The Ludwig von Mises Institute presents The Libertarian Tradition, an audio series with
Jeff Rigenbach.
It was 101 years ago this week, on April 12, 1910, that William Graham Sumner died.
He had been born nearly 70 years earlier, on October 30, 1840, almost 30 years to the
The day before the birth of another American libertarian, Albert J. Nock, whose career bears a striking, if superficial, similarity to Sumner's.
Like Sumner, Nock began his career while still in his twenties as an Episcopal clergyman.
Like Nock, Sumner went into such work largely to please his family, but the job was a poor fit for both men.
Nock walked away from it after little more than a decade.
Decade. Sumner didn't make it even five years. Both men moved on directly from religious
employment to the work for which they came to be best known. Nock, at the age of 40,
moved on to the magazine journalism for which he became famous in the 1920s and 30s. Sumner,
while still in his early 30s, moved on to the position as professor of political economy
at Yale, which he held for the rest of his life.
Today neither Nock nor Sumner is particularly well known, and those who do know of Sumner,
those who don't confuse him with Charles Sumner, the abolitionist senator from Massachusetts,
probably know him as a social Darwinist.
And this is ironic, for he was not so known during his lifetime or for many years thereafter.
Robert C. Bannister, the Swarthmore historian, edited a valuable collection of Sumner's
essays nearly two decades ago for Liberty Fund.
This is how he describes the situation in his forward to that volume.
Sumner's Social Darwinism, he writes, although rooted in controversies during his lifetime,
received its most influential expression in Richard Hofstadter's Social Darwinism in
and American Thought, which was first published in 1944.
In fact, there is considerable evidence that the entire concept of social Darwinism was
virtually invented by Richard Hofstadter.
Eric Foner, in an introduction to a then-new edition of Hofstadter's book published in
the early 1990s, declines to go quite that far.
Hofstadter did not invent the term Social Darwinism, Foner writes, which originated
in Europe in the 1860s and crossed the Atlantic in the early 20th century, but before he wrote
it was used only on rare occasions.
He made it a standard shorthand for a complex of late 19th century ideas, a familiar part
of the lexicon of social thought.
In the process, he not only portrayed William Graham Sumner as a social Darwinist, he also
portrayed Herbert Spencer that way.
In fact, Richard Hofstadter seems to be the principal source of the widespread modern
belief that both these men were social Darwinists.
But were they?
What precisely is this complex of late 19th century ideas, as Eric Foner puts it, that
Social Darwinism is supposed to stand for.
Perhaps the most frustrating thing about doing a little general reading in this field
is discovering how difficult it is to find any sort of definition of that phrase,
Social Darwinism, especially if one is hoping to find a succinct and quotable definition of it.
Entire books are written on the subject without ever carefully and clearly delimiting
In essence, however, social Darwinism seems to be the notion that success in the market proves an individual's fitness to survive in the struggle for existence, so that both legislation and private charity meant to assist those who fail in the market is inadvisable, since our species will grow stronger if these unfit individuals are allowed to die off.
Did anyone ever espouse this doctrine? Herbert Spencer certainly didn't.
Spencer, who was born 191 years ago this month on April 27, 1820, was an enthusiastic exponent of
evolution, true enough. In fact, he wrote about evolution before Darwin did. In fact,
it was Herbert Spencer, not Charles Darwin, who coined the phrase, survival of the fittest.
But Spencer was no sort of Darwinian at all. Even after Darwin began publishing,
Spencer remained a Lamarckian, a disciple of an earlier advocate of evolution who believed
organisms could pass on acquired characteristics to their offspring. In the case of humans,
Spencer's view was that culture and education make this process possible.
Also, Spencer was a proponent of private charity.
Was William Graham Sumner an advocate of social Darwinism?
As I have indicated, he has been so described, most notably by Richard Hofstadter and various
others over the past 60-odd years.
Robert Bannister calls this description more caricature than accurate characterization
of Sumner, however, and says further that it seriously misrepresents him.
He notes that Sumner's short book What Social Classes Owe to Each Other, which was first
published in 1884 when the author was in his early 40s, would earn him a reputation as
the Gilded Age's leading social Darwinist, though it invoked neither the names nor the
rhetoric of Spencer or Darwin.
It is interesting, in fact, to take a look into its pages and see what it is exactly
One of those concerns was the history of human civilization, particularly its political component.
The history of the human race, Sumner wrote, is one long story of attempts by certain persons
and Classes to obtain control of the power of the state, so as to win earthly gratifications
at the expense of others.
All this began, according to Sumner, in ancient times, when organized bands of robbers plundered
laborers and merchants, until eventually they found that means of robbery which consisted
in gaining control of the civil organization, the state, and using its poetry and romance
by the Civil Organization here, Sumner seems to mean whatever local or tribal organization
provided the bundle of services, community defense, adjudication of disputes, identification
and apprehension of wrongdoers, that Albert J. Nock called government.
The bands of robbers took over the local government and transformed it into a state.
And of course, they developed high-spun theories of nationality, patriotism and loyalty to
justify these nefarious deeds in the minds of their victims.
Since then, Sumner wrote, human history has been only a tiresome repetition of one story.
Persons and classes have sought to win possession of the power of the state in order to live
luxuriously out of the earnings of others.
The fashion of the time, Sumner is referring here to the 1880s, is to run to government boards,
commissions and inspectors to set right everything which is wrong. No experience seems to damp the
faith of our public in these instrumentalities. The English liberals in the middle of this century
seem to have full grasp of the principle of liberty and to be fixed and established in
In this country, the party which is in, always interferes, and the party which is out, favors
non-interference.
I found it startling after reading that passage to be reminded that Sumner was writing here
about the Republican and Democratic parties as they were 130 years ago.
Little wonder that, as Robert Bannister tells us, Sumner had experienced disillusionment
with politics as early as 1877 and had repudiated politics as a waste of time by 1880, declining
There were, Sumner said, only two notions to choose from in making political decisions.
One was the notion that the state should regulate things by a committee of control, and the
other to let things regulate themselves by the conflict of interests between free men.
These two notions, he said, are diametrically opposed, and the former is corrupting to free
The bottom line, according to Sumner, was that if we have been all wrong for the last
300 years in aiming at a fuller realization of individual liberty as a condition of general
and widely diffused happiness, then we must turn back to paternalism, discipline and authority.
But to have a combination of liberty and dependence is impossible.
In fact, of course, Sumner didn't believe for a moment that we have been all wrong for
the last 300 years.
He believed that in a free society it is not the state that holds people together.
Rather, the ties by which all are held together are those of free cooperation and contract.
If we look back for comparison to anything of which human history gives us a type or
experiment, we see that the modern free system of industry offers to every living human being
chances of happiness indescribably in excess of what former generations have possessed.
It offers no such guarantees as were once possessed by some that they should in no case
suffer.
We have an instance right at hand.
The Negroes, once slaves in the United States, used to be assured care, medicine, and support.
But they spent their efforts, and other men took the products.
They have been set free.
That means only just this.
They now work and hold their own products, and are assured of nothing but what they earn.
In escaping from subjection, they have lost claims.
Care, medicine and support they get if they earn it.
Will anyone say that the black men have not gained?
Will anyone deny that individual black men may seem worse off?
Will anyone allow such observations to blind them to the true significance of the change?
If anyone thinks that there are or ought to be somewhere in society guarantees that no
Sumner believed that if the question at hand was what social classes owe to each other,
We should find the correct answer by focusing not on social classes at all, but on individuals.
Every man and woman in society, he wrote, has one big duty, that is, to take care of
his or her own self.
This is a social duty, for fortunately the matter stands so that the duty of making the
best of oneself individually is not a separate thing from the duty of filling one's place
in Society, but the two are one, and the latter is accomplished when the former is done.
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.
Now the man who can do anything for or about anybody else than himself is fit to be head
of a Family, and when he becomes head of a family, he has duties to his wife and his
children in addition to the former big duty.
Then again, any man who can take care of himself and his family is in a very exceptional position
if he does not find in his immediate surroundings people who need his care and have some sort
of a personal claim upon him.
If now he is able to fulfill all this, and to take care of anybody outside his family
and his dependents, he must have a surplus of energy, wisdom and moral virtue beyond
what he needs for his own business.
No man has this, for a family is a charge which is capable of infinite development,
and no man could suffice to the full measure of duty for which a family may draw upon him.
Neither can a man give to society so advantageous an employment of his services, whatever they
are, in any other way as by spending them on his family.
Upon this, however, I will not insist.
I recur to the observation that a man who proposes to take care of other people must
have himself and his family taken care of after some sort of a fashion, and must have
an as yet unexhausted store of energy.
Such energetic do-gooders would do well to attend to the potential downside of what they
are undertaking, however, for, as Sumner put it, the danger of minding other people's business
is two-fold.
First, there is the danger that a man may leave his own business unattended to.
And second, there is the danger of an impertinent interference with another's affairs.
The friends of humanity almost always run into both dangers.
I am one of humanity, and I do not want any volunteer friends.
I regard friendship as mutual, and I want to have my say about it.
I suppose that other components of humanity feel in the same way about it.
If so, they must regard anyone who assumes the role of a friend of humanity as impertinent.
The reference to the friend of humanity back to his own business is obviously the next
step.
Yet we are constantly annoyed, and the legislatures are kept constantly busy by the people who
have made up their minds that it is wise and conducive to happiness to live in a certain
way, and who want to compel everybody else to live in their way.
Some people have decided to spend Sunday in a certain way, and they want laws passed to
make other people spend Sunday in the same way.
Some people have resolved to be teetotallers, and they want a law passed to make everybody
else a teetotaller.
Some people have resolved to eschew luxury, and they want taxes laid to make others eschew
luxury.
The taxing power is especially something after which the reformer's finger always itches.
Sometimes there is an element of self-interest in the proposed reformation, as when a publisher
Sumner wanted a duty imposed on books to keep Americans from reading books which would
unsettle their Americanisms, and when artists wanted a tax laid on pictures to save Americans
from buying bad paintings.
There was one other duty Sumner believed the individuals in society owed to each other,
and it was rather an odd one for a social Darwinist like him.
He Thought People Ode Each Other Compassion and Assistance
We may philosophize as coolly and correctly as we choose about our duties and about the
laws of right living, Sumner wrote.
No one of us lives up to what he knows.
The man struck by the falling tree has perhaps been careless.
We are all careless.
Enviorned as we are by risks and perils which befall us as misfortunes, no man of us is
is in a position to say, I know all the laws and am sure to obey them all, therefore I
shall never need aid and sympathy.
At the very best, one of us fails in one way and another in another, if we do not fail
altogether.
Therefore, the man under the tree is the one of us who, for the moment, is smitten.
It may be you tomorrow, and I next day.
It is the common frailty in the midst of a common peril which gives us a kind of solidarity
of interest to rescue the one for whom the chances of life have turned out badly just
now.
Probably the victim is to blame.
He almost always is so.
A lecture to that effect in the crisis of his peril would be out of place because it
would not fit the need of the moment.
But it would be very much in place at another time, when the need was to avert the repetition
of such an accident to somebody else.
Men therefore owe to men in the chances and perils of this life, aid and sympathy on account
of the common participation in human frailty and folly.
Sumner cautioned his readers that he believed the duty to provide aid and sympathy to others
belongs in the field of private and personal relations under the regulation of reason and
conscience. He didn't believe the existence of this duty justified any sort of state guarantees
against hardship. What social classes owe to each other contains much more of interest to
modern libertarians, including one of the best simple popular discussions you'll find before the
of the 1940s of the importance of capital to civilization.
It's a treasure of the libertarian tradition, and I recommend it wholeheartedly.
Perhaps Richard Hofstadter should have read it before he called William Graham Sumner
a social Darwinist.
This is Jeff Riggenbach.
www.fieggen.com