More than a decade after leaving Harvard for the world of polities, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D.N.Y.) enjoyed a warm welcome last night as h opened this year's prestigious Godkin Lecture series with a speeds on family structure and poverty.

Moynihan avoid specific proposal instead emphasizing the nee' for national attention of the economy, ramifications of "the earthquake that has shuddered I through the American, family in the past 20 years."

This year's edition on the annual lecture instituted in 1953 in honor of L. I., Godkin, founding editor of The Nation, winds up with two Kennedy School talks today at 10 a.m., and 2 p.m.

Last night's speech by the 58-year-old Moynihan, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, came on the 20th anniversary of his controversial report as assistant secretary of labor linking weak family structure with poverty among Blacks.

Past Godkin speakers include former Attorney General Elliot I., Richardson '41 and noted conservative columnist George F. Will.

'A Fitting Representative'

President Bok, who introduced the former Harvard professor and dean of the Graduate School of Education, called Moynihan "a very fitting representative" to speak on the lectureship topic of "The Essentials of Free Government and the Duties of the Citizen." Bok said Moynihan has "remained a detatched observer, an academic trying to make some larger sense" of the political world.

Other Harvard luminaries who came by for Moynihan's speech included Warburg Professor of Economics Emeritus John Kenneth Galbraith, Institute of Politics Fellow Hendrik Hertzberg '65, former editor of The New Republic, and Dean of the Graduate School of Education Patricia A. Graham.

Moynihan-who noted that he has given a Phi Beta Kappa Oration, a Freshman Lecture and a Commencement Address have-took aim specifically at arguments by conservative Charles Murray that federal social programs only increase dependence, encourage the break-down of the family and prolonged poverty.

"He may be right. But he has not proven anything," Moynihan said