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Social darwinism as serts that humans compete with one another and all of the plant and animal inhabitants of the biosphere for dominance, and that dominance is ceded to the species and the members of that species who are the fittest and most capable of competing.

Though based in part on British naturalist Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection forwarded 30 years earlier in his 1859 Origin of Species, it was British Victorian biologist and social philosopher Herbert Spencer who coined the phrase “survival of the fittest.” Spencer and the other leading 19th century promoters of social Darwinism, Walter Bagehot in Britain, and William Graham Sumner in the United States where the philosophy was more accepted, asserted that societies are organisms the evolution of which is dominated and shaped by those people and species more fit to survive than others. Social Darwinism was used at times to rationalize the disregarding of environmental concerns and the denial of social responsibility for the care of poor and weak members of human society.

According to social Darwinism, the strong (i.e., the rich and powerful) are superior and possess the evolutionary advantage in any competition over the weaker members of society and the weaker species within the biosphere. The strong win in war, business, and life because they are better suited to dominate society and the biosphere than those who are less fit, less able to compete on the same level. Thus, social stratification, inequities in wealth, wars, and use of social, political, and economic power by superior beings to dominate, control, and abuse inferior people or species are all part of the natural process of life. The rich and powerful are rich and powerful because they adapt better to changing social, political, and economic conditions than the poor and weak members of society. The ascendancy of the rich and powerful is natural and proper because it is nothing more than the superior animal or plant surviving the natural selection process.

In a similar vein, the children of the rich and powerful have the natural advantage over the children of the poor and weak in future competitions just as the next generation of plants and animals descended from the dominating variation within their species and against other species have the hereditary advantage passed to them. Slowly and inexorably the rich and powerful get richer and more powerful and the poor and weak get weaker and less powerful. It is the survival and thriving of the fittest. Human society evolves just as animals and plants evolve with the superior or fitter within human society dominating the less fit or less competitive.

Just as inferior species die off naturally as the superior species dominates more and more and requires more and more of the available resources, so it should be with inferior races and individuals in human society. Social Darwinists asserted that the weaker members of society should be allowed to naturally lose their position in society. It is therefore counterintuitive, counterproductive, and wasteful to promote the survival, elevation, and reproduction of those who cannot compete in human society. The same is true for plant and animal species driven to extinction by the superior human species. The extinction of these species is natural and should not be avoided.

Anything that the superior human species and the superior humans within their species need or desire in their continued ascendancy should be theirs for the taking and anything that artificially aids the ascendancy or retention of inferior species and inferior humans within their species should be avoided. Thus, welfare, minimum wages, labor unions, universal education, universal healthcare, anti-poverty programs, and anything that interferes with the natural progress of societies and economic systems should be avoided. Social, political, and economic inequalities are natural, and the best course of action to facilitate the natural and proper development or evolution of society is the natural process of the “survival of the fittest” through competition based on self-interest.

The conclusion of many of America’s most successful capitalists of the 19th century, men such as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, both known as “robber barons”-a derogatory name for American businessmen who allegedly were unprincipled in their business operations and stock manipulations to the detriment of the workers whose labors allowed these industrialists to amass great personal fortunes-was that their good fortune was theirs naturally by virtue of their innate superiority. That superiority gave them the right, even responsibility, to promote the prosperity of those in society who had the ability and desire to prosper rather than elevate those who were innately incapable or undesirous of competing. The idea that it was natural and proper for the rich and powerful to prosper at the expense of the weak and the poor led to the more exploitative aspects of capitalism such as the refusal to negotiate with labor unions and even use vastly superior power to attempt to negate or destroy them.

Even the philanthropy of the more prosperous members of America’s Gilded Age (1865-1901) was guided by the idea that those who should be helped are those with ability and desire, not those seeking a handout or unearned elevation in social and economic status. It was for this reason that Carnegie directed his giving to the establishment of libraries, a university, and other public institutions that helped those with ability and desire to elevate themselves and not to social institutions offering handouts to the undeserving.

The idea that by virtue of being the fittest one could do what one wished without regard to any inferior species or inferior person also provided the rationale for both Carnegie and Rockefeller to disregard the environment in their use of natural resources on which their wealth was based and the pollution that their industries created. Superior humans did not need to regard inferior species or inferior humans in their use of the available resources because their dominance was natural and proper, it was the way species and societies evolved.

Extreme forms of social Darwinism promoted eugenics programs designed to cull inferior members from the species. The eugenics movement in the United States, led by such members of the prospering elite as Alexander Graham Bell, promoted this culling through sterilization laws and immigration limitations.

Though social Darwinism was a significant force in the United States until the early 1930s, it fell into disfavor as it became associated with the rise of German National Socialism-Nazism-and the Nazi emphasis on eugenics, racial purity, and racial superiority. It was during this period as well that anthropologists such as Franz Boas, Margaret Mead, and Ruth Benedict asserted that human cultures differentiate humans from animals and thereby severed the theoretical link between social Darwinism and biological evolution asserted by Spencer. More generally, Social Darwinism lacked any meaningful or compelling proof. While it was convenient and compelling to believe that the social position of individuals reflected genetic merit, hard data remained impossible to find.

Any hope for a resurrection of social Darwinism in the 20th century necessarily relied on advances in genetics and in population-scale statistics in educational performance and other areas. Watson and Crick’s discovery of the genetic encoding in DNA led some to assert that the social behavior of humans is in part genetically encoded. The recent mapping of the human genome, however, has demonstrated that genetic variations within the human species are remarkably minimal, and that the complex interconnection of traits and environmental influences makes any hope of salvaging social Darwinism remote. In the mid-1970s, Edward O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins came to assert “sociobiology” and argued that human and societal behavior is rooted in both biology and culture, which complicates any efforts to defend a simple relationship between social success and natural advantage.

Other efforts to connect genetics, especially race, and performance have been asserted in recent years relying on population-scale statistics. Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s 1994 book The Bell Curve asserted a “cognitive elite,” higher IQ scores amongst a small population, and a non-random relationship between race and intelligence. The findings were effectively criticized both on statistical grounds and improper inferences from findings. Specifically, the inheritability of IQ was drawn into serious question. Perhaps the most notable retort of the book and its place in the history of social Darwinism was The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould published a few years after. Social Darwinism, with or without support, however, persists into the early 21st century as a system of belief.

Bibliography:

Peter Dickens, “Social Darwinism: Linking Evolutionary Thought to Social Theory,” Concepts in the Social Sciences (Open University Press, 2000);
Stephen Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (W.W. Norton, 1996);
Mark Hawkins, Social Darwinism in European and American Thought, 1860-1945: Nature as Model and Nature as Threat (Cambridge University Press, 1997);
J. Herrnstein and C. Murray, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (Free Press, 1994);
Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought (Beacon Press, 1992);
Howard Kaye, The Social Meaning of Modern Biology: From Social Darwinism to Sociobiology (Transaction Publishers, 1997);
Alexander Rosenberg, “Darwinism in Philosophy, Social Science and Policy,” Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Biology (Cambridge University Press, 2000);
Thakur, Legacy of Social Darwinism (Global Vision Publishing House, 2006).