Social Darwinism

11 Key excerpts on "Social Darwinism"

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  The Social Meaning of Modern Biology

  From Social Darwinism to Sociobiology

  • Howard Kaye(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  1979, p. 157), was the first of many to charge that Darwin's theory of evolution was largely a projection of bourgeois competitive relations onto the realm of nature. And the danger of such a projection has proved to be as clear to others as it was to Engels: the use of Darwinism as an ideological buttress for competitive capitalism, a tactic which soon came to be known as "Social Darwinism." Once the characteristics of bourgeois reality and of its ideological defenses have been transferred to nature, they are then, in Engels's words, "transferred back again from organic nature to history and it is now claimed that their validity as eternal laws of human society has been proved" (quoted in Sahlins 1976, pp. 102-03).

  To non-Marxists as well, the ideological elements in Darwin's work and the ideological uses to which it has been put have been obvious. As historian Richard Hofstadter noted in his influential Social Darwinism in American Thought, "a parallel can be drawn between the patterns of natural selection and classical economics," with the survival of the fittest a "biological generalization of the cruel processes which reflective observers saw at work in early nineteenth-century society" ([1944] 1955, pp. 38, 144). Armed with such a biological generalization, social Darwinists like Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner could provide what appeared to be the sanction of science and of the cosmos for these "cruel processes" in capitalist society.

  The question of Darwin's role in the development of Social Darwinism has continued to be debated, but the reality of Social Darwinism has largely gone unquestioned. The misapplication of the theories of natural selection and the struggle for existence to human society as a powerful and cruel apology for brutal exploitation both within and between societies is now "so well known," the historian of science Loren Graham tells us, "that it need not be discussed" (1981, p. 218). That it is so well known is in large measure due to Hofstadter's widely read work.3

  In Hofstadter's view, Social Darwinism was strongest in America because, "with its rapid expansion, its exploitative methods, its desperate competition, and its peremptory rejection of failure, post-bellum America was like a vast human caricature of the Darwinian struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest." In such a social jungle, "successful business entrepreneurs" turned to Darwinism "almost by instinct" in order to justify both their personal success and their ruthless methods. This conservative Social Darwinism served its ideological function well through the optimistic, expansionist decades of the 1870s and 1880s, during which the middle class could still believe in its opportunities for success in the struggle of life. But by the 1890s, Hofstadter claims, "the material basis of the Spencer-Sumner ideology was being transformed"; agrarian protests, labor struggles, and rapid urbanization had made the social environment appear too brutal to be tolerated. And with the concurrent growth of monopolies and loss of middle-class status and opportunities, the American middle class now "shrank from the principle it had glorified, turned in flight from the hideous image of rampant competitive brutality, and repudiated the once-heroic entrepreneur." Giving voice to such distress, American intellectuals began to work out a new "reform Darwinism," emphasizing the role of cooperation, intellect, and government intervention in achieving human progress. Thus for Hofstadter the story of Darwinism in America and the shift from conservative to reform varieties is the story of industrialization and serves as "a clear example of the principle that changes in the structure of social ideas wait on general changes in economic and political life" ([1944] 1955, pp. 5, 35, 38, 44, 119, 201—04; see also Bannister 1979, pp. 10, 136—37).

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  The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Darwin and Evolutionary Thought

  • Michael Ruse(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  G 195 g G E s say 2 3 g Social Darwinism Naomi Beck I n the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. . . . Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history” (Darwin 1859, 488). This statement, which appears in the concluding chapter to the Origin of Species, was Darwin’s only mention of human evolution in the entire book. He was well aware of the difficulties his biological propositions would encounter from believers in spe- cial creation and therefore thought it wise to leave the delicate question of human evolution aside for the time being. Darwin was nonetheless fully conscious that his theory would lead to important insights in this domain and would probably revolu- tionize the way we think about ourselves and our cultures. Enter Social Darwinism. The term Social Darwinism, which came into fashion after 1940 (Hodgson 2004), has been used mainly to decry doctrines that justify some form of individual, social, or racial superiority through evolutionary principles with which Darwin’s theory is identified, such as the struggle for existence and natural selection. It has also been employed in reference to teleological explanations of the causes of human progress that often carry with them value judgments concerning the degree of civilization attained by various peoples. Yet many of the positions typically attached to Social Darwinism do not correspond to this stereotypical description. Even among the main proponents of evolutionary theory in the nineteenth century – Darwin, Wallace, Huxley, and Spencer – there were important disagreements concerning the process of evolution in humans and its results. This article offers an examination of their claims, as well as some related and antagonistic viewpoints, in an effort to tease out the various and complex meanings of Social Darwinism. By tuning the microscope to grasp the finer details, a surprisingly different picture from the one usually conveyed by this blanket term will emerge.

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  Darwin's Conjecture

  The Search for General Principles of Social and Economic Evolution

  • Geoffrey M. Hodgson, Thorbjørn Knudsen(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • University of Chicago Press

    (Publisher)

  In 1 944, during the Nazi genocide and the Second World War, Hofstadter published the classic Social Darwinism in American Thought . For Hofstadter, Social Darwinism was found in the use of key phrases such as natural selec-tion , struggle for existence , and survival of the fittest . The term social Darwin-ism was used, not only as a general description of abuses of biology by the Nazis and others, but also as a means of sustaining the established separa-tion between the social sciences and biology. This separation was also aided by the enduring influence of Marx and Durkheim in the social sciences. The degree to which the tide had turned against Darwinian ideas can be judged by considering Veblen’s institutionalist followers in the interwar pe-riod. Veblen himself remained enormously influential. But even his closest followers were quick to abandon his Darwinian project. Veblen’s student Wesley Mitchell ( 1 936, xlix) rejected Darwinism. The leading institution-alist, John R. Commons ( 1 897, 1 924, 1 934), saw Darwinian principles as inappropriate when applied to economics. Clarence Ayres ( 1 932, 95)—who emerged as the de facto leader of American institutionalism after the Second 1 6. There is now a huge literature on Social Darwinism, and aspects of its meaning and history are still under dispute. See, e.g., Bannister ( 1 979), Jones ( 1 980), Bellomy ( 1 984), and Hodgson (2004b, 2006a). 1 8 c h a p t e r o n e World War—declared that Darwinism was generally flawed and outmoded ( Jones 1 995; Hodgson 2004a). Overall, this severe and widespread reaction against Darwinism in the social sciences helps explain much of the lasting resistance to the project of generalizing Darwinism in this sphere. This resistance has been fueled by stubbornly enduring misunderstandings concerning the nature of Darwin-ism itself.

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  The Descent of Darwin

  The Popularization of Darwinism in Germany, 1860-1914

  • Alfred Kelly(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • The University of North Carolina Press

    (Publisher)

  Darwinism’s enormous popularity in the latter part of the nineteenth century was due in part to its apparent profound social and political implications. More than a biological theory for the specialists, Darwinism seemed, if only indirectly, to speak to the fundamental questions that lie at the heart of all social theory: What is man’s nature, and what is the natural order of human society? The desire to be on the side of nature—long a preoccupation of social theorists—tempted advocates of almost every cause to rummage among the rich ambiguities of evolutionary theory in the hope of uncovering scientific evidence in support of their views. Many capitalists, liberals, democrats, conservatives, nationalists, racists, and socialists convinced themselves that Darwinism could settle age-old controversies in their favor. And, in truth, almost anything could be inferred from Darwinism, provided that one was at once highly selective and oblivious to contradictory evidence. Apologists for capitalism, for instance, could glorify the struggle for life, while those pressing for radical egalitarianism could point to the common origin of all men or the natural necessity of change. That Darwin himself saw no broader social implications for his theories and was contemptuous of those who did, did nothing to still these often simplistic debates. In fact, Darwin’s failure to throw his immense prestige onto any one side probably contributed to the confusion and controversy. But, no matter how much he might share Darwin’s reluctance, no serious thinker or popularizer could hope to keep Darwinism confined to the realm of biology. Every Darwinist became ipso facto a social theorist.

  To oversimplify somewhat, there were two basic answers to the question, what does Darwinism mean for human society? The first stressed struggle and saw in Darwinism, with its natural selection of the fittest, proof of the naturalness (and hence justice) of the competitive, hierarchical, bourgeois society. In this view, the economic struggle had selected the fittest, who were now rich and powerful, and left the less fit behind. If the sufferings of the less fit masses were regrettable in the short term, they were nonetheless natural and necessary, and any attempt to alleviate them through social welfare would only contribute to the degeneration of the race. Carried to its logical extreme, and it often was, this interpretation of Darwinism could lead to eugenics or racial hygiene—attempts to “help” nature improve the race by speeding up natural selection in a desired direction. The second answer was given by socialists and radicals, who were never at ease with biological analogies to society, but still were able to find some comfort in Darwin’s implicit challenge to a static society. Accordingly, they saw change as the main message of Darwinism and stressed that existing elites were by no means the fittest in any Darwinian sense. Only when everyone had an equal start, as in nature, would men be able to reach their true potential. The term “Social Darwinism” has generally been associated with the first of these two positions and will be used that way here, but it may with almost equal justification be applied to the second. No one in the late nineteenth century called himself a Social Darwinist. The term is a creation of later historians, and its restricted application reflects more their interests and limitations than the merit of anyone’s special claim to Darwinism.1

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  The Origins of the Holocaust

  • Michael Robert Marrus(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Saur

    (Publisher)

  Seen as the power behind human progress, struggle lost its sting and became an impersonal natural force. The evolutionary optimism that characterized the first phase in the application of Darwinist principles to natu-ral philosophy, social theory, and ethics was far more an expression of the liberal, rationalist doctrines of the time than of Darwin's theory. For the core of the Darwinian theory is a process of selection in which value judgments play no part. Although in the improvement of most or-ganisms in respect of their aptitude for life 5 Darwin saw a certain trend of the evolutionary process toward higher and more efficient types, he avoided deriving criteria of value from this view. As a keen-sighted and incorruptible RACISM, THE OCCULT, AND EUGENICS 9 Social Darwinism in Germany observer he perceived that development in nature is not necessarily upward. Strictly speaking, his theory states merely that success in the struggle for existence signifies biological fitness for the living conditions prevailing at a particular time and place. Thus Social Darwinism in the more specific sense did not come into being until develop-ment ceased to be equated with progress and the theory of natural selection was taken as the principal model for so-cial and political thinking. Only then did the special fea-ture of Darwin's theory, the mechanical explanation of natural development by processes of selection and exter-mination in disregard of all teleology, achieve its full effect. A shift of accent in this direction took place when in a period characterized by the second industrial revolution, by imperialism and the national uprisings in eastern Cen-tral Europe, the doctrine of liberalism and with it men's confidence in the natural harmony and automatic upward trend of the social process ceased to be dominant.

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  Kurt Vonnegut

  Myth and Science in the Postmodern World

  • Gilbert McInnis(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Peter Lang Group

    (Publisher)

  C H A P T E R O N E Darwinism, Social Darwinism, and Mythology Before moving on to examine the mythological implications of Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection in Vonnegut’s writings and in Darwin’s too, I need to deal with an issue that continues to be an ongoing problem in the academic world. This issue is the problem of the willed ambivalence of many academics (and scientists) who refuse to accept Darwin’s science as “social,” and therefore to accept the idea that there is no distinction between Darwin’s ideas on the one hand and the principles of Social Darwinism on the other. After careful examination of key passages from both The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races In the Struggle for Life (1859) and The Descent of Man (1874), I agree with many others that Darwin, in addition to being strictly a scientist, was in fact the first social Darwinist. Robert Young describes various misunderstandings of Social Darwinism: One definition presents Social Darwinism as ‘the type of theory that attempts to describe and explain social phenomena chiefly in terms of competition and conflict, especially the competition of group with group and the equilibrium and adjustment that ensues upon such struggles’… Another described it as ‘the name loosely given to the application to society of the doctrine of the struggle for existence and survival of the fittest’… Another definition said that it’s ‘the more general adaptation of Darwinian, and related biological concepts to social ideologies’… A last example was: ‘a ruthless form of laissez-faire that it has become fashionable to “Social Darwinism’”(621).

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  Kindness Wars

  The History and Political Economy of Human Caring

  • Noel A. Cazenave(Author)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  To that end, I begin by placing the kindness-related ideas of the 19th century about socialism and Social Darwinism in their proper social and economic context of industrialization and changing class relations. Next, I examine the kind and unkind implications of various early, utopian socialist proposals for addressing the human suffering caused by industrialization. Then, while acknowledging that, consistent with Enlightenment-era ideals, there were optimistic and hopeful elements of Darwin’s doctrine of human progress, I conclude that contrary to the widely accepted view of Darwinism as being both largely apolitical and misrepresented by social Darwinists, its core class, racial, and gender assumptions provided the philosophy, scientific legitimacy, and much of the language of the mean-spirited survival of the fittest ideology of Social Darwinism. I then consider some more recent socialist ideas as to how to respond to the major social transformations of that time in a more just and caring way. And, finally, I examine Darwinist and social Darwinist thinking that justified 19th-century racism and the related problems it fostered like slavery, imperialism, colonialism, eugenics, and genocide, as well as the ideas of some of the intellectuals and activists who opposed them. I begin by describing the social and economic events that set the stage for those important 19th-century kindness wars and battles. The 19th Century: Social and Economic Context With the arrival of the 19th century, the West entered into a post-Enlightenment era during which there was both movement away from some of its most cherished progressive ideals and the persistence of others

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  Historical Materialism and Social Evolution

  • P. Blackledge, G. Kirkpatrick, P. Blackledge, G. Kirkpatrick(Authors)
  • 2002(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  3 Social Darwinism and Socialist Darwinism in Germany: 1860 to 1900 Ted Benton Introduction An influential tendency of thought 1 in Anglo-Saxon history and sociology of the sciences has argued for a recognition of the essential homo- geneity of science and broader features of cultural life. Older traditions of historiography which devoted themselves to an understanding of the inner dynamic of a supposedly autonomous domain of scientific ideas have been abandoned in favour of an approach which sees in the very idea of an autonomous domain of conceptual movement an evasion of the issue of the ideological and political commitments and involve- ments of science. Science is itself a social practice, along with others. Why, then, should it be assumed that this social practice escapes the value-conflicts, the normative constraints, the political and ideological struggles which pervade and even constitute its social surrounds? The case to be made out for this newer approach seems, at first sight, to be very strong. Consider, for example, the evident utility of the Darwinian idea of natural selection through a struggle for existence in the legitimation of laissez faire capitalism, as well as the justification of imperial domination of other races and cultures. Consider, conversely, Darwin’s own recognition of the centrality of his reading of Malthus, bourgeois apologist par excellence, to the formation of his ideas on natural selection. The homogeneity of this piece of science, at least, with the leading ideas and social practices of bourgeois society in the latter part of the nineteenth-century seems undeniable. As Robert Young has argued, ‘To sequester the social and political debate from the scientific one is to falsify the texture of the nineteenth-century debate and to mystify oppression in the form of science’ (Young 1973, 344–438). 36

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  Social Darwinism

  • Jeffrey O'Connell, Michael Ruse(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  Before we get to this high point, however, there has been (and continues to be), as this process takes place, a bloody struggle for existence and, in Spencer ’ s treatment of this, we see the seeds of traditional Social Darwinism. He writes of “spurious philanthropists” who try to alleviate the sufferings of the poor through state aid, like the Poor Laws. Blind to the fact that under the natural order of things, society is constantly excreting its unhealthy, imbecile, slow, vacillating, faithless members, these unthinking, though well-meaning, men advocate an interference which not 13 Social Darwinism only stops the purifying process but even increases the vitiation—absolutely encourages the multiplication of the reckless and incompetent by offering them an unfailing provision, and discourages the multiplication of the competent and provident by heightening the prospective difficulty of maintaining a family. (Spencer 1851, 323–324) You may think that this is all truly dreadful. How can anyone almost relish the suffering and misery that the natural course of events is going to bring on our fellow humans? The answer lies in flipping from what we have seen, what we might call his normative ethics, to Spencer ’ s justification, his metaethics. Progress! Drawing on German sources – Friedrich Schelling notably – Spencer saw progress (in the organic world) as marked by a kind of increasing complexification. “It is settled beyond dispute that organic progress consists in a change from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous.” Spencer then broadened from the organic to the social. Now, we propose in the first place to show, that this law of organic progress is the law of all progress.

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  Support-Bargaining, Economics and Society

  A Social Species

  • Patrick Spread(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  20 But his approach to science suggests as much convenience as scientific concern. He had a vision of society and sought natural foundations on which to build it. His theory depended substantially for its popularity on the promise of progress and prosperity, at least for those with the fitness necessary to survival. The harsh consequences for the unfit ultimately brought about withdrawal of support for his theory. When it became clear that permissive entrepreneurship was not producing the changes in human nature that he foresaw, his theory lost credibility. Support instead assembled behind the ideal of a more group-conscious society that would share benefits more widely. The scientific underpinnings of Spencer's theory crumbled with the discrediting of Lamarck. Spencer suffered, like the theorists of cooperative social theory, from the inadequate foundations that natural science had been able to provide for social theory.

  Racism, imperialism and militarism

  The regard for the ‘natural’ and violent aspects of the Darwinian struggle for existence meant that Darwin was potentially a very fertile source of theory in support of racism, imperialism and militarism. All three were burning issues in the period between the publication of the Origin and the outbreak of the First World War, so there was a demand for whatever light natural theorists could throw on the issues, with an implicit understanding that support would follow the light. Darwin's comments on race, quoted in Chapter 1 , and his anticipation in The Descent of Man that the civilised races would displace the savage races offered apparently straightforward support for adventurous imperialists. According to Hofstadter, Darwinism became, ‘…a new instrument in the hands of theorists of race and struggle’.21

  War was seen by many theorists as promoting the survival of the fittest and improvements to the race. It brought out noble qualities in humans, such as self-sacrifice and readiness to help others. At the outset of the First World War Sir Ronald Ross, professor of tropical medicine at the University of Liverpool, identified these effects of war. Paul Crook writes of Ross's theories:

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  The Evolution-Creation Struggle

  • Michael Ruse, Michael RUSE(Authors)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • Harvard University Press

    (Publisher)

  Might is at once the supreme right, and the dispute as to what is right is decided by the arbitrament of war. War gives a biologically just de-cision, since its decision rests on the very nature of things.” 13 As with the socialists, those promoting the necessity of strife in the name of evolution often postulated group selection. How much the totalitarian philosophies of the twentieth cen-tury—nazism, fascism, communism—owed to Social Darwinism has been much debated. In the case of Hitler and his gang, historians to-day dilute any significant role for evolution (Darwinism in particular) and instead put much weight on the influence of cultural factors, such as the apocalyptic anti-Semitism of the Volkish movement which cen-tered around the Wagnerians at Bayreuth. 14 Although one can tie as-pects of this movement into the Romantic thinking at the beginning of the nineteenth century, biological connections are remote or non-existent. More controversial are those who argue that Christianity itself was the greatest ideological force for ill in Nazi Germany—specifically the anti-Semitic legacy of Martin Luther. As a general thesis, this is overstated, although recent scholarship has shown that connections between Hitler’s movement and Protestant Christianity were a lot closer than many had admitted. The fact is, however, that occasionally Hitler blamed Christianity for opposing evolution! Sounding like a paradigmatic social Darwinian, he wrote, “He who wants to live must fight, and he who does not want to fight in this world where eternal struggle is the law of life has no right to exist.” 15 But do not read too much into any of this. The theoreticians of National Socialism saw   113 that evolution posed grave threats to the very core of their ideology. Even a progressivist view of evolution that put Germans at the top of the tree would have had to recognize that Jews were on one of the near-by branches.

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