Rethinking Classical Liberalism in 'Progressive' Times: The Divergent Sociologies of Spencer and Sumner
36 Pages Posted: 13 Aug 2009 Last revised: 26 Aug 2009
Date Written: 2009
Abstract
This paper explores classical liberal disillusionment via two figures: Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner. As self-avowed sociologists both made their theories of social change explicit, and thus offer an excellent opportunity to analyze how the disillusionment of classical liberalism was = like all shifts in nineteenth-century liberalism = intertwined with visions of the past, present, and future of social change. In comparing these figures I also suggest the limits of recurrent portrayals of Sumner as an American Spencerian. Crucial differences between Spencer and Sumner came to the fore in their responses to the late-nineteenth century. While reacting in light of a shared background in classical liberalism, each sociologist worked out the theoretical consequences of disillusionment in divergent ways. In his later works Spencer retained his initial mid-century confidence that the endpoint of progress is a social order with minimal government by postponing realization of this ideal to a more distant future and opening up the present as a target for cutting critique. Sumner by contrast put aside belief in progress as he forged a “science of society” from the perspective of which such a belief was only a myth unable, at the dawn of the twentieth century, even to claim the redeeming feature of being socially useful.
Keywords: Classical Liberalism, Progress, Herbert Spencer, William Graham Sumner
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