Thursday, December 15, 2011

Social Darwinism and Class Politics-William Graham Sumner, “What Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1884

“…The classes are who are respectively endowed with the rights and duties of posing and solving social problems, they are as follows:  Those who are bound to solve the problems are the rich, comfortable, prosperous, virtuous, respectable, educated, and healthy; those whose right it is to set the problems are those who have been less fortunate or less successful in the struggle for existence.  The problem itself seems to be, How shall the latter be made as comfortable as the former?”
I love this quote because it is the truth.  It is the class that has more than the lower class that should not have any problems and should be the ones contributing to solving some of the social problems that exist among the less fortunate.  In doing so the question, “how shall the latter be made as comfortable as the former,” would be answered.

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