Social Darwinism--from Website

Social Darwinism

Introduction
Social Darwinism is a quasi-philosophical, quasi-religious, quasi-sociological view that came from the mind of Herbert Spencer, an English philosopher in the 19th century. It did not achieve wide acceptance in England or Europe, but flourished in this country, as is true of many ideologies, religions, and philosophies. A good summary of Social Darwinism is by Johnson:

In these years, when Darwin's Origin of Species, popularized by Herbert Spencer as "the survival of the fittest, " and applied to races as well as species in a vulgarized form, Social Darwinism, the coming Christian triumph was presented as an Anglo-Saxon Protestant one.

Social Darwinism is by no means dead, for vestiges of it can be found in the present.
What Is "Darwinism?"

Charles Darwin was an English biologist who, along with a few others, developed a biological concept that has been vulgarized and attacked from the moment his major work, The Origin of Species, was published in 1859. An accurate and brief picture of his contribution to biology is probably his own: Evolution is transmission with adaptation. Darwin saw in his epochal trip aboard the ship The Beagle in the 1830s what many others had seen but did not draw the proper conclusions. In the Galapagos Islands, off South America, Darwin noted that very large tortoises differed slightly from one island to the next. He noted also that finches also differed from one geographical location to the next. Some had shorter beaks, useful for cracking seeds. Some had long, sharp beaks, useful for prying insects out of their hiding places. Some had long tail feathers, others short ones.

Darwin took copious notes, captured insects and animals and selected plants. These he preserved in jars and took them back to England where he thought about the implications of what he had seen. for almost three decades. What occurred to him was a simple notion: animals, plants, insects, fishes, etc., which were obviously related differed slightly and these differences seemed to be tied in with their ability to survive. Differences, which he called "adaptations," were often related to geographical factors. He also saw something similar in fossils: certainly some fish, sea shells, etc., that died and were covered up by sand, gradually turned to stone, and were caught forever in fossil form. There seemed to be an interesting, complex relationship: extinct animals, fish, insects, plants, etc., looked somewhat like contemporary ones but were not in the same phyla. (That is, they were not of the same kind, type or variety.)

What this seemed to mean to Darwin was biological evolution. Organisms better suited to their environment gained some survival advantage and passed their genetically transmitted advantages to their offsprings. Darwin thought that this process was extremely slow and even. In fact, we became aware that it is neither slow nor even: there are examples of a good deal of change in a short period of time; and there are examples of very little change over a long period of time. Nor did Darwin understand the mechanism by which the transmission took place. This was to be figured out by Gregor Mendel, Thomas Hunt Morgan, DeVries and in our own time, Watson and Crick who deduced the spiral shape of the DNA molecule.

Darwin's discoveries struck his native England, as well as Europe, and this country with an enormous impact. They ran into total conflict with the idea of special creation, which one can find in the Book of Genesis, especially Chapter I and II. The emotional impact of Darwin's discoveries have not abated.

The Misapplication of a Biological Theory

But, for our purposes, it is the use to which some people made of biological evolution which concerns us. Some simplified the idea to "survival of the fittest." Others believed that an identical process took place among human beings. They believed that white Protestant Europeans had evolved much further and faster than other "races." And some, especially the followers of Herbert Spencer, took it one step further. Human society is always in a kind of evolutionary process in which the fittest- which happened to be those who can make lots of money--were chosen to dominate. There were armies of unfit, the poor, who simply could not compete. And just as nature weeds out the unfit, an enlightened society ought to weed out its unfit and permit them to die off so as not to weaken the racial stock.

This idea eventually led to a variety of practices and beliefs, e.g., Nordic Racism, used by German anthropologists and later Nazi theoreticians. It also led to eugenics in which, it was believed, the unfit transmit their undesirable characteristics. A breeding program for human beings would see to it that the unfit did not transmit their undesirable characteristics.

Another application of a biological concept to human behavior was the notion that any attempt to provide welfare for the poor was a tragically misguided mistake. Feeding or housing the poor simply permitted them to survive and to transmit their unfitness to their children, who in turn would pass it on to their children. A spurious piece of sociology about two families known as the Jukes and the Kallikaks purported to trace a race of criminals and prostitutes to two persons in the Revolutionary War. This study was used for many years to demonstrate that "inferiority" was inherited.

Many in our culture did not bother to read Spencer, Darwin nor did they realize the oversimplification of eugenics. But that is not the point. The point is that a piece of ideology got into American life and assumed considerable importance. What is also significant is that some, e.g., wealthy industrialists, believed that what they were doing was supported by science. Yes, they said, the caucasian, European-derived male industrialist was at the apex of evolution. And yes, they said, it is undesirable to provide, as public policy, governmental support for any plan that would perpetuate racial weakness.

Other social theories competed with Social Darwinism. By the 1930s, the New Deal created a climate in which the government was responsible for a "net" that would not allow any individual to lapse into abject poverty, homelessness on a wide scale, hunger or destitution. However, in the 1980s, Ronald Reagan was elected on a platform which declared that New Deal policies were responsible for poverty, crime, and all other social problems. Government, Reagan kept on repeating, was not any part of a solution to the problem. Government was the problem. Therefore, a good many policies based upon the "net" concept were weakened or simply eliminated.

As we approach the millennium, it is not accurate to say that 19th century Social Darwinism, "Reaganomics," New Deal philosophy or its manifestation in the economic policies of President Clinton is now dominant. A fair assessment is that all of these ideologies can be found within our society--as public policy and as belief structure. The ability of conflicting, incompatible social philosophies to live side by side, even within the same person, (cite) explains why there is so much unresolved conflict, why it is difficult for a given bit of social policy to achieve permanence. why, as many have pointed out, there is considerable poverty in the wealthiest society in the world.

Back to Introduction to Social Justice