Social Darwinism is the application of the
evolutionary concept of natural selection
to human society. The term itself emerged
in the 1880s, and it gained widespread currency
when used after 1944 by opponents of these
ways of thinking. The majority of those who
have been categorized as social Darwinists
did not identify themselves by such a label.Scholars
debate the extent to which the various social
Darwinist ideologies reflect Charles Darwin's
own views on human social and economic issues.
His writings have passages that can be interpreted
as opposing aggressive individualism, while
other passages appear to promote it. Some
scholars argue that Darwin's view gradually
changed and came to incorporate views from
other theorists such as Herbert Spencer. Spencer
published his Lamarckian evolutionary ideas
about society before Darwin first published
his hypothesis in 1859, and both Spencer and
Darwin promoted their own conceptions of moral
values. Spencer supported laissez-faire capitalism
on the basis of his Lamarckian belief that
struggle for survival spurred self-improvement
which could be inherited. An important proponent
in Germany was Ernst Haeckel, who popularized
Darwin's thought (and personal interpretation
of it) and used it as well to contribute to
a new creed, the monist movement.
== Origin of the term ==
The term Darwinism was coined by Thomas Henry
Huxley in his March 1861 review of On the
Origin of Species, and by the 1870s it was
used to describe a range of concepts of evolution
or development, without any specific commitment
to Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection.The
first use of the phrase "social Darwinism"
was in Joseph Fisher's 1877 article on The
History of Landholding in Ireland which was
published in the Transactions of the Royal
Historical Society. Fisher was commenting
on how a system for borrowing livestock which
had been called "tenure" had led to the false
impression that the early Irish had already
evolved or developed land tenure;
These arrangements did not in any way affect
that which we understand by the word " tenure",
that is, a man's farm, but they related solely
to cattle, which we consider a chattel. It
has appeared necessary to devote some space
to this subject, inasmuch as that usually
acute writer Sir Henry Maine has accepted
the word " tenure " in its modern interpretation,
and has built up a theory under which the
Irish chief " developed " into a feudal baron.
I can find nothing in the Brehon laws to warrant
this theory of social Darwinism, and believe
further study will show that the Cain Saerrath
and the Cain Aigillue relate solely to what
we now call chattels, and did not in any way
affect what we now call the freehold, the
possession of the land.
Despite the fact that Social Darwinism bears
Charles Darwin's name, it is also linked today
with others, notably Herbert Spencer, Thomas
Malthus, and Francis Galton, the founder of
eugenics. In fact, Spencer was not described
as a social Darwinist until the 1930s, long
after his death. The social Darwinism term
first appeared in Europe in 1880, the journalist
Emilie Gautier had coined the term with reference
to a health conference in Berlin 1877. Around
1900 it was used by sociologists, some being
opposed to the concept. The term was popularized
in the United States in 1944 by the American
historian Richard Hofstadter who used it in
the ideological war effort against fascism
to denote a reactionary creed which promoted
competitive strife, racism and chauvinism.
Hofstadter later also recognized (what he
saw as) the influence of Darwinist and other
evolutionary ideas upon those with collectivist
views, enough to devise a term for the phenomenon,
"Darwinist collectivism". Before Hofstadter's
work the use of the term "social Darwinism"
in English academic journals was quite rare.
In fact,
... there is considerable evidence that the
entire concept of "social Darwinism" as we
know it today was virtually invented by Richard
Hofstadter. Eric Foner, in an introduction
to a then-new edition of Hofstadter's book
published in the early 1990s, declines to
go quite that far. "Hofstadter did not invent
the term Social Darwinism", Foner writes,
"which originated in Europe in the 1860s and
crossed the Atlantic in the early twentieth
century. But before he wrote, it was used
only on rare occasions; he made it a standard
shorthand for a complex of late-nineteenth-century
ideas, a familiar part of the lexicon of social
thought."
=== Usage ===
Social Darwinism has many definitions, and
some of them are incompatible with each other.
As such, social Darwinism has been criticized
for being an inconsistent philosophy, which
does not lead to any clear political conclusions.
For example, The Concise Oxford Dictionary
of Politics states:Part of the difficulty
in establishing sensible and consistent usage
is that commitment to the biology of natural
selection and to 'survival of the fittest'
entailed nothing uniform either for sociological
method or for political doctrine. A 'social
Darwinist' could just as well be a defender
of laissez-faire as a defender of state socialism,
just as much an imperialist as a domestic
eugenist.
The term "Social Darwinism" has rarely been
used by advocates of the supposed ideologies
or ideas; instead it has almost always been
used pejoratively by its opponents. The term
draws upon the common meaning of Darwinism,
which includes a range of evolutionary views,
but in the late 19th century was applied more
specifically to natural selection as first
advanced by Charles Darwin to explain speciation
in populations of organisms. The process includes
competition between individuals for limited
resources, popularly but inaccurately described
by the phrase "survival of the fittest", a
term coined by sociologist Herbert Spencer.
Creationists have often maintained that Social
Darwinism—leading to policies designed to
reward the most competitive—is a logical
consequence of "Darwinism" (the theory of
natural selection in biology).
Biologists and historians have stated that
this is a fallacy of appeal to nature and
should not be taken to imply that this phenomenon
ought to be used as a moral guide in human
society. While there are historical links
between the popularization of Darwin's theory
and forms of social Darwinism, social Darwinism
is not a necessary consequence of the principles
of biological evolution.
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.
The expansion of the British Empire fitted
in with the broader notion of social Darwinism
used from the 1870s onwards to account for
the remarkable and universal phenomenon of
"the Anglo-Saxon overflowing his boundaries",
as phrased by the late-Victorian sociologist
Benjamin Kidd in Social Evolution, published
in 1894. The concept also proved useful to
justify what was seen by some as the inevitable
extermination of "the weaker races who disappear
before the stronger" not so much "through
the effects of … our vices upon them" as
"what may be called the virtues of our civilisation."
== 
Proponents ==
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 The Social Organism (1860), Spencer compares
society to a living organism and argues that,
just as biological organisms evolve through
natural selection, society evolves and increases
in complexity through analogous processes.In
many ways, Spencer's theory of cosmic evolution
has much more in common with the works of
Lamarck and Auguste Comte's positivism than
with Darwin's.
Jeff Riggenbach argues that Spencer's view
was that culture and education made a sort
of Lamarckism possible and notes that Herbert
Spencer was a proponent of private charity.
However, the legacy of his social Darwinism
was less than charitable.
Spencer's work also served to renew interest
in the work of Malthus. While Malthus's work
does not 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, the
same 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 both the 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 restricting reproduction,
due to their Whiggish distrust of government.Friedrich
Nietzsche's philosophy addressed the question
of artificial selection, yet Nietzsche's principles
did not concur with Darwinian theories of
natural selection. Nietzsche's point of view
on sickness and health, in particular, opposed
him to the concept of biological adaptation
as forged by Spencer's "fitness". Nietzsche
criticized Haeckel, Spencer, and Darwin, sometimes
under the same banner by maintaining 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
does not seem to me to be the only viewpoint
from which to explain the progress of strengthening
of a man or of a race.
Ernst Haeckel's recapitulation theory was
not Darwinism, but rather attempted to combine
the ideas of Goethe, Lamarck and Darwin. It
was adopted by emerging social sciences to
support the concept that non-European societies
were "primitive" in an early stage of development
towards the European ideal, but since then
it has been heavily refuted on many fronts
Haeckel's works led to the formation of the
Monist League in 1904 with many prominent
citizens among its members, including the
Nobel Prize winner Wilhelm Ostwald.
The simpler aspects of social Darwinism followed
the earlier Malthusian ideas that humans,
especially males, require competition in their
lives in order to survive in the future. Further,
the poor should have to provide for themselves
and not be given any aid. However, amidst
this climate, most social Darwinists of the
early twentieth century actually supported
better working conditions and salaries. Such
measures would grant the poor a better chance
to provide for themselves yet still distinguish
those who are capable of succeeding from those
who are poor out of laziness, weakness, or
inferiority.
== Hypotheses relating social change and evolution
==
"Social Darwinism" was first described by
Oscar Schmidt of the University of Strasbourg,
reporting at a scientific and medical conference
held in Munich in 1877. He noted how socialists,
although opponents of Darwin's theory, used
it to add force to their political arguments.
Schmidt's essay first appeared in English
in Popular Science in March 1879. There followed
an anarchist tract published in Paris in 1880
entitled "Le darwinisme social" by Émile
Gautier. However, the use of the term was
very rare—at least in the English-speaking
world (Hodgson, 2004)—until the American
historian Richard Hofstadter published his
influential Social Darwinism in American Thought
(1944) during World War II.
Hypotheses of social evolution and cultural
evolution were common in Europe. The Enlightenment
thinkers who preceded Darwin, such as Hegel,
often argued that societies progressed through
stages of increasing development. Earlier
thinkers also emphasized conflict as an inherent
feature of social life. Thomas Hobbes's 17th
century portrayal of the state of nature seems
analogous to the competition for natural resources
described by Darwin. Social Darwinism is distinct
from other theories of social change because
of the way it draws Darwin's distinctive ideas
from the field of biology into social studies.
Darwin, unlike Hobbes, believed that this
struggle for natural resources allowed individuals
with certain physical and mental traits to
succeed more frequently than others, and that
these traits accumulated in the population
over time, which under certain conditions
could lead to the descendants being so different
that they would be defined as a new species.
However, Darwin felt that "social instincts"
such as "sympathy" and "moral sentiments"
also evolved through natural selection, and
that these resulted in the strengthening of
societies in which they occurred, so much
so that he wrote about it in Descent of Man:
The following proposition seems to me in a
high degree probable—namely, that any animal
whatever, endowed with well-marked social
instincts, the parental and filial affections
being here included, would inevitably acquire
a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its
intellectual powers had become as well, or
nearly as well developed, as in man. For,
firstly, the social instincts lead an animal
to take pleasure in the society of its fellows,
to feel a certain amount of sympathy with
them, and to perform various services for
them.
== Regional distribution ==
=== United States ===
Spencer proved to be a popular figure in the
1880s primarily because his application of
evolution to areas of human endeavor promoted
an optimistic view of the future as inevitably
becoming better. In the United States, writers
and thinkers of the gilded age such as Edward
L. Youmans, William Graham Sumner, John Fiske,
John W. Burgess, and others developed theories
of social evolution as a result of their exposure
to the works of Darwin and Spencer.
In 1883, Sumner published a highly influential
pamphlet entitled "What Social Classes Owe
to Each Other", in which he insisted that
the social classes owe each other nothing,
synthesizing Darwin's findings with free enterprise
Capitalism for his justification. According
to Sumner, those who feel an obligation to
provide assistance to those unequipped or
under-equipped to compete for resources, will
lead to a country in which the weak and inferior
are encouraged to breed more like them, eventually
dragging the country down. Sumner also believed
that the best equipped to win the struggle
for existence was the American businessman,
and concluded that taxes and regulations serve
as dangers to his survival. This pamphlet
makes no mention of Darwinism, and only refers
to Darwin in a statement on the meaning of
liberty, that "There never has been any man,
from the primitive barbarian up to a Humboldt
or a Darwin, who could do as he had a mind
to."Sumner never fully embraced Darwinian
ideas, and some contemporary historians do
not believe that Sumner ever actually believed
in social Darwinism. The great majority of
American businessmen rejected the anti-philanthropic
implications of the theory. Instead they gave
millions to build schools, colleges, hospitals,
art institutes, parks and many other institutions.
Andrew Carnegie, who admired Spencer, was
the leading philanthropist in the world (1890–1920),
and a major leader against imperialism and
warfare.H. G. Wells was heavily influenced
by Darwinist thoughts, and novelist Jack London
wrote stories of survival that incorporated
his views on social Darwinism. Film director
Stanley Kubrick has been described as having
held social Darwinist opinions.
=== Japan ===
Social Darwinism has influenced political,
public health and social movements in Japan
since the late 19th and early 20th century.
Social Darwinism was originally brought to
Japan through the works of Francis Galton
and Ernst Haeckel as well as United States,
British and French Lamarkian eugenic written
studies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Eugenism as a science was hotly debated at
the beginning of the 20th century, in Jinsei-Der
Mensch, the first eugenics journal in the
empire. As Japan sought to close ranks with
the west, this practice was adopted wholesale
along with colonialism and its justifications.
=== China ===
Social Darwinism was formally introduced to
China through the translation by Yan Fu of
Huxley's Evolution and Ethics, in the course
of an extensive series of translations of
influential Western thought. Yan's translation
strongly impacted Chinese scholars because
he added national elements not found in the
original. He understood Spencer's sociology
as "not merely analytical and descriptive,
but prescriptive as well", and saw Spencer
building on Darwin, whom Yan summarized thus:
Peoples and living things struggle for survival.
At first, species struggle with species; they
as [people] gradually progress, there is a
struggle between one social group and another.
The weak invariably become the prey of the
strong, the stupid invariably become subservient
to the clever."By the 1920s, social Darwinism
found expression in the promotion of eugenics
by the Chinese sociologist Pan Guangdan.
When Chiang Kai-shek started the New Life
movement in 1934, he
. . . harked back to theories of Social Darwinism,
writing that "only those who readapt themselves
to new conditions, day by day, can live properly.
When the life of a people is going through
this process of readaptation, it has to remedy
its own defects, and get rid of those elements
which become useless. Then we call it new
life."
=== Germany ===
Social evolution theories in Germany gained
large popularity in the 1860s and had a strong
antiestablishment connotation first. Social
Darwinism allowed people to counter the connection
of Thron und Altar, the intertwined establishment
of clergy and nobility, and provided as well
the idea of progressive change and evolution
of society as a whole. Ernst Haeckel propagated
both Darwinism as a part of natural history
and as a suitable base for a modern Weltanschauung,
a world view based on scientific reasoning
in his Monist League. Friedrich von Hellwald
had a strong role in popularizing it in Austria.
Darwin's work served as a catalyst to popularize
evolutionary thinking. Darwin himself called
Haeckel's connection between Socialism and
Evolution through Natural Selection a foolish
idea prevailing in Germany.
A sort of aristocratic turn, the use of the
struggle for life as base of social darwinism
sensu stricto came up after 1900 with Alexander
Tilles 1895 work Entwicklungsethik (ethics
of evolution) which asked to move from Darwin
till Nietzsche. Further interpretations moved
to ideologies propagating a racist and hierarchical
society and provided ground for the later
radical versions of social Darwinism.
== Criticism ==
Social Darwinism is often cited as an ideological
justification for much of 18th/19th century
European enslavement and colonization of Third
World countries; it has often even found its
way into the intellectual foundations of public
education in neo-colonized countries.
== See also ==
== References ==
=== Primary sources ===
Darwinism: Critical Reviews from Dublin Review
(Catholic periodical)|Dublin Review, Edinburgh
Review, Quarterly Review (1977 edition) reprints
19th century reviews and essays
Darwin, Charles (1859). "On the Origin of
Species by Means of Natural Selection, or
the Preservation of Favoured Races in the
Struggle for Life" (1st ed.). London: John
Murray.
Darwin, Charles (1882). "The Descent of Man,
and Selection in Relation to Sex" (2nd ed.).
London: John Murray.
Fisher, Joseph (1877). "The History of Landholding
in Ireland". London: Transactions of the Royal
Historical Society: 249–50.
Fiske, John. Darwinism and Other Essays (1900)
=== Secondary sources ===
Bannister, Robert C. Social Darwinism: Science
and Myth in Anglo-American Social Thought
(1989)
Bannister, Robert C. Sociology and Scientism:
The American Quest for Objectivity, 1880–1940
(1987)
Bernardini, J.-M. Le darwinisme social en
France (1859–1918). Fascination et rejet
d'une idéologie, Paris, CNRS Edition, 1997.
Boller, Paul F. Jr. American Thought in Transition:
The Impact of Evolutionary Naturalism, 1865–1900
(1969)
Bowler, Peter J. (2003). Evolution: The History
of an Idea (3rd ed.). University of California
Press. ISBN 978-0-520-23693-6.
Crook, D. Paul. Darwinism, War and History
: The Debate over the Biology of War from
the 'Origin of Species' to the First World
War (1994)
Crook, Paul (1999). "Social Darwinism in European
and American Thought, 1860–1945". The Australian
Journal of Politics and History. 45.
Crook, Paul. Darwin's Coat-Tails: Essays on
Social Darwinism (Peter Lang, 2007)
Degler, Carl N. In Search of Human Nature:
The Decline and Revival of Darwinism in American
Social Thought (1992).
Desmond, Adrian; Moore, James (1991). Darwin.
London: Michael Joseph, Penguin Group. ISBN
978-0-7181-3430-3.
Dickens, Peter. Social Darwinism: Linking
Evolutionary Thought to Social Theory (Philadelphia:
Open University Press, 2000).
Gossett, Thomas F. Race: The History of an
Idea in America (1999) ch 7
Hawkins, Mike (1997). Social Darwinism in
European and American Thought 1860-1945: Nature
and Model and Nature as Threat. London: Cambridge
University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-57434-1.
Hodge, Jonathan and Gregory Radick. The Cambridge
Companion to Darwin (2003)
Hodgson, Geoffrey M. (December 2004). "Social
Darwinism in Anglophone Academic Journals:
A Contribution to the History of the Term"
(PDF). Vol. 17 No. 4: 428–63. ISSN 0952-1909.
Retrieved 2010-02-17. Social Darwinism, as
almost everyone knows, is a Bad Thing.
Hofstadter, Richard (1944). Social Darwinism
in American Thought. Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 9780807055038.Hofstadter,
Richard (1992). Eric Foner, ed. Social Darwinism
in American Thought (with a new introduction
ed.). Boston: Beacon Press. ISBN 978-0807055038.
Jones, Leslie, Social Darwinism Revisited
History Today, Vol. 48, August 1998
Kaye, Howard L. The Social Meaning of Modern
Biology: From Social Darwinism to Sociobiology
(1997).
== Further reading ==
Sammut-Bonnici, T. & Wensley, R. (2002), 'Darwinism,
Probability and Complexity: Transformation
and Change Explained through the Theories
of Evolution', ' 'International Journal of
Management Reviews' ', 4(3) pp. 291–315.
== External links ==
Social Darwinism on ThinkQuest
In the name of Darwin – criticism of social
Darwinism
Descent of Man on Alibris
