William Graham Sumner Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

William Graham Sumner (1840–1910) was a prominent American sociologist and a vocal advocate of laissez-faire capitalism, anti-imperialism, and the futility of social reform. His academic works and popular essays contributed significantly to the influence of social Darwinism on American political and economic thought in the late nineteenth century.

Born in Paterson, New Jersey, Sumner grew up in Hartford, Connecticut, in a working-class English immigrant family. After graduating from Yale in 1863, where he studied political economy, Sumner continued his education in history and language at the universities of Geneva and Göttingen and in theology at Oxford University. Sumner was ordained in the Episcopalian Church in 1867 but left the ministry in 1872 to become a professor of political and social sciences at Yale University, a position he held until shortly before his death in 1910.

Sumner sought to join the social Darwinism of English philosopher Herbert Spencer with the assumptions underlying political liberalism, classical economics, and the Protestant work ethic in order to justify and naturalize the economic inequalities that developed in America after the Civil War (1861–1865). Sumner’s political thought rests on a view of society comprised of individuals competing against nature for economic survival. The accumulation of capital provides individuals with a competitive advantage and is instrumental in the advance of civilization. Because accumulation requires intelligence and self-denial, wealth is the result of successful adaptation to economic competition, and poverty a natural result of individual failure. Hostile to philosophical speculation, Sumner denied the existence of natural rights, arguing instead that the individual had only the right to use his powers for his own welfare and to securely enjoy that which he had earned. As characterized by Sumner, this right is also a duty, because by failing to look after oneself, one’s welfare becomes the responsibility of others. Thus for Sumner, the doctrine of liberty is contained in the command “mind your own business.”

The natural laws of competition and natural selection led Sumner to a minimal conception of the state. To him, government institutions are essential to maintaining civil liberty, but must be limited to ensuring equal opportunities for economic competition and to providing freedom for labor and security for earnings. If it is to protect the rights of citizens, Sumner argued, government cannot become the vehicle of class-based claims. In this respect, both plutocrats and social reformers are guilty of illegitimately using the state to gain an unfair advantage in the competition over material resources. For this reason Sumner was equally opposed to welfare programs, protective tariffs, and government contracts or “jobbery,” all of which interfere with the laws of free economic competition, and by extension, with the progress of society. Moreover, government interference rewards those who cannot succeed on their own and ultimately penalizes the “forgotten man,” who works hard, accumulates what capital he can, and whose earnings are inevitably used to fund various class-based legislative schemes.

Although a politically and economically conservative thinker, Sumner falls solidly within the American liberal tradition; while his sociological thought emphasizes the importance of mores and folkways, he nonetheless insisted in his political work that freely chosen contracts rather than tradition or custom are the only source social obligations. Like social Darwinism generally, the influence of Sumner’s political and economic ideas gradually faded as the progressive movement began to yield social reforms.

Bibliography:

Curtis, Bruce. William Graham Sumner. Boston:Twayne, 1981.
Davie, Maurice R. William Graham Sumner: An Essay of Commentary and Selections. New York: Crowell, 1963.
Sumner,William Graham. Folkways: A Study of Mores, Manners, Customs, and Morals. New York: Dover, 2002.
On Liberty, Society, and Politics: The Essential Essays of William Graham Sumner, edited by Robert C. Bannister. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1992.
What Social Classes Owe to Each Other. Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton, 2003.

This example William Graham Sumner Essay is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic please use our writing services. EssayEmpire.com offers reliable custom essay writing services that can help you to receive high grades and impress your professors with the quality of each essay or research paper you hand in.