what social classes owe to each other summary and analysis

Human society tries hard to adapt itself to any conditions in which it finds itself, and we have been warped and distorted until we have got used to it, as the foot adapts itself to an ill-made boot. His interests included money and tariff policy, and critiques of socialism, social classes, and imperialism. It does not seem to include those who employ only domestic servants. It has been developed with the development of the middle class, and with the growth of a commercial and industrial civilization. Men forced it on women, who were drudges and slaves. When, therefore, the statesmen and social philosophers sit down to think what the state can do or ought to do, they really mean to decide what the Forgotten Man shall do. The middle class has always abhorred gambling and licentiousness, but it has not always been strict about truth and pecuniary fidelity. He and they together formed a great system of factories, stores, transportation, under his guidance and judgment. Yet who is there whom the statesman, economist, and social philosopher ought to think of before this man? They never have any doubt of the efficacy of their remedies. The amateurs in social science always ask: What shall we do? The amateurs always plan to use the individual for some constructive and inferential social purpose, or to use the society for some constructive and inferential individual purpose. Wait for the occasion. In our modern revolt against the medieval notions of hereditary honor and hereditary shame we have gone too far, for we have lost the appreciation of the true dependence of children on parents. Members of society who come into it as it is today can live only by entering into the organization. This is the inevitable result of combining democratic political theories with humanitarian social theories. The other sovereigns will not respect his independence if he becomes dependent, and they cannot respect his equality if he sues for favors. Furthermore, it seems to me certain that all aggregated capital will fall more and more under personal control. If the feudal aristocracy, or its modern representativewhich is, in reality, not at all feudalcould carry down into the new era and transmit to the new masters of society the grace, elegance, breeding, and culture of the past, society would certainly gain by that course of things, as compared with any such rupture between past and present as occurred in the French Revolution. We each owe it to the other to guarantee mutually the chance to earn, to possess, to learn, to marry, etc., etc., against any interference which would prevent the exercise of those rights by a person who wishes to prosecute and enjoy them in peace for the pursuit of happiness. Hence the real sufferer by that kind of benevolence which consists in an expenditure of capital to protect the good-for-nothing is the industrious laborer. This latter is the Forgotten Man. These are very wearisome and commonplace tasks. If we generalize this, it means that All-of-us ought to guarantee rights to each of us. It has been borrowed and imitated by the military and police state of the European continent so fast as they have felt the influence of the expanding industrial civilization; but they have realized it only imperfectly, because they have no body of local institutions or traditions, and it remains for them as yet too much a matter of "declarations" and pronunciamentos. The public loses, but the loss goes to cover extra risk, and that does not raise wages. It is a great delusion to look about us and select those men who occupy the most advanced position in respect to worldly circumstances as the standard to which we think that all might be and ought to be brought. The only help which is generally expedient, even within the limits of the private and personal relations of two persons to each other, is that which consists in helping a man to help himself. 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. "What Social Classes Owe to Each Other". The object is to teach the boy to accumulate capital. What the Social Classes Owe Each Other an Article by | Bartleby The problem itself seems to be, How shall the latter be made as comfortable as the former? They assume to speak for a large, but vague and undefined, constituency, who set the task, exact a fulfillment, and threaten punishment for default. There always are two parties. They do not blame themselves or their parents for their lot, as compared with that of other people. 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. 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. There are relations of employer and employee which need to be regulated by compromise and treaty. What history shows is that rights are safe only when guaranteed against all arbitrary power, and all class and personal interest. The relations of men are open and free, but they are also loose. We shall find that all the schemes for producing equality and obliterating the organization of society produce a new differentiation based on the worst possible distinctionthe right to claim and the duty to give one man's effort for another man's satisfaction. During the last ten years I have read a great many books and articles, especially by German writers, in which an attempt has been made to set up "the State" as an entity having conscience, power, and will sublimated above human limitations, and as constituting a tutelary genius over us all. Upon this, however, I will not insist. We each owe to the other mutual redress of grievances. It is secondary, and results from physical or economic improvements. On no sound political theory ought such a person to share in the political power of the state. It is plain that the Forgotten Man and the Forgotten Woman are the real productive strength of the country. An immoral political system is created whenever there are privileged classesthat is, classes who have arrogated to themselves rights while throwing the duties upon others. The state gives equal rights and equal chances just because it does not mean to give anything else. The doors of waste and extravagance stand open, and there seems to be a general agreement to squander and spend. It would be aside from my present purpose to show (but it is worth noticing in passing) that one result of such inconsistency must surely be to undermine democracy, to increase the power of wealth in the democracy, and to hasten the subjection of democracy to plutocracy; for a man who accepts any share which he has not earned in another man's capital cannot be an independent citizen. The distinction here made between the ills which belong to the struggle for existence and those which are due to the faults of human institutions is of prime importance. The social doctors enjoy the satisfaction of feeling themselves to be more moral or more enlightened than their fellow men. This device acts directly on the supply of laborers, and that produces effects on wages. The average weekly wage for all workers increased from $891 to $1,034 from 1996 to 2015while teachers' wages decreased $30 per week, from $1,122 to $1,092. For the mass of mankind, therefore, the price of better things is too severe, for that price can be summed up in one wordself-control. The preaching in England used all to be done to the poorthat they ought to be contented with their lot and respectful to their betters. The answer is, by capital. Trade unions adopt various devices for raising wages, and those who give their time to philanthropy are interested in these devices, and wish them success. A free man in a free democracy derogates from his rank if he takes a favor for which he does not render an equivalent. These classes are sometimes discontented, and sometimes not. The law of sympathy, by which we share each others' burdens, is to do as we would be done by. That is what we are trying to do by many of our proposed remedies. Where population has become chronically excessive, and where the population has succumbed and sunk, instead of developing energy enough for a new advance, there races have degenerated and settled into permanent barbarism. They want to save them and restore them. How heartless! Hence the relations of sympathy and sentiment are essentially limited to two persons only, and they cannot be made a basis for the relations of groups of persons, or for discussion by any third party. They are having their own way, and they like it. It would be like killing off our generals in war. The beneficiaries are selected by favoritism, and are apt to be those who have recommended themselves to the friends of humanity by language or conduct which does not betoken independence and energy. There are bad, harsh, cross employers; there are slovenly, negligent workmen; there are just about as many proportionately of one of these classes as of the other. What he wants, therefore, is that ambiguities in our institutions be cleared up, and that liberty be more fully realized. There ought to be no laws to guarantee property against the folly of its possessors. Undoubtedly there are, in connection with each of these things, cases of fraud, swindling, and other financial crimes; that is to say, the greed and selfishness of men are perpetual. How right he was, how incredibly prescient, to see this coming. When once this simple correction is made in the general point of view, we gain most important corollaries for all the subordinate questions about the relations of races, nations, and classes. He who had meat food could provide his food in such time as to get leisure to improve his flint tools. If numbers increase, the organization must be perfected, and capital must increasei.e., power over nature. ; and it is allowed to pass as an unquestioned doctrine in regard to social classes that "the rich" ought to "care for the poor"; that Churches especially ought to collect capital from the rich and spend it for the poor; that parishes ought to be clusters of institutions by means of which one social class should perform its duties to another; and that clergymen, economists, and social philosophers have a technical and professional duty to devise schemes for "helping the poor." Think of the piles of rubbish that one has read about corners, and watering stocks, and selling futures! What Social Classes Owe to Each Other by William Graham Sumner summary What shall be done with him is a question of expediency to be settled in view of the interests of societythat is, of the non-criminals. Furthermore, it ought to be distinctly perceived that any charitable and benevolent effort which any man desires to make voluntarily, to see if he can do any good, lies entirely beyond the field of discussion. Later the demos, rising into an independent development, has assumed power and made a democracy. Physicians, lawyers, and others paid by fees are workers by the piece. It is evident that if we take for discussion "capital and labor," if each of the terms has three definitions, and if one definition of each is loose and doubtful, we have everything prepared for a discussion which shall be interminable and fruitless, which shall offer every attraction to undisciplined thinkers, and repel everybody else. But if we can expand the chances we can count on a general and steady growth of civilization and advancement of society by and through its best members. Discussions are made to bear upon the assumed rights, wrongs, and misfortunes of certain social classes; and all public speaking and writing consists, in a large measure, of the discussion of general plans for meeting the wishes of classes of people who have not been able to satisfy their own desires.

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