Lester Frank Ward - Influence On U.S. Government Policy

Influence On U.S. Government Policy

Ward had strong influence on a rising generation of progressive political leaders, such as Herbert Croly. In the book "Lester Ward and the Welfare State", Commager details Ward's influence and refers to him as the "father of the modern welfare state".

As a political approach, Ward's system became known as social liberalism, as distinguished from the classical liberalism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries which featured such thinkers as Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill. While classical liberalism had sought prosperity and progress through laissez-fare, Ward's "American social liberalism" sought to enhance social progress through direct government intervention. Ward believed that in large, complex and rapidly growing societies human freedom could only be achieved with the assistance of a strong democratic government acting in the interest of the individual. The characteristic element of Ward's thinking was his faith that government, acting on the empirical and scientifically based findings of the science of sociology, could be harnessed to create a near Utopian social order.

Ward's thinking had a profound impact on the administrations of Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt and on the modern Democratic Party. The "liberalism" of the Democrats today is not that of Smith and Mill, which stressed non-interference from the government in economic issues, but of Ward, which stressed the unique position of government to effect positive change. While Roosevelt's experiments in social engineering were popular and effective, the full effect of the forces Ward set in motion came to bear half a century after his death, in the Great Society programs of President Lyndon B. Johnson and the Vietnam war.

Ward realized that the path to human progress was not easy or smooth. His hope was that the science of sociology, which was but in its infancy, would allow government officials to learn from their past mistakes.

Ward died in Washington, D.C.. He is buried in Watertown, New York.