History of Social Darwinism

As prep for coming posts, let me fill you in on some history.

First, the Wikipedia entry on “Social Darwinism”: 

Social Darwinism is … various pseudoscientific theories and societal practices that purport to apply biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology, economics and politics. Social Darwinists believe that the strong should see their wealth and power increase, while the weak should see their wealth and power decrease. … Many such views stress competition between individuals in laissez-faire capitalism, while others, emphasizing struggle between national or racial groups, support eugenics, racism, imperialism and/or fascism.…

The American historian Richard Hofstadter popularized the term in the United States in 1944. He used it in the ideological war effort against fascism to denote a reactionary creed that promoted competitive strife, racism, and chauvinism. … Before Hofstadter's work the use of the term "social Darwinism" in English academic journals was quite rare … 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 …

Social Darwinism declined in popularity following World War I, and its purportedly scientific claims were largely discredited by the end of World War II—partially due to its association with Nazism and due to a growing scientific consensus that eugenics and scientific racism were groundless.  References to social Darwinism since have usually been pejorative. … 

Despite the fact that social Darwinism bears Charles Darwin's name, it is primarily linked today with others, notably Herbert Spencer, Thomas Malthus, and Francis Galton, the founder of eugenics. … Malthus … anticipated the social Darwinists in suggesting that charity could exacerbate social problems. …

After publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859, one strand of Darwin's followers argued natural selection ceased to have any noticeable effect on humans once organised societies had been formed. However, some scholars argue Darwin's view gradually changed and came to incorporate views from other theorists such as Herbert Spencer. …

Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton … argued that social morals needed to change so that heredity was a conscious decision, to avoid both the over-breeding by less fit members of society and the under-breeding of the more fit ones. … welfare and insane asylums were allowing inferior humans to survive and reproduce at levels faster than the more "superior" humans … Neither Galton nor Darwin, though, advocated any eugenic policies restricting reproduction, due to their Whiggish distrust of government. …

Peter Kropotkin argued in his 1902 book Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution that Darwin did not define the fittest as the strongest, or most clever, but recognized that the fittest could be those who cooperated with each other. … Fabians in the early 1900s sought to use the state as the means through which a collectivist social Darwinism was to be put into effect. The common Fabian views of the time reconciled a specific form of state socialism and the goal of reducing poverty with eugenics policies. …

Within American society, ideas of social Darwinism reached their greatest prominence during the Gilded Age. Some argue that … late 19th-century industrial titans … owed much to social Darwinism, and that monopolists of this type [used]… natural selection to explain corporate dominance in their respective fields. …

Andrew Carnegie, who admired Spencer, was the leading philanthropist in the world in the period from 1890 to 1920, and a major leader against imperialism and warfare.… American novelist Jack London (1876–1916) wrote stories of survival that incorporated his views on social Darwinism. …

Concept [used] to justify what was seen by some as the inevitable "disappearance" of "the weaker races ... before the stronger" not so much "through the effects of ... our vices upon them" as "what may be called the virtues of our civilisation." Winston Churchill, a political proponent of eugenics, maintained that if fewer "feebleminded" individuals were born, less crime would take place. …

The simpler aspects of social Darwinism followed the earlier Malthusian ideas that humans, especially males, require competition in their lives to survive. 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 20th century actually supported better working conditions and salaries.

From Was Hitler a Darwinian?, by Robert J. Richards

Scholars of Hitler’s reign … will often deploy the vague concept of “social Darwinism” when characterizing Hitler’s racial ideology. … [But] …

[Hitler] was recorded as positively rejecting any notion of the descent of human beings from lower animals. …

Neither Darwin’s nor [leading German Darwinian] Haeckel’s name appears in Hitler’s book [Mein Kampf]… the only name carrying any scientific weight that Hitler cites in Mein Kamp is that of Houston Stuart Chamberlain, his supporter and an avowed anti-Darwinian. … Nowhere does Hitler even use the terms “Evolutionslehre,” “Abstammungslehre,” “Deszendenz-Theorie,” or any word that obviously refers to evolutionary theory. 

The phrase usually identified with Darwinian theory, “struggle for existence” (Kampf ums Dasein), appears eight times in the [Chamberlin’s earlier] Foundations. … Chamberlain contended that while some of Darwin’s observations might be empirically helpful, his theory “is simply poetry; it is unproven and unprovable.” …

Chamberlain’s racism and conception of struggle of races owed no theoretical debt to Darwin, Haeckel, Weismann or any other of the Darwinians, rather chiefly to Gobineau, Kant, Goethe, and Wagner. …

Leading Nazi biologists rejected Darwin and Haeckel precisely because they thought the theories of these two scientists were materialistic  … [While] Darwin was disposed to regard certain races as morally and intellectually inferior … neither Darwin nor … Haeckel, can be accused of anti-Semitism. (More) 

Haeckel's Monist League … freethinkers who opposed all forms of mysticism … their organizations were immediately banned following the Nazi takeover in 1933 because of their association with a wide variety of causes including feminism, pacifism, human rights, and early gay rights movements. (More)

On the “naturalistic fallacy”:

In 1903 G.E. Moore presented in Principia Ethica his “open-question argument” against what he called the naturalistic fallacy, with the aim of proving that “good” is the name of a simple, unanalyzable quality, incapable of being defined in terms of some natural quality of the world, whether it be “pleasurable” (John Stuart Mill) or “highly evolved” (Herbert Spencer) [or] … “what God wills.” (more)