Everything about Social Darwinism totally explained
Social Darwinism is a theory that competition among all individuals, groups, nations or ideas drives
social evolution in human societies. The term draws upon
Charles Darwin's theory of
natural selection, where competition between individual
organisms drives biological evolutionary change (
speciation) through the
survival of the fittest.
The term was popularized in 1944 by the
American historian Richard Hofstadter, and has generally been used by critics rather than advocates of what the term is supposed to represent.
While the term has been applied to the claim that Darwin's theory of
evolution by
natural selection can be used to understand the social endurance of a nation or country, social Darwinism commonly refers to ideas that predate Darwin's publication of
On the Origin of Species. Others whose ideas are given the label include the
18th century clergyman
Thomas Malthus, and Darwin's cousin
Francis Galton who founded
eugenics towards the end of the
19th century.
Some claim that it supports
racism on the lines set out by
Arthur de Gobineau before Darwin published his theories, which directly contradict Darwin's own work. This classification of social Darwinism constitutes part of the reaction against the
Nazi regime and the
Holocaust.
Theories and origins
Despite the fact that social
Darwinism bears Darwin's name and his works were widely read by social Darwinists, the theory also draws from the work of many other authors, including
Herbert Spencer,
Thomas Malthus, and
Francis Galton, the founder of
eugenics. Darwin himself gave serious consideration to Galton's work, but thought the ideas of "hereditary improvement" impractical. Aware of weaknesses in his own family, Darwin was sure that families would naturally refuse such selection and wreck the scheme. He thought that even if compulsory registration was the only way to improve the human race, this illiberal idea would be unacceptable, and it would be better to publicize the "principle of inheritance" and let people decide for themselves. In
The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex of 1882 he described how medical advances meant that the weaker were able to survive and have families, and commented on the effects of this, while cautioning that hard reason shouldn't override sympathy, and considering how other factors might reduce the effect –
Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.
The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he's acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil.
... We must therefore bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely that the weaker and inferior members of society don't marry so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage, though this is more to be hoped for than expected. |
Herbert Spencer's ideas, like those of evolutionary progressivism, stemmed from his reading of Thomas Malthus, and his later theories were influenced by those of Darwin. However, Spencer's major work,
Progress: Its Law and Cause (1857) was released two years before the publication of Darwin's
On the Origin of Species, and
First Principles was printed in 1860. In regard to social institutions, there's a good case that Spencer's writings might be classified as 'social Darwinism'. He argues that the individual (rather than the collectivity) is the unit of analysis that evolves, that evolution takes place through natural selection, and that it affects social as well as biological phenomena.
In many ways Spencer's theory of cosmic evolution has much more in common with the works of
Lamarck and
Auguste Comte's
positivism work than Darwin.
Spencer's work also served to renew interest in the work of Malthus. While Malthus's work doesn't itself qualify as social Darwinism, his 1798 work
An Essay on the Principle of Population, was incredibly popular and widely read by social Darwinists. In that book, for example, the author argued that as an increasing population would normally outgrow its food supply, this would result in the starvation of the weakest and a
Malthusian catastrophe. According to
Michael Ruse, Darwin read Malthus' famous
Essay on a Principle of Population in 1838, four years after Malthus' death. Malthus himself anticipated the social Darwinists in suggesting that charity could exacerbate social problems.
Another of these social interpretations of Darwin's biological views, later known as
eugenics, was put forth by Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton, in 1865 and 1869. Galton argued that just as physical traits were clearly inherited among generations of people, so could be said for mental qualities (genius and talent). Galton argued that social morals needed to change so that heredity was a conscious decision, in order to avoid over-breeding by "less fit" members of society and the under-breeding of the "more fit" ones.
In Galton's view, social institutions such as
welfare and
insane asylums were allowing "inferior" humans to survive and reproduce at levels faster than the more "superior" humans in respectable society, and if corrections were not soon taken, society would be awash with "inferiors." Darwin read his cousin's work with interest, and devoted sections of
Descent of Man to discussion of Galton's theories. Neither Galton nor Darwin, though, advocated any eugenic policies such as those which would be undertaken in the early
20th century, as government coercion of any form was very much against their political opinions.
Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy addressed the question of artificial selection, but it was built against Darwinian theories of natural selection. His point of view on sickness and health, in particular, opposed him to the concept of biological adaptation, forged by Spencer's "fitness". He criticized both Haeckel, Spencer, and Darwin, sometimes under the same banner. Nietzsche thought that, in specific cases, sickness was necessary and even helpful. Thus, he wrote:
Wherever progress is to ensue, deviating natures are of greatest importance. Every progress of the whole must be preceded by a partial weakening. The strongest natures retain the type, the weaker ones help to advance it.
Something similar also happens in the individual. There is rarely a degeneration, a truncation, or even a vice or any physical or moral loss without an advantage somewhere else. In a warlike and restless clan, for example, the sicklier man may have occasion to be alone, and may therefore become quieter and wiser; the one-eyed man will have one eye the stronger; the blind man will see deeper inwardly, and certainly hear better. To this extent, the famous theory of the survival of the fittest doesn't seem to me to be the only viewpoint from which to explain the progress of strengthening of a man or of a race. |
The publication of
Ernst Haeckel's best-selling
Welträtsel ('Riddle of the Universe') in 1899 brought social Darwinism and earlier ideas of racial hygiene to a very wide audience, and its
recapitulation theory became famous. This led to the formation of the
Monist League in 1904 with many prominent citizens among its members, including the
Nobel Prize winner
Wilhelm Ostwald. By 1909 it had a membership of some six thousand people.
The simpler aspects of social Darwinism followed the earlier Malthusian ideas that humans, especially males, need competition in their lives in order to survive in the future, and that the poor should have to provide for themselves and not be given any aid, although most social Darwinists of the early twentieth century supported better working conditions and salaries, thus giving the poor a better chance to provide for themselves and distinguishing those who are capable of succeeding from those who are poor out of laziness, weakness, or inferiority.
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