• Socialism as an ideology gained a passionate following across Europe in the middle and late 1800s. Just as ardent were the laissez-faire anti-socialists, who opposed any government interference in a country’s economic or social systems. The following documents represent the views of a socialist and an anti-socialist. The first document, from an English socialist magazine, includes many of the key words and concepts driving the socialist movement: class, labor theory of value, the rich produce nothing, a call to foreign brethren ( fellow workers), and a new social order to replace the class system. The second document comes from William Graham Sumner, a widely read Yale College professor. An ardent supporter of laissez-faire economics and of the “survival of the fittest” beliefs of Social Darwinists, he vehemently opposed socialism and communism. Here he argues against government or private efforts to help society’s poor or weak.

“The Meaning of Socialism,” January 1885

“Fellow Citizens, We come before you as Revolutionists, that is, as men and women who wish to see the basis of society changed.

Why is this?

Because in the society which now exists the majority of the people is miserable and oppressed. . . . The “labourers,” including all those who are engaged in . . . producing food for the community, are scarcely raised above starvation, or are punished for the crime of being born poor. . . .

Those poor persons . . . are a class, necessary, with all its poverty and misery, to the existence, as a class, of that other class of rich men: for all society is based upon labour and could not exist without it; and those of its members who do not produce wealth must necessarily live on the labours of those who do produce it. Those poor people . . . form a class which . . . has one interest common to all its members, the enjoyment of the fruits of its labour, and one enemy in common, namely the class of rich men who produce nothing, and if they work, work only at fleecing the poor class.

So then there are two classes; one producing and governed, the other non-producing and governing; one the means of wealth, the other the consumers of wealth: one Rich, the other Poor.

Fellow Workers, Is it necessary that this miserable state of things should last forever?

We bid you hope . . . for the establishment of a new order of things, the Social Order, in which there will be no poor and, therefore, no rich; in which there will be no classes.

English fellow-workmen! . . . Decent and happy life for all lies ahead of us, while all around is mere squalor, disorder, discontent, and the failure of all the hopes of civilization. Come out from these dreary ruins of decaying systems, and march with us toward the new Social Order of the World.”

William Graham Sumner, “On a New Philosophy: That Poverty Is the Best Policy,” 1883

“It is very popular to pose as a “friend of humanity,” or a “friend of the working classes.” Anything which has a charitable sound and a kind-hearted tone generally passes without investigation, because it is disagreeable to assail it. Sermons, essays, and orations assume a conventional standpoint with regard to the poor, the weak, etc.; and it is allowed to pass as . . . unquestioned doctrine . . . that “the rich” ought to “care for the poor.” . . .

The humanitarians, philanthropists, and reformers . . . find enough which is sad and unpromising in the condition of many members of society. They see wealth and poverty side by side. They note great inequality of social position and social chances. They eagerly set about . . . to account for what they see, and to devise schemes for remedying what they do not like. In their eagerness to recommend the less fortunate classes to pity and consideration they forget all about the rights of other classes; they gloss over all the faults of the classes in question, and they exaggerate their misfortunes and their virtues. They invent new theories of property, distorting rights and perpetrating injustice, as any one is sure to do who sets about the re-adjustment of social relations with the interests of one group distinctly before his mind, and the interests of all other groups thrown into the background.

Here it may suffice to observe that, on the theories of the social philosophers to whom I have referred, we should get a new maxim of judicious living: Poverty is the best policy. If you get wealth, you will have to support other people; if you do not get wealth, it will be the duty of other people to support you.”

Sources: The Executive Council of the Social-Democratic Federation, “The Meaning of Socialism,” To-day: The Monthly Magazine of Scientific Socialism 3 (January–June 1885): 1–5, 10; William Graham Sumner, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other (New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1883, 1920), pp. 16–17, 21–22, 24.

QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS