From Here to There

A Final Note on the Eighties

In making his fight in the eighteen eighties for a sociology that would foreswear a bias in favor of a ruling caste of “sociocrats,” William Graham Sumner lost out to his great antagonist, Lester Ward. A believer in “social invention,” Ward was the spiritual granddaddy of all those who would use the coercive power of the State to set up a “social budget” designed to allocate the people’s savings in accordance with top-down planning edicts. He was John Kenneth Galbraith in nineteenth-century dress—and the future has more and more tended to bow to his ukases.

JC

About the Author

John Chamberlain

John Chamberlain (1903–1995) was an American writer.

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A Final Note on the Eighties

In making his fight in the eighteen eighties for a sociology that would foreswear a bias in favor of a ruling caste of “sociocrats,” William Graham Sumner lost out to his great antagonist, Lester Ward. A believer in “social invention,” Ward was the spiritual granddaddy of all those who would use the coercive power of the State to set up a “social budget” designed to allocate the people’s savings in accordance with top-down planning edicts. He was John Kenneth Galbraith in nineteenth-century dress—and the future has more and more tended to bow to his ukases.