Social Darwinism

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Social Darwinism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Social Darwinism is a modern name given to various theories of society that emerged in England and the United States in the 1870s, and which allegedly sought to apply biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the ttest [1][2] Social Darwinists generally argue that the strong to sociology and politics. should see their wealth and power increase while the weak should see their wealth and power decrease. Dierent social Darwinists have dierent views about which groups of people are the strong and the weak, and they also hold dierent opinions about the precise mechanism that should be used to promote strength and punish weakness. Many such views stress competition between individuals in laissez-faire capitalism; whereas the opposite concept of government intervention in social development (also known as Reform Darwinism) motivated ideas of [3] eugenics, racism, imperialism, fascism, Nazism and struggle between national [4][5] or racial groups. The term social Darwinism gained widespread currency when used after 1944 by opponents of these earlier concepts. Today, because of the negative connotations of the theory of social Darwinism, especially after the atrocities of the Second World War, few people would describe themselves as social Darwinists and the [6] term is generally seen as pejorative. Creationists have often maintained that social Darwinismleading to policies designed to make the weak perishis a logical consequence of "Darwinism" (the theory of natural selection in biology). Biologists and historians have stated that this is a naturalistic fallacy, since the theory of natural selection is merely intended as a description of a biological phenomenon and should not be taken to imply that this phenomenon is good or that it ought to be used as a moral guide in human society. Social Darwinism owed more to Herbert Spencer's ideas, together with genetics and Protestant Nonconformism, than to Charles Darwin's [7] research. While most scholars recognize some historical links between the popularisation of Darwin's theory and forms of social Darwinism, they also maintain that social Darwinism is not a necessary consequence of the principles [8] of biological evolution. Scholars debate the extent to which the various social Darwinist ideologies reect Charles Darwin's own views on human social and economic issues. His writings have passages that can be interpreted as opposing aggressive individualism, [9] while other passages appear to promote it. Some scholars argue that Darwin's view gradually changed and came to incorporate views from the leading social [10] but Spencer's Lamarckian interpreters of his theory such as Spencer, evolutionary ideas about society were published before Darwin rst published his theory, and both promoted their own conceptions of moral values. Spencer
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supported laissez-faire capitalism on the basis of his Lamarckian belief that [11] struggle for survival spurred self-improvement which could be inherited.
Contents
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Origin of the term Theories and origins Social Darwinists Darwinism and hypotheses of social change United States Japan China Criticism and controversy 8.1 Multiple incompatible denitions 8.2 Nazism, eugenics, fascism, imperialism 8.3 Peter Kropotkin Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution 9 Nazi Germany 9.1 Contemporary Proponents of Social Darwinism 10 See also 11 References 11.1 Primary sources 11.2 Secondary sources 12 Further reading 13 External links
Origin of the term

The term rst appeared in Europe in 1877,[12] and around this time it was used by [13] The term was popularized in the United sociologists opposed to the concept. States in 1944 by the American historian Richard Hofstadter who used it in the ideological war eort against fascism to denote a reactionary creed which promoted competitive strife, racism and chauvinism. Hofstadter later also recognized (what he saw as) the inuence of Darwinist and other evolutionary ideas upon those with collectivist views, enough to devise a term for the [3] phenomenon, "Darwinist collectivism." Before Hofstadter's work the use of the [14] In fact, term "social Darwinism" in English academic journals was quite rare. ...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
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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." Je Riggenbach
[1]
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, with one modern exception. The term "social Darwinism" is self-ascribed in the case of the Church of Satan and modern Satanism (see [6][15][16] The chapter heading "Contemporary Proponents of Social Darwinism") term draws upon the common use of the term Darwinism, which has been used to describe a range of evolutionary views, but in the late 19th century was applied more specically to natural selection as rst 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 ttest," a term coined by sociologist Herbert Spencer. 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.
Theories and origins

The term Darwinism had been coined by Thomas Henry Huxley in his April 1860 [17] and by the 1870s it was used to describe a review of On the Origin of Species, range of concepts of evolutionism or development, without any specic [18] commitment to Charles Darwin's own theory. The rst 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 [12] Fisher was commenting on how a system for of the Royal Historical Society. borrowing livestock which had been called "tenure" had led to the false [19] impression that the early Irish had already evolved or developed land tenure;
These arrangements did not in any way aect that which we
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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 nd 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 aect what we now call the freehold, the possession of the land. Fisher 1877.
[19]
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 [20] Darwinist until the 1930s, long after his death. Darwin himself gave serious consideration to Galton's work, but considered the ideas of "hereditary improvement" impractical. Aware of weaknesses in his own family, Darwin was sure that families would naturally refuse such selection and wreck the scheme. He thought that even if compulsory registration was the only way to improve the human race, this illiberal idea would be unacceptable, and it would be better to publicize the "principle of inheritance" and let people decide [21] for themselves. In The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex of 1882 Darwin described how medical advances meant that the weaker were able to survive and have families, and as he commented on the eects of this, he cautioned that hard reason should not override sympathy and considered how other factors might reduce the eect: Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed. The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason,
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without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benet, with an overwhelming present evil. ... We must therefore bear the undoubtedly bad eects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely that the weaker and inferior members of society do not marry so freely as the sound; and this check might be indenitely increased by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage, though this is more to be hoped [22] for than expected.
Social Darwinists
Herbert Spencer's ideas, like those of evolutionary progressivism, stemmed from his reading of Thomas Malthus, and his later theories were inuenced by those of Darwin. However, Spencer's major work, Progress: Its Law and Cause (1857) was released three 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 [23] 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.
Herbert Spencer
Je Riggenbach argues that Spencer's view was that culture and education made [1] a sort of Lamarckism possible and notes that Herbert Spencer was a proponent [1] of private charity. 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
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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 t members of society and the under-breeding of the more t ones.
Thomas Malthus
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 such as those that would be undertaken in the early 20th century, for government coercion of any form was very much against their [citation needed] political opinions.
Francis Galton
Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy addressed the question of articial 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 "tness". Nietzsche criticized Haeckel, Spencer, and Darwin, sometimes under the same banner by maintaining that in [24] Thus, he wrote: specic cases, sickness was necessary and even helpful. 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
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survival of the ttest does not seem to me to be the only viewpoint from [25] which to explain the progress of strengthening of a man or of a race. The publication of Ernst Haeckel's best-selling Weltrtsel ('Riddle of the Universe') in 1899 brought social Darwinism and earlier ideas of racial hygiene to [citation needed] His recapitulation theory was not Darwinism, but a wider audience. 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 [26] Haeckel's ideal, but since then it has been heavily refuted on many fronts 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. [citation needed] By 1909, it had a membership of some six thousand people. 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.
Darwinism and hypotheses of social change

Further information: Social evolution "Social Darwinism" was rst described by Oscar Schmidt of the University of Strasbourg, reporting at a scientic and medical conference held in Munich in 1877. He noted how socialists, although opponents of Darwin's theory, nonetheless used it to add force to their political arguments. Schmidt's essay rst [27] There followed an appeared in English in Popular Science in March 1879. anarchist tract published in Paris in 1880 entitled "Le darwinisme social" by mile Gautier. However, the use of the term was very rare at least in the English[28] until the American historian Richard speaking world (Hodgson, 2004) Hofstadter published his inuential 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 conict 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
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distinct from other theories of social change because of the way it draws Darwin's distinctive ideas from the eld 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 dierent that they would be dened 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 lial aections 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, rstly, the social instincts lead an animal to take pleasure in the society of its fellows, to feel a certain amount of sympathy with [29] them, and to perform various services for them.
United States
Spencer proved to be a popular gure 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 inuential pamphlet entitled "What Social Classes Owe to Each Other", in which he insisted that the social classes owe each other nothing, synthesizing Darwin's ndings with free enterprise Capitalism for [citation needed] According to Sumner, those who feel an obligation his justication. 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 [30] could do as he had a mind to."
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Sumner never fully embraced Darwinian ideas, and some contemporary historians [31] The do not believe that Sumner ever actually believed in social Darwinism. 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 (18901920), and a [32] major leader against imperialism and warfare. H. G. Wells was heavily inuenced by Darwinist thoughts, and novelist Jack London wrote stories of survival that incorporated his views on social [33] Darwinism.
Japan
See also: Eugenics in Japan Social Darwinism has inuenced 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 [34] Eugenism as a science was hotly debated at late 19th and early 20th centuries. the beginning of the 20th century, in Jinsei-Der Mensch, the rst eugenics journal in the empire. As Japan sought to close ranks with the west, this practice was [35] adopted wholesale along with colonialism and its justications.
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 [36] Yan's translation strongly impacted translations of inuential Western thought. 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, who Yan summarized thusly: Peoples and living things struggle for survival. At rst, 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 [37] 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
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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 [38] elements which become useless. Then we call it new life."
Criticism and controversy

Multiple incompatible denitions
Social Darwinism has many denitions, 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 diculty in establishing sensible and consistent usage is that commitment to the biology of natural selection and to 'survival of the ttest' 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 [39] eugenist.
Nazism, eugenics, fascism, imperialism

Social Darwinism was predominantly found in laissez-faire societies where the prevailing view was that of an individualist order to society. As such, Social Darwinism, supposed that human progress would generally favor the most individualistic races, which were those perceived as stronger. The opposite position to Social Darwinism was Reform Darwinism, which called on the State to actively guide human evolution as a social question. Reform Darwinists were primarily members of the Progressive intellectual movement and manifested their general belief in government involvement into specic support for community programs including eugenics programs and segregation. Reform Darwinism was part of the ideological foundations of Nazism and other fascist movements. However, this form of social Darwinism is dierent from the laissez-faire version, because it does not envision survival of the ttest within an individualist order of society, but rather advocates a type of racial and national struggle where the state [40] Names such as "Darwinian directs human breeding through eugenics. collectivism" or "Reform Darwinism" have been suggested to describe these views, in order to dierentiate them from the individualist type of social [3] Darwinism.
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Some pre-twentieth century doctrines subsequently described as social [3] Darwinism appear to anticipate state imposed eugenics and the race doctrines of Nazism. Critics have frequently linked evolution, Charles Darwin and social Darwinism with racialism, nationalism, imperialism and eugenics, contending that social Darwinism became one of the pillars of fascism and Nazi ideology, and that the consequences of the application of policies of "survival of the ttest" by Nazi [41][42] Germany eventually created a very strong backlash against the theory. As mentioned above, social Darwinism has often been linked to nationalism and [43] During the age of New Imperialism, the concepts of evolution imperialism. [43] justied the exploitation of "lesser breeds without the law" by "superior races." To elitists, strong nations were composed of white people who were successful at expanding their empires, and as such, these strong nations would survive in the [43] With this attitude, Europeans, except for Christian struggle for dominance. missionaries, seldom adopted the customs and languages of local people under [43] their empires.
Peter Kropotkin Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution

Peter Kropotkin argued in his 1902 book Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution that Darwin did not dene the ttest as the strongest, or most clever, but recognized that the ttest could be those who cooperated with each other. In many animal societies, "struggle is replaced by co-operation." It may be that at the outset Darwin himself was not fully aware of the generality of the factor which he rst invoked for explaining one series only of facts relative to the accumulation of individual variations in incipient species. But he foresaw that the term [evolution] which he was introducing into science would lose its philosophical and its only true meaning if it were to be used in its narrow sense onlythat of a struggle between separate individuals for the sheer means of existence. And at the very beginning of his memorable work he insisted upon the term being taken in its "large and metaphorical sense including dependence of one being on another, and including (which is more important) not only the life of the individual, but success in leaving progeny." [Quoting Origin of Species, chap. iii, p. 62 of rst edition.] While he himself was chiey using the term in its narrow sense for his own special purpose, he warned his followers against committing the error (which he seems once to have committed himself) of overrating its narrow meaning. In The Descent of Man he gave some powerful pages to illustrate its proper, wide sense. He pointed out how, in numberless animal societies, the struggle between separate individuals for the means of existence disappears, how struggle is replaced by co-operation, and how that substitution results in the development of
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intellectual and moral faculties which secure to the species the best conditions for survival. He intimated that in such cases the ttest are not the physically strongest, nor the cunningest, but those who learn to combine so as mutually to support each other, strong and weak alike, for the welfare of the community. "Those communities," he wrote, "which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would ourish best, and rear the greatest number of ospring" (2nd edit., p. 163). The term, which originated from the narrow Malthusian conception of competition between each and all, thus lost its [44] narrowness in the mind of one who knew Nature. Noam Chomsky discussed briey Kropotkin's views in a July 8, 2011 YouTube video from Renegade Economist, in which he said Kropotkin argued ...the exact opposite [of Social Darwinism]. He argued that on Darwinian grounds, you would expect cooperation and mutual aid to develop leading towards community, workers' control and so on. Well, you know, he didn't prove his point. It's at least as well argued as [45] Herbert Spencer is...
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany's justication for its aggression was regularly promoted in Nazi propaganda lms depicting scenes such as beetles ghting in a lab setting to demonstrate the principles of "survival of the ttest" as depicted in Alles Leben ist Kampf (English translation: All Life is Struggle). Hitler often refused to intervene in the promotion of ocers and sta members, preferring instead to have them ght amongst themselves to force the "stronger" person to prevail"strength" referring to those social forces [46] Key proponents were void of virtue or principle. Alfred Rosenberg, who was hanged later at Nuremberg. The argument that Nazi ideology was strongly Alfred Rosenberg in 1939 inuenced by social Darwinist ideas is often found in [47] For historical and social science literature. example, the Jewish philosopher and historian Hannah Arendt analysed the historical development from a politically indierent scientic Darwinism via social [48] Darwinist ethics to racist ideology. By 1985, the argument has been taken up by opponents of evolutionary theory. [7]
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Such claims have been presented by creationists such as Jonathan Sarfati. [49][50] Intelligent design creationism supporters have promoted this position as well. For example, it is a theme in the work of Richard Weikart, who is a historian at California State University, Stanislaus, and a senior fellow for the Center for [42] It is also a main argument in Science and Culture of the Discovery Institute. the 2008 intelligent-design/creationist movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. [51][52][53][54] These claims are widely criticized within the academic community. [55][56] The Anti-Defamation League has rejected such attempts to link Darwin's ideas with Nazi atrocities, and has stated that "Using the Holocaust in order to tarnish those who promote the theory of evolution is outrageous and trivializes [41] the complex factors that led to the mass extermination of European Jewry." Similar criticisms are sometimes applied (or misapplied) to other political or scientic theories that resemble social Darwinism, for example criticisms leveled at evolutionary psychology. For example, a critical reviewer of Weikart's book writes that "(h)is historicization of the moral framework of evolutionary theory poses key issues for those in sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, not to mention bioethicists, who have recycled many of the suppositions that Weikart [54] has traced." Another example is recent scholarship that portrays Ernst Haeckel's Monist League as a mystical progenitor of the Vlkisch movement and, ultimately, of the Nazi Party of Adolf Hitler. Scholars opposed to this interpretation, however, have pointed out that the Monists were freethinkers who opposed all forms of mysticism, and that their organizations were immediately banned following the Nazi takeover in 1933 because of their association with a wide variety of causes [57] including feminism, pacism, human rights, and early gay rights movements.
Contemporary Proponents of Social Darwinism

The concept of social Darwinism and eugenics, by those who attribute the term to themselves, is prevalent within modern Satanism. Social Darwinist ideas are presented throughout The Satanic Bible, authored by Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan and 20th century Satanism. LaVey describes Satanism as "a [58] and humans are described religion based on the universal traits of man," throughout as inherently carnal and animalistic. Each of the seven deadly sins is [59] Social described as part of human's natural instinct, and are thus advocated. Darwinism is particularly noticeable in The Book of Satan, where LaVey uses portions of Ragnar Redbeard's Might is Right, though it also appears throughout [60][61] in references to man's inherent strength and instinct for self-preservation. LaVeyan Satanism has been described as "institutionalism of Machiavellian [62] The Church of Satan webpage self-interest" because of many of these themes. heading Satanism: The Feared Religion," by Magus Peter H. Gilmore, states, ...contemporary Satanism[...]is: a brutal religion of elitism and social Darwinism
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that seeks to re-establish the reign of the able over the idiotic... and, Satanists also seek to enhance the laws of nature by concentrating on fostering the practice [63] of eugenics.
See also
Altruism Antonie Pannekoek Cultural selection theory Eugenics George Chatterton-Hill Meritocracy Natural philosophy Ownership society Sexual capital Social ecology Social implications of the theory of evolution Sociobiology and evolutionary psychology Universal Darwinism Austrian School Laissez-faire Supply-side economics Objectivism
References
1. ^ a b c d Riggenbach, Je (2011-04-24) The Real William Graham Sumner (http://mises.org/daily/5206/The-Real-William-Graham-Sumner), Mises Institute 2. ^ Williams, Raymond. 2000. Social Darwinism. In Herbert Spencer's Critical Assessment. John Oer. (ed). pp. 186199 3. ^ a b c d Leonard, Thomas C. (2009) Origins of the Myth of Social Darwinism: The Ambiguous Legacy of Richard Hofstadters Social Darwinism in American Thought (http://www.princeton.edu/~tleonard/papers/myth.pdf) Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 71, p.3751 4. ^ Gregory Claeys (2000). The "Survival of the Fittest" and the Origins of Social Darwinism. Journal of the History of Ideas 61 (2):223-240. 5. ^ Bowler 2003, pp. 298299 6. ^ a b Hodgson 2004, pp. 428430 7. ^ a b "CA002.1: Social Darwinism." (http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc /CA/CA002_1.html). TalkOrigins Archive. 2003-09-26. Retrieved 25 April 2012. 8. ^ Paul, Diane B. 2003. Darwin, Social Darwinism and Eugenics. in The Cambridge companion to Darwin. Cambridge University Press, 2003 ISBN 0-521-77730-5 p. 9. ^ Bowler 2003, pp. 300301 10. ^ Gregory Claeys. 2000. The "Survival of the Fittest" and the Origins of Social Darwinism. Journal of the History of Ideas , Vol. 61, No. 2 (Apr., 2000), pp. 223240 11. ^ Bowler 2003, pp. 301302 12. ^ a b Fisher, Joseph (1877). "The History of Landholding in Ireland". Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (London) V: 228326. JSTOR 3677953 (//www.jstor.org /stable/3677953)., as quoted in the Oxford English Dictionary 13. ^ Ward, Lester F (1907). "Social Darwinism". American Journal of Sociology
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(Chicago) 12: 70910. 14. ^ Hodgson 2004, pp. 445446 15. ^ "The Church of Satan webpage heading "Satanism: The Feared Religion, by Magus Peter H. Gilmore," states, "...contemporary Satanism[...]is: a brutal religion of elitism and social Darwinism that seeks to re-establish the reign of the able over the idiotic..." and, "Satanists also seek to enhance the laws of nature by concentrating on fostering the practice of eugenics." " (http://www.churchofsatan.com/Pages /Feared.html). 16. ^ Bannister, 1979; Hodgson, 2004 17. ^ Huxley, T.H. (April 1860). "ART. VIII. Darwin on the origin of Species" (http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=text&itemID=A32& pageseq=29). Westminster Review. pp. 54170. Retrieved 2008-06-19. "What if the orbit of Darwinism should be a little too circular?" 18. ^ Bowler 2003, p. 197 19. ^ a b Fisher 1877, pp. 249250 20. ^ Hodgson 21. ^ Desmond & Moore 1991, p. 598 22. ^ Darwin 1882, p. 134 (http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=text& itemID=F955&pageseq=157) 23. ^ Spencer, Herbert. 1860. 'The Social Organism', originally published in The Westminster Review. Reprinted in Spencer's (1892) Essays: Scientic, Political and Speculative. London and New York. 24. ^ Barbara Stiegler, Nietzsche et la biologie, PUF, 2001, p.90. ISBN 2-13-050742-5. See, for ex., Genealogy of Morals, III, 13 here [1] (http://malaspina.edu/~johnstoi /Nietzsche/genealogy3.htm#13) 25. ^ Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, 224 here [2] (http://www.publicappeal.org/library/nietzsche/Nietzsche_human_all_too_human /sect5_signs_of_higher_and_lower_culture.htm) 26. ^ Scott F Gilbert (2006). "Ernst Haeckel and the Biogenetic Law" (http://8e.devbio.com/article.php?id=219). Developmental Biology, 8th edition. Sinauer Associates. Retrieved 2008-05-03. "Eventually, the Biogenetic Law had become scientically untenable." 27. ^ Schmidt, Oscar; J. Fitzgerald (translator) (March 1879). "Science and Socialism". Popular Science Monthly (New York) 14: 577591. ISSN 0161-7370 (//www.worldcat.org/issn/0161-7370). "Darwinism is the scientic establishment of inequality" 28. ^ but see:Wells, D. Collin. 1907. "Social Darwinism". American Journal of Sociology. Vol. 12, No. 5, pp. 695716 29. ^ Descent of Man, chapter 4 ISBN 1-57392-176-9 30. ^ http://www.gutenberg.org/les/18603/18603-h/18603-h.htm 31. ^ "A careful reading of the theories of Sumner and Spencer exonerates them from the century-old charge of social Darwinism in the strict sense of the word. They did not themselves advocate the application of Darwin's theory of natural selection." The Social Meaning of Modern Biology: From Social Darwinism to Sociobiology (http://print.google.com/print?id=7BJUIOnC534C&pg=PA33&lpg=PA33& dq=bannister+social+darwinism&prev=http://books.google.com /books%3Fq%3Dbannister%2Bsocial%2Bdarwinism%26lr%3D%26client%3Drefox15 of 20 2014-04-14 11:23
32.
33.
34. 35. 36.
37. 38. 39. 40.
41.
42.
43.
a&sig=w_af5g6OzVWG-hgUu3sYUUJcIM8&pli=1& auth=DQAAAGkAAADLyWTynwQEsSIybdJkKg8_AeJlL9zHpKGWUlfY7GKH8ipNUBIAXF0MrEscS0fSnV5c_QwPpCxm34JbdATnfBBTkA0Sm-SiLNH9_YMzUjYdLDR8UybN7KfG_Y1SUHITHVHOcbY1x3Ejg3ZgP0BRXb) ^ "At least a partand sometimes a generous part" of the great fortunes went back to the community through many kinds of philanthropic endeavor, says Robert H. Bremner, American Philanthropy (1988) p. 86 online at Amazon.com ^ "Borrowing from Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, social Darwinists believed that societies, as do organisms evolve over time. Nature then determined that the strong survive and the weak perish. In Jack London's case, he thought that certain favored races were destined for survival, mainly those that could preserve themselves while supplanting others, as in the case of the White race." The philosophy of Jack London (http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/London/Essays/philosophy.html) ^ Eugenics in Japan: some ironies of modernity, 18831945 by Otsubo S, Bartholomew JR. Sci Context. 1998 Autumn-Winter;11(34):54565. ^ http://sitemaker.umich.edu/jennifer.robertson/les /blood_talks__eugenic_modernity_anthro___hist_2002.pdf ^ Jonathan D. Spence. The Search for Modern China." W.W. Norton, 1990, p. 301 (http://books.google.com/books?id=vI1RRslLNSwC& q=social+darwinism#v=snippet&q=social%20darwinism&f=false). ^ Ibid. ^ Ibid., 414-15. ^ McLean, Iain (2009). The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics. Oxford University: Oxford University Press. p. 490. ISBN 9780199207800. ^ Leonard, Thomas C. (2005) Mistaking Eugenics for Social Darwinism: Why Eugenics is Missing from the History of American Economics (http://www.princeton.edu/~tleonard/papers/mistaking.pdf) History of Political Economy, Vol. 37 supplement: 200233 ^ a b "Hitler & Eugenics" (http://www.expelledexposed.com/index.php/the-truth /hitler-eugenics). Expelled Exposed. National Center for Science Education. National Center for Science Education. Retrieved 2008-06-09. ^ a b "Senior Fellow Richard Weikart responds to Sander Glibo" (http://www.discovery.org/a/2247). Center for Science and Culture. October 10, 2004. Retrieved 2008-05-17. ^ a b c d Western Civilization: Ideas, Politics, and Society (http://books.google.com /books?id=kKGgoNo4un0C&pg=PA653&lpg=PA653). Houghton Miin Harcourt Publishing Company. October 2008. ISBN 978-0-547-14701-7. Retrieved 2007-03-25. "The most extreme ideological expression of nationalism and imperialism was Social Darwinism. In the popular mind, the concepts of evolution justied the exploitation of "lesser breeds without the law" by superior races. This language of race and conict, of superior and inferior people, had wide currency in the Western states. Social Darwinists vigorously advocated the acquisition of empires, saying that strong nations-by denition, those that were successful at expanding industry and empire-would survive and that others would not. To these elitists, all white men were more t than non-whites to prevail in the struggle for dominance. Even among Europeans, some nations were deemed more t than others for the competition.
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44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56. 57.
58. 59. 60.

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Usually, Social Darwinists thought their own nation the best, an attitude that sparked their competitive enthusiasm. In the nineteenth century, in contrast to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Europeans, except for missionaries, rarely adopted the customs or learned the languages of local people. They had little sense that other cultures and other people had merit or deserved respect. Many westerners believed that it was their duty as Christians to set an example and to educate others. Missionaries were the rst to meet and learn about many peoples and were the rst to develop writing for those without a written language. Christian missionaries were ardently opposed to slavery." ^ Kropotkin, kniaz' Petr Alekseevich. "Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution" (http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4341/pg4341.html). ^ Chomsky, Noam (July 8, 2011). "Noam Chomsky on Darwinism" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjermDZ1qfI). ^ cf. 1997 BBC documentary: "The Nazis: A Warning from History" (http://imdb.com /title/tt0207907/) ^ E.g. Weingart, P ., J. Kroll, and K. Bayertz, Rasse, Blut, und Gene. Geschichte der Eugenik und Rassenhygiene in Deutschland (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1988). ^ Arendt, H.: Elements of Totalitarianism, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: New York 1951. pp. 178179 ^ Jonathan Sarfati (2002) "Nazis planned to exterminate Christianity (http://creation.com/nazis-planned-to-exterminate-christianity)" Creation 24:3 p27. ^ Jonathan Sarfati (1999) "The Holocaust and evolution (http://creation.com /the-holocaust-and-evolution)" Creation 22:1 p4. ^ Zimmerman, Andrew Zimmerman (Volume 110, Issue 2, Page 566567, April 2005). "Richard Weikart. From Darwin to Hitler". The American Historical Review (American Historical Review) 110 (2): 566. doi:10.1086/531468 (http://dx.doi.org /10.1086%2F531468). ^ "Richard Weikart: From Darwin to Hitler" (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu /doi/full/10.1086/501405). Isis. Volume 96, Issue 4, Page 669671, December 2005. Retrieved 2007-05-17. ^ "Review: Richard Weikart, From Darwin to Hitler" (http://www.h-net.org/reviews /showrev.cgi?path=37981105462766). H-German. September 2004. Retrieved 2007-05-17. ^ a b "Review: Richard Weikart, From Darwin to Hitler" (http://www.h-net.msu.edu /reviews/showrev.cgi?path=80951126890820). H-Ideas. June 2005. Retrieved 2007-05-17. ^ "Book Review of From Darwin to Hitler" (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full /10.1086/502761). The Journal of Modern History. (March 2006): 255257. Retrieved 2007-05-17. ^ "Creationists for Genocide" (http://www.talkreason.org/articles/Genocide.cfm). Talk Reason. 2007. Retrieved 2007-05-17. ^ Weikart, Richard (2002). " "Evolutionre Aufklrung"? Zur Geschichte des Monistenbundes". Wissenschaft, Politik und entlichkeit: von der Wiener Moderne bis zur Gegenwart. Wien: WUV-Universittsverlag. pp. 13148. ISBN 3-85114-664-6. ^ LaVey 2005, p. 53. ^ LaVey 2005, p. 46. ^ Lewis 2002, p. 4.
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61. ^ LaVey 2005, p. 47. 62. ^ Taub & Nelson 1993, p. 528. 63. ^ "The Church of Satan webpage heading "Satanism: The Feared Religion", by Magus Peter H. Gilmore" (http://www.churchofsatan.com/Pages/Feared.html).
Primary sources
Darwinism: Critical Reviews from Dublin Review (Catholic periodical)|Dublin Review (http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=93577330), 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 (http://www.archive.org/stream/transactions05royauoft /transactions05royauoft_djvu.txt). London: Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. pp. 249250. Fiske, John. Darwinism and Other Essays (1900) (http://www.questia.com /PM.qst?a=o&d=57831077)
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 (http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=61860931) (1987) Bernardini, J.-M. Le darwinisme social en France (18591918). Fascination et rejet d'une idologie, Paris, CNRS Edition, 1997. Boller, Paul F. Jr. American Thought in Transition: The Impact of Evolutionary Naturalism, 1865-1900 (1969) (http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o& d=96294585) Bowler, Peter J. (2003). Evolution: The History of an Idea (3rd ed.). University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-23693-9. 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. "Social Darwinism in European and American Thought, 1860-1945" The Australian Journal of Politics and History, Vol. 45, 1999 (http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5001247998) Crook, Paul. Darwin's Coat-Tails: Essays on Social Darwinism (Peter Lang,
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2007) Degler, Carl N. In Search of Human Nature: The Decline and Revival of Darwinism in American Social Thought (1992). 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 (http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=98417918) Hawkins, Mike (1997). Social Darwinism in European and American Thought 1860-1945: Nature and Model and Nature as Threat. London: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-57434-X. Desmond, Adrian; Moore, James (1991). Darwin. London: Michael Joseph, Penguin Group. ISBN 0-7181-3430-3. Hodge, Jonathan and Gregory Radick. The Cambridge Companion to Darwin (2003) (http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=107191131) Hodgson, Georey M. (December 2004). "Social Darwinism in Anglophone Academic Journals: A Contribution to the History of the Term" (http://www.georey-hodgson.info/user/image/socialdarwinism.pdf) (PDF). Vol. 17 No. 4 (Journal of Historical Sociology): 428463. ISSN 0952-1909 (//www.worldcat.org/issn/0952-1909). Retrieved 2010-02-17. "Social Darwinism, as almost everyone knows, is a Bad Thing." Hofstadter, Richard, Social Darwinism in American Thought (1955) Jones, Leslie, Social Darwinism Revisited History Today, Vol. 48, August 1998 (http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5001362323) Kaye, Howard L. The Social Meaning of Modern Biology: From Social Darwinism to Sociobiology (1997).
Further reading
Bannister, Robert (April 27, 1989). Social Darwinism: Science and Myth in Anglo-American Social Thought. Temple University Press. ISBN 0-87722-566-4. 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 (http://library.thinkquest.org/C004367 /eh4.shtml) In the name of Darwin (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/darwin/nameof/) criticism of social Darwinism
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Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Social_Darwinism& oldid=603785120" Categories: 19th century 20th century Herbert Spencer Liberalism Political theories Social ethics Sociological paradigms Sociological theories Theories of history Conservatism Social theories This page was last modied on 11 April 2014 at 19:35. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-prot organization.
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