third class, and so long as society continues to develop strong classes of merchants, financiers, professional men, and other classes. It will provoke a complete rethinking of the functioning of society and economy. This does not mean that one man has an advantage against the other, but that, when they are rivals in the effort to get the means of subsistence from nature, the one who has capital has immeasurable advantages over the other. Possibly this is true. They are not needed, or are costly beyond all necessity or even decent luxury. William Graham Sumner wrote an article in 1883 to directly address this dilemma, called, What the Social Classes Owe to Each Other. Think of that construction of this situation which attributes all the trouble to the greed of "moneyed corporations!" Let us translate it into blunt English, and it will read, Mind your own business. The title of the book, "What Social Classes Owe to Each Other," is answered by the author, essentially, as: "nothing." At one point in his body of work, he noted that life is like "Root, hog, or die." The truest sympathy is not compassion, but a fellow feeling with courage and fortitude in the midst of noble effort. We think that it costs nothingdoes itself, as it were. The reason for the excesses of the old governing classes lies in the vices and passions of human naturecupidity, lust, vindictiveness, ambition, and vanity. There was one tool-weapon in naturethe flint. They assume to speak for a large, but vague and undefined, constituency, who set the task, exact a fulfillment, and threaten punishment for default. He is suffering from the fact that there are yet mixed in our institutions medieval theories of protection, regulation, and authority, and modern theories of independence and individual liberty and responsibility. As usual, they are logical. It follows, however, that one man, in a free state, cannot claim help from, and cannot be charged to give help to, another. There is an especial field for combined action in the case of employees. At every turn, therefore, it appears that the number of men and the quality of men limit each other, and that the question whether we shall have more men or better men is of most importance to the class which has neither land nor capital. A good father believes that he does wisely to encourage enterprise, productive skill, prudent self-denial, and judicious expenditure on the part of his son. So be it; but he cannot escape the deduction that he can call no man to his aid. The character, however, is quite exotic in the United States. The people who can be called upon to serve the uncomfortable must be those who have done their duty, as the world goes, tolerably well. The real collision of interest, which is the center of the dispute, is that of employers and employed; and the first condition of successful study of the question, or of successful investigation to see if there is any question, is to throw aside the technical economic terms, and to look at the subject in its true meaning, expressed in untechnical language. After reading and listening to a great deal of this sort of assertion I find that the question forms itself with more and more distinctness in my mind: Who are those who assume to put hard questions to other people and to demand a solution of them? A man who is present as a consumer, yet who does not contribute either by land, labor, or capital to the work of society, is a burden. At one time, no doubt, feudalism was an organization which drew together again the fragments of a dissolved society; but when the lawyers had applied the Roman law to modern kings, and feudal nobles had been converted into an aristocracy of court nobles, the feudal nobility no longer served any purpose. ISBN-10: 1614272360. He who had meat food could provide his food in such time as to get leisure to improve his flint tools. In their view they have a right, not only to pursue happiness, but to get it; and if they fail to get it, they think they have a claim to the aid of other menthat is, to the labor and self-denial of other mento get it for them. It costs far more vigilance and exertion to be so under the democratic form, where we have no aids from tradition or prestige, than under other forms. A drunkard in the gutter is just where he ought to be, according to the fitness and tendency of things. This kind of strike is a regular application of legitimate means, and is sure to succeed. It is very popular to pose as a "friend of humanity," or a "friend of the working classes." The power of wealth in the English House of Commons has steadily increased for fifty years. If we are a free, self-governing people, we must understand that it costs vigilance and exertion to be self-governing. All the material over which the protected interests wrangle and grab must be got from somebody outside of their circle. 1 Review. Employers can, however, if they have foresight of the movements of industry and commerce, and if they make skillful use of credit, win exceptional profits for a limited period. I have said that trade unions are right and useful, and perhaps, necessary; but trade unions are, in fact, in this country, an exotic and imported institution, and a great many of their rules and modes of procedure, having been developed in England to meet English circumstances, are out of place here. William Graham Sumner was one of the founding fathers of American sociology. Try first long and patiently whether the natural adjustment will not come about through the play of interests and the voluntary concessions of the parties.". what social classes owe to each other summary and analysis Signup for our newsletter to get notified about our next ride. In justification, now, of an arrangement so monstrously unjust and out of place in a free country, it is said that the employees in the thread mill get high wages, and that, but for the tax, American laborers must come down to the low wages of foreign thread makers. It is nothing but the doctrine of liberty. The more one comes to understand the case of the primitive man, the more wonderful it seems that man ever started on the road to civilization. The penalty of neglect is suffering. Those things are all glorious, and strike the imagination with great force when they are seen; but no one doubts that they make life harder for the scattered insignificant peasants and laborers who have to pay for them all. The Forgotten Man is not a pauper. On that theory, of course the good men owed a great deal to the bad men who were in prison and at the galleys on their account. The danger of minding other people's business is twofold. We will use the terms "capital" and "labor" only in their strict economic significance, viz., the first definition given above under each term, and we will use the terms "laborers" and "capitalists" when we mean the persons described in the second definition under each term. Tenants strike when house rents rise too high for them. Science is colorless and impersonal. The way he talks about how some poor need help from those "better off" in order for them fight for a better life, while at the same time arguing that those men who contribute nothing to society should not receive benefits from men who do.

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