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Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism was an intellectual and social movement that gained popularity
in the United States and Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It
appropriated principles of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution to explain and justify
the existing social order. The movement championed unbridled competition as the
driving force behind social progress, suggesting that the lower classes, the
"inferior" races, and the "unhealthy" (or "unfit") were destined to fail in the struggle for
survival and that this was simply part of the natural order. While Social Darwinism is
typically associated with this earlier era, these ideas and values have endured to this day
as a strain of thought among some policy makers and many in the public.
Social Darwinism began as a type of intellectual worldview shortly after the
publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859). Darwin's book signaled
a new direction in thinking about the natural and social world in the 19th century. Prior
to this time, a creationist view of the universe had prevailed, and dominant thinking in
Europe and the West held that a divine being had created the world and all living things
in their existing forms and relationships. Darwin argued, instead, that incremental
mutations over time within species naturally selected some types of organisms to adapt
and survive, while others became extinct. Darwin's focus was on the natural world, but
his ideas soon spread beyond the biological sciences and the academy.
One of the first scholars to apply Darwin's ideas to human society was British
sociologist Herbert Spencer (1820–1903). Spencer believed humans had reached the
highest stage of evolution because of their superior ability to reason and therefore
compete with other life-forms in the struggle for survival. In the society of his day,
Spencer also believed countries like England and the United States represented the most
advanced civilizations because the most able were allowed to introduce new ideas in a
competitive marketplace, allowing the most fit (a term used in Darwin's Origin) to rise
to the top of society. In his writings and speeches, Spencer decried any attempts to
improve people's lives through government regulation of industry, believing that
civilization would make greater progress if laissez-faire capitalism was allowed to
operate free of any restrictive laws.
Spencer's ideas became most popular in the late 19th century United States. Both
wealthy industrialists and many academics were drawn to Social Darwinism. Among
them was Yale professor William Graham Sumner (1840–1910), who believed any aid to
those in need was misplaced sentimentalism that interfered with the laws of nature.
While Sumner and other Social Darwinists might have differed on other issues, they
were united in their belief that progress was built upon a fierce and largely unregulated
competition in social and economic life and that people had to fend for themselves if
society was to continue to progress.
Social Darwinist ideas cannot be separated from the historical context in which
they originated. The United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was in the
midst of rapid economic and social change. Large-scale immigration to American cities
brought workers into the expanding labor force for the growing industrial sector.
Tremendous wealth was generated and technological innovations were the hallmarks of
an expanding American economy. Sharp racial and economic conflicts marked this time
period. Therefore, Social Darwinism became an especially attractive worldview for many
Americans who were white, of northwest European descent, and identified as either
middle or upper class. Social Darwinism rationalized and explained socialinequity to
them as a natural phenomenon that was a price that had to be paid if American society
was to continue to progress.
By the 1930s, however, Social Darwinism had waned in popularity. This was in
part due to the Great Depression, scientific advances in the understanding of human
differences, and the mounting horror of applied Nazi eugenic policies. The depression
brought about the realization for many that ability and hard work were not enough to
succeed in a competitive marketplace. Also, scientific advances in biology had begun to
discredit many racial and eugenic theories, including the idea that some groups of
people were biologically destined to excel in the struggle for existence. Finally, a number
of extreme Social Darwinian and eugenic practices brought the movement into disrepute
by the end of World War II. In the United States, these practices included the
involuntary sterilization of those deemed mentally and physically unhealthy. In Europe
similar programs of involuntary sterilization anchored in widely accepted theories of
eugenics resulted eventually in state-sanctioned murders (or "euthanizing") of the
"unfit" on a small scale, and finally the mass murders of the Holocaust. Despite these
calamities, Social Darwinism persists as an element in some contemporary policy
debates about aid to those in need and in discussions regarding the perceived need to
genetically identify and screen out physical and mental "defects."
Further Information/References
Hawkins, Mike. Social Darwinism in European and American Thought, 1860–
1945. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Hofstadter, Richard H. Social Darwinism in American Thought. Boston: Beacon, 1992.
Mann, Jonathon M., et al., eds. Health and Human Rights: A Reader. New York:
Routledge, 1999