Social Darwinism and its consequences

In 1859, the British researcher Charles Darwin published his groundbreaking work On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. It was the result of more than twenty years of research and would transform science. Unknown to Darwin, the naturalist Alfred Wallace had developed a very similar theory during the same period, and the year before he had sent Darwin a letter describing his work.

Darwin could hardly believe his eyes and wrote to a colleague:

“I have never experienced a more striking coincidence. If Wallace had had my manuscript sketch from 1842, he could not have made a better summary!”¹

As early as 1809, the French biologist Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck had presented a theory explaining how acquired characteristics are inherited in nature and thereby create change. Darwin’s theory of evolution was a broad scientific framework that sought to grasp the fundamentals of how nature works.

It explained the process through which change occurs in nature without specifying the results of that change. Consequently, despite its logical concreteness, it was open to interpretation. Most scientific theories are formulated so that if A happens, then B will be the consequence. Darwin’s theory merely stated that if A occurred, then change would occur—but it did not specify in what form.

In the essay “The Great Generalization: The Theory of Evolution in American Political and Social Thought after the Civil War,” Erin Sutter wrote:

“The flexibility of the theory, combined with its novelty and openness to change, were qualities that made evolution relatively adaptable and able to support a wide range of positions, even those opposed to one another.”²

The expression “survival of the fittest” did not originate with Darwin himself, but with the British philosopher Herbert Spencer,³ editor of The Economist and one of the leading sociologists of his time in the mid-19th century. Spencer saw similarities between animal organisms and human societies and argued that both consist of three main systems:

• The first is the regulatory system, which in animals is the central nervous system and in our societies the government.
• The second is the sustaining system, which for animals is the intake and distribution of nourishment, and for societies industry, jobs, money, the economy, and so on.
• The third is the distribution system, which in animals consists of veins and arteries and in societies roads, transportation, and everything through which information and goods are exchanged.

A cousin of Darwin named Francis Galton wanted to rank individuals of the human species—or races—on a scale of developmental stages. This idea became the beginning of so-called social Darwinism and the notion of improving human biological nature by eliminating less viable individuals. Galton proposed applying the principles of horse breeding to humans in order to create a stronger race that would not be overrun by “inferior” races.

Galton and his peers in the upper classes worried that the rapidly increasing reproduction of the masses would endanger the strength of the British race and make Britain unfit for its imperial role.⁴ The central ideas of social Darwinism were thus that society was evolving from a lower to a higher stage, but that this development was endangered because inferior (that is, weak, sick, and poor) people were having too many children, risking the degeneration of the population.

Poverty was largely seen as the result of poor character, and this character weakness was considered hereditary by proponents of these ideas. Poor Laws were enacted in 1834 based on this reasoning. As a consequence, aid was not distributed to the needy; instead, they were required to live and work in so-called workhouses. These were prison-like institutions made so deterrent that people only sought them out in extreme emergencies.

This sometimes led to families being split up, as women, men, and children were housed separately. Many were outraged by this brutal treatment of the poor and the sick, and the system was harshly criticized by, among others, Charles Dickens, who illustrated it in novels such as Oliver Twist. One source of this mindset was the demographer and political economist Robert Malthus’s book An Essay on the Principle of Population, published in 1798, in which he introduced the idea that we are all trapped in an unavoidable struggle for existence.

Malthus described the suffering of the poor as something natural and, to some extent, desirable. Poverty had a purpose because humans are by nature “indolent, lazy, and averse to work.”⁵ According to Malthus, evil existed in the world to stimulate us into activity. This idea—that suffering has a higher purpose—became one of the core elements of social Darwinism.

As for Francis Galton, his own background was hardly impressive. He dropped out of his medical studies twice—first after a nervous breakdown and later after inheriting a fortune from his father.⁶ Herbert Spencer is often called the father of social Darwinism, but he opposed both authoritarianism and imperialism.

Spencer believed that people and societies should develop freely and was an opponent of colonialism and war. For example, he described militarism as a “re-barbarization” following a brief golden age of peace and free trade. He was also critical of restrictions on civil liberties. “Dictatorial measures, which have multiplied rapidly, have tended steadily to limit individual freedoms, and this in a double way,” he wrote in 1884:

“Regulations have been enacted in annually increasing numbers that restrict the citizen where his actions were previously unconstrained, and compulsory actions have been imposed that he previously could choose whether or not to perform; at the same time, heavier public burdens, chiefly local, have further limited his freedom by reducing the portion of his income he may spend as he wishes, and increasing the portion taken from him to be used as public agents see fit.”⁷

Many intellectuals—and especially members of the power elite—seized upon the harsher aspects of evolutionary theory to apply them to society itself. Darwin’s ideas and Spencer’s phrase about the survival of the fittest seemed to legitimize their claims to power and capital.⁸

In other words, social Darwinism was seen as a reasonable explanatory model for social inequality, which was attributed more to the inadequacy of the working class than to flaws in the corporate sector and market economy.⁹ “The growth of large corporations is simply the survival of the fittest,” John D. Rockefeller Jr. later said. “This is not an evil tendency in business,” he claimed. “It is merely the working out of a law of nature and a law of God.”¹⁰