Income Inequality: William Graham Sumner invented the GOP’s defense of the rich — in 1883

[salvorhardin]

One of the earliest (and most acerbic) champions of inequality was William Graham Sumner, a Yale sociologist and one of the best-known public intellectuals of the late 19th century. Sumner started his career as an Episcopal priest, tending to the pastoral needs of a New Jersey flock. Within a few years, however, he concluded that his temperament—famously standoffish and blunt—was better suited to scholarly endeavors. ... But it was in the realm of economic philosophy that Sumner carved out his most controversial and lasting influence. In 1883, he composed a short book-length essay titled “What Social Classes Owe to Each Other.” His answer? Absolutely nothing.

...

Sumner’s list of deadbeats and drags on society will be familiar to any casual observer of modern conservative politics. First were the social reformers (usually well-educated Northeasterners, preferably women), whom Sumner chastised for their arrogance, hypocrisy, and dangerous utopian schemes. Next came government bureaucrats, typified by the “obscure clerk” whose small-minded enforcement of rules threatened to crush the nation’s visionary spirits. Finally, there were the poor themselves—often “negligent, shiftless, inefficient, silly, and imprudent.” “A drunkard in the gutter is just where he ought to be,” Sumner argued with his trademark bluntness. He even went so far as to denounce democracy itself, viewing mass voting as a modern experiment perilously close to mob rule.

Ultimately, though, it was neither the rich nor the poor who were the greatest objects of Sumner’s concern. Even as he cheered the richest of the rich, he positioned himself as the champion of a far more humble social figure, an ordinary taxpayer-citizen dubbed the “Forgotten Man.” In Sumner’s formulation, the “Forgotten Man” was the backbone of American society, the sort of fellow who “watched his own investments, made his own machinery safe, attended to his own plumbing, and educated his own children.” It was this earthy taxpayer-citizen—not the wealthiest Americans—who truly stood to suffer under a regime of government regulation and social reform. “He is an obscure man,” Sumner explained. Moreover, this hidden figure was usually too busy or too disgusted to engage in political debate. “He might grumble sometimes to his wife,” Sumner wrote, “but he does not frequent the grocery, and he does not talk politics at the tavern. So he is forgotten.”

This image of the overlooked law-abiding citizen has since become a staple of American political rhetoric—and one that conveniently declares the mass of voters in secret agreement with any given set of ideals. In the 1930s, as historian Amity Shlaes has noted, New Dealers adopted the idea of a “Forgotten Man” to promote reforms such as Social Security and labor rights. In the decades since, the figure has mostly reverted back to its conservative origins. In 1969, journalist Peter Schrag identified the “forgotten American” as a white working-class man “alienated” by the civil rights movement and the War on Poverty. “He does all the right things,” Schrag wrote, “obeys the law, goes to church and insists—usually—that his kids get a better education than he had.” That same year, Richard Nixon tweaked the idea to come up with his “Silent Majority.”

Full article: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/history/2012/03/income_inequality_william_graham_sumner_invented_the_gop_s_defense_of_the_rich_in_1883_.single.html

[freshwest]

1. That is straight on the mark. No wonder they've learned it so well.

[salvorhardin]

2. I wish more people would take an interest in the intellectual history of American politics

We get a thousand PBS miniseries about the Civil War, but nobody produces intellectual histories for popular consumption. Hofstadter's Social Darwinism In American Thought was great, but that was 1944, and I dare say a bit too dry for most people these days.

[freshwest]

3. Social darwinism, Calvinism, progressive and labor movements to counter them, were all taught in

Public high schools back in the day. Along with the books on Federalism, all of that. The conservatives knew the way to change the narrative was to go after the public school circulum, the textbooks, etc. After that didn't work fast enough, they went with the culture wars Sumner was part of and found more sexy and religious topics to get people to pull their kids out of school.

Now they're privatizing the schools and teaching corporate values, eliminating the history of the US and the world, all to fit their world view. I just call their movement fascism, using the means that Mussolini and Roosevelt would both agree would define it. We're on a hard road here, and most people don't have the money, time or leisure to engage on this level. Those who can make use of the knowledge can spread their own conclusions about it to them.

Our venues of communicating these ideas, because of the destruction of the commons and the selling off of the media (as well as the post office, which was once enshrined as place to disseminate important political ideas) is well on the way. I feel discouraged when I see things reduced to the internet only, because that is under corporate control and the knowledge can be cut off or erased. At the owner's whim.

We have to consider this in line with the repression of expressing oneself in public like OWS is attacked, that we are going to have a hard time with mass organizing. The media has got most people thinking that the mass movements of the past should stay in the past, that it's somehow unseemly to protest, and a threat to them. Also with all the hate dog whistles from Sumner, etc.

I could be wrong, but that is the trend to me. And if you'd like to have more discussions of this nature, there's always the Socialist Progressive group here. If you're not already subscribed. Or some of the others.

[izquierdista]

4. So many conservative graves....

....so little pee in the bladder. Waiter! another round please!

[lastlib]

6. Think I'll put a clothespin on it and hold it.....

...until they plant Cheney and Bush. Then "Let the River Run"!

will keep drinkin' til then!

[lastlib]

5. I remember reading this guy's nonsense in college....

...and thinking, "What an asshole!"