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William Graham Sumner and the Problem of Liberal Democracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 November 2010

William F. Byrne
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Abstract

This paper examines problems of the liberal democratic order through an analysis of the political thought of a neglected American thinker, William Graham Sumner. Sumner argues that the liberal order is inextricably linked to laissez-faire, and is under siege from the closely interrelated threats of socialism, plutocracy, imperialism, and the degeneration of democracy. He recognizes that the liberal-democratic capitalist state has significant deficiencies, including atomization, “cold” economic relations, and a loss of “poetry.” It also seems to depend upon values which are not readily propagated by liberalism. But efforts to address deficiencies through government action amount to attempts to intermix philosophically incompatible elements and serve to hasten the system's collapse. Sumner's work unwittingly suggests that the usual “Lockean” liberal model may be so flawed that a revised public philosophy, with new language and paradigms, is needed for the effective pursuit of his goals of freedom, dignity, and human development.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 72 , Issue 4 , Fall 2010 , pp. 571 - 597
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2010

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References

1 Sumner, William Graham, Folkways (New York: Dover Publications, 1959).Google Scholar

2 Shone, Steve J., “Cultural Relativism and the Savage: The Alleged Inconsistency of William Graham Sumner,” The American Journal of Economics and Sociology 63, no. 3 (2004): 697.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For general biographical information on Sumner, see Curtis, Bruce, William Graham Sumner (Boston: Twayne Publishers / G. K. Hall, 1981)Google Scholar, and Bannister, Robert C., ed., On Liberty, Society, and Politics: The Essential Essays of William Graham Sumner (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1992)Google Scholar, foreword.

3 Sumner, William Graham, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1883)Google Scholar.

4 Available in Bannister, ed., On Liberty, Society, and Politics.

5 Hofstadter, Richard, Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860–1915 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1944)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Hofstadter, Richard, “William Graham Sumner, Social Darwinist,” The New England Quarterly 14, no. 3 (1941): 457–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Smith, Norman Erik, “William Graham Sumner as an Anti-Social Darwinist,” Pacific Sociological Review 2, no. 3 (July 1979): 334.Google Scholar

8 Hofstadter, “William Graham Sumner,” 471.

9 Curtis, William Graham Sumner, 63.

10 Bannister, Robert C., Sociology and Scientism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), 101.Google Scholar

11 See, for example, Smith, “William Graham Sumner as an Anti-Social Darwinist”; Bannister, Robert C., Social Darwinism: Science and Myth in Anglo-American Social Thought (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1979)Google Scholar; and Scott Trask, H. A., “William Graham Sumner: Against Democracy, Plutocracy, and Imperialism,” Journal of Libertarian Studies 18, no. 4 (2004): 1–27.Google Scholar

12 It should perhaps be noted that Sumner is not a dogmatic proponent of complete laissez-faire, in the sense of a state with absolutely no governmental roles related to economic activity. And late in life he supported government action to preserve competition in the face of monopolistic tendencies. See Bannister, Social Darwinism, 110.

13 Sumner, What Social Classes, 12.

14 Ibid., 23.

15 Trask, “William Graham Sumner,” 5.

16 Sumner, What Social Classes, 145–49.

17 Sumner, “Definitions of Democracy and Plutocracy,” in On Liberty, Society, and Politics, 144.

18 Ibid.

19 Trask, “William Graham Sumner,” 5.

20 His most famous anti-imperialism essay is The Conquest of the United States by Spain, available in On Liberty, Society, and Politics.

21 Sumner, William Graham, “Earth Hunger,” in Earth-Hunger and Other Essays (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1980), 56.Google Scholar

22 Hofstadter, “William Graham Sumner,” 475.

23 Sumner, What Social Classes, 34 (emphasis in original).

24 Ibid., 22.

25 Ibid., 24.

26 Ibid., 25.

27 Ibid., 33.

28 Ibid., 25.

29 Ibid.

30 Ibid., 27.

31 There is, of course, a great deal going on in Locke besides what is mentioned here. In fact, some of his thought could be characterized as more medieval and Christian than liberal/capitalist/modern. Our interest here is not Locke per se, but what is most commonly taken from him.

32 Sumner, What Social Classes, 26.

33 Ibid., 39.

34 Ibid., 38–39.

35 Ibid., 15–16.

36 Ibid., 25–26.

37 Ibid., 39.

38 Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick, The Manifesto of the Communist Party, in The Communist Manifesto and Other Revolutionary Writings, ed. Blaisdell, Bob (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2003), 127.Google Scholar

39 Sumner, What Social Classes, 26.

40 Ibid.

41 William Graham Sumner, The Concentration of Wealth: Its Economic Justification, reprinted in On Liberty, Society, and Politics.

42 Sumner, “Definitions of Democracy and Plutocracy,” 143.

43 Sumner, What Social Classes, 106.

44 Ibid., 41.

45 Ibid., 104.

46 Ibid., 101.

47 Ibid., 102.

48 Ibid., 103.

49 Burke, Edmund, Reflections on the Revolution in France, in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, vol. 8, ed. Mitchell, L. G. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989).Google Scholar For a general treatment of the relationship of older class structures to the new commercial order, see Pocock, J. G. A., Virtue, Commerce, and History: Essays on Political Thought and History, Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50 Sumner, What Social Classes, 103.

51 Ibid., 103.

52 Ibid., 104.

53 Ibid., 105.

54 Burke, Reflections, 127.

55 Sumner, Folkways, 3.

56 William Graham Sumner, “Separation of State and Market,” in Earth-Hunger and Other Essays, 308–9.

57 William Graham Sumner, “The Conflict of Plutocracy and Democracy,” in On Liberty, Society, and Politics, 147.

58 Sumner, “Conflict,” 147.

59 One of the most prominent works in this tradition is Theodore Lowi, J., The End of Liberalism: The Second Republic of the United States, 2nd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1979).Google Scholar

60 William Graham Sumner, “The Absurd Effort to Make the World Over,” in On Liberty, Society, and Politics, 259.

61 Ibid.

62 William Graham Sumner, Speech at McCormick Hall, Chicago (as reported in Chicago Tribune, January 1, 1877), in On Liberty, Society, and Politics, 83.

63 Sumner, “Separation,” 307.

64 William Graham Sumner, “Democracy and Modern Problems,” in Earth-Hunger and Other Essays, 305.

65 William Graham Sumner, “The Bequests of the Nineteenth Century to the Twentieth,” in On Liberty, Society, and Politics, 384–85.

66 Ibid., 385.

67 Ibid., 387.

68 Ibid.

69 Ibid.

70 William Graham Sumner, “What is Civil Liberty?” in Earth-Hunger and Other Essays, 127–28.

71 See William Graham Sumner, “What is Civil Liberty?” “Is Liberty a Lost Blessing,” and “Liberty and Responsibility,” in Earth-Hunger and Other Essays.

72 Sumner, “Bequests,” 383.

73 de Tocqueville, Alexis, Democracy in America, trans. Bowen, Francis, rev. and ed. Bradley, Phillips (New York: Vintage, 1990), 2:294.Google Scholar

74 Sumner, What Social Classes, 20–21.

75 Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971).Google Scholar

76 See, for example, Nisbet, Robert, The Quest for Community (San Francisco: ICS Press, 1990).Google Scholar

77 See, for example, Strauss, Leo, “What is Liberal Education?” in Liberalism Ancient and Modern (New York: Basic Books, 1968).Google Scholar

78 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1:307.