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Kyle Hedden HIS 300 Social Darwinism Social Darwinism is a pseudo-religious, pseudo-philosophical, pseudosociological view that Herbert Spencer popularized in the nineteenth century. The foundation of Social Darwinism is that direct analogies which connect nature to human society, and animals’ struggle for survival to business competition can be presented as proof for the way things ought to be. If analogies connect humans with nature than human society should reflect the natural world. Social Darwinists never bothered to explain why civilized society should reflect the animal kingdom; their theory was so popular they never had to explain themselves. For this paper four books were analyzed; Social Darwinism in American Thought by Richard Hofstadter, Jan Breman’s Imperial Monkey Business, Social Darwinism in European and American Thought, 1860-1945 written by Mike Hawkins, and Peter Dickens’ Social Darwinism. These were survey type texts that showed how Social Darwinism influenced social policy. Because the scientific community embraced evolution and an influx of influential intellectuals promoted it, Social Darwinism became widespread and had many hard-line adherents to its teachings. They basically taught that the end justifies the means, and might makes right. They also showed that Social Darwinism is not a dead topic, it is still popular. Spencer and Charles Darwin were the founders and greatest contributors of Social Darwinism. Darwin wrote The Origin of Species in 1859, it was an immediate success. He did not create the theory of evolution, he articulated it better, and that caused its popularity. His theory obtained instant international acceptance by scientists. Darwinism

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became a religion, evolution contradicted Divine creation which Christianity preached because it was in their bible. Darwinism applied to all living things which included humans, this coupled with the widespread acceptance by scientific “experts” led to the application of Social Darwinism. Spencer believed that human society was in a constant evolutionary process. He actually coined the term “survival of the fittest” which Darwin used in his second edition of his The Origin of Species. Spencer equated fittest with the rich and poor with the least fit, therefore nature chose the rich to survive and he believed that we should not help the poor survive, eventually they will die off. As noted by Eric Foner, who wrote a new introduction for Hofstadter’s book, Social Darwinism in American Thought was the first popular critique of Social Darwinism. Hofstadter is even credited with popularizing the term “Social Darwinism” which was coined in the 1880s but rarely used until he published his popular book. Hawkins even pointed out that many revisionist historians claim Hofstadter concocted a myth that Social Darwinism played any role in social policy. Hofstadter argued that while Social Darwinism was a popular thought, no new social practices were developed in America because of it. Social Darwinism only scientifically justified an already popular thought. His knowledge on the subject was unquestionable, his bibliography contained manuscripts, periodicals, articles, and nearly two hundred books written by those who argued both for and against the subject. To develop his argument, Hofstadter focused mostly on the work of Darwin, Spencer, William Graham Sumner, and Lester Ward. He pointed out that Darwin was not the originator of the theory of evolution, but he defended it better than his predecessors.

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Darwin’s promotion of Darwinism created a new religion. Science wholly accepted his theory, it was taught in schools, published in several newspapers, and talked about on campus. Hofstadter made this topic seem as popular as Iraq is now. The last area affected by Darwinism was the churches, “where evolution won its chief victories among the intellectually alert members of the more liberal Protestant denomination.”i By the beginning of the twentieth century a theology emerged that combined divine creation with evolution. Hofstadter claimed Spencer was more popular in the U. S. than anywhere else. “In the three decades after the Civil War it was impossible to be active in any field of intellectual work without mastering Spencer.”ii Spencer was popular in the U. S. because struggle was already a part of the American way of life. Hofstadter wrote how Spencer was especially popular with the wealthy businessmen because he promoted laissez-faire and gave their business practices scientific justification. Laissez-faire is French for “let things alone”, it was an economic policy of no governmental intervention. At the start of the Industrial Revolution it was popular in Europe and America. Its policies created abuses such as the exploitation of child labor and the working class in general, and huge monopolies which eliminated competition and consolidated wealth. The consequences of this policy in America were by 1910 the wealthiest 1% of the population owned 47% of the national property while between one-third and one-half of the industrial population lived in poverty. “The most vigorous and influential social Darwinist in America was William Graham Sumner of Yale.”iii Sumner used direct animal struggle to human competition analogies to try to dull the lower class’s resentment of the rich. He pointed out that

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natural rights, humanitarianism, and democracy did not exist in nature, therefore they have no place in society. By pointing to many critics of Social Darwinism, Hofstadter proved that arguments against Social Darwinism always existed. In his book he devoted an entire chapter to Lester Ward who believed in the Social Darwinian concept of race-struggle, but opposed the other aspects of Social Darwinism. Ward made a distinction between animal/physical evolution and human/mental evolution, and claimed that we were evolving on purpose. Ward also noticed that nature is not economic, it is wasteful, a plant in a garden will thrive more than a similar plant in the wild because it will not have to compete against weeds. “Ward demolished the central feature of the monistic dogma – the continuity between process in nature and process in society.”iv Hofstader brilliantly showed the mindset of Darwinists. The scientific justification of lower-class exploitation replaced the moral obligation to assist the poverty-stricken masses with the moral obligation to let society’s “least fit” die off. To accomplish this, the “might makes right” creed must be obeyed. Social Darwinism as a scientific theory relieved the rich of their responsibility for the suffering of the poor, much like how the global economy exploits the poor countries for the profit of the rich who claim to help them by giving them ten cents per hour jobs. Hofstadter claimed that a Christian nation like America ultimately could not accept a policy which threatened the collapse of the moral standard. He also credited the Progressive Movement with disposing the laissez-faire policy which was promoted by Social Darwinism. This was accomplished by the middle class who used the government to reform the business practices of the upper class.

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Hofstadter said that the increased criticism of Social Darwinism created a change in its application. Now the state was utilized to create a better human species. This was known as the Eugenics Movement. It was believed that the raising number of immigrants from central and southern Europe was lowering the American intelligence; our society was in the process of degradation, “the ideas of the (eugenics) movement began to receive practical application in 1907, when Indiana became the first state to adopt a sterilization law; by 1915 twelve states had passed similar measures.”v Eugenicists equated the upper class with the smartest or fittest and promoted their practices through “Their warnings about the multiplication of morons at the lower end of the social scale.”vi It was believed that a continual scientific sorting of “fittest” and “least fit” individuals could improve the human species by encouraging the “better” individuals to reproduce more while limiting the reproduction of the “worse” people. Hofstadter wrote that the Eugenics Movement and Social Darwinism with it largely died out in America around World War Two because it “sounded too much like dangerous German talk”vii but he believed that resurgence is possible. Hofstadter apparently overlooked America’s continued racial policies, especially toward our own Native Americans, and he failed to notice that eugenics continued in America until 1974. Jan Breman focused on the idea of racial supremacy that Social Darwinism justified. Through the use of a much smaller but more focused bibliography of Social Darwinian policies in America, France, Germany and England, Bremen pointed out that Social Darwinism is basically scientific racism. She argued that racism today is based upon Social Darwinist concepts that have long been prevalent in Western society and those concepts are the reason for its current prevalence. Breman pointed out how Social

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Darwinism assumed inequality, and therefore created a hierarchy of the races. “In the nineteenth century such ideas were worded very pointedly in writings that accepted as given the basic inequality of races and classes, peoples and nations.”viii Because it was scientific, Social Darwinism justified and legitimized the colonization and suppression of the “lower” races by the white races. “Darwinism had come forward as a kind of religion vying with Christianity”ix with the “justification of the right of might.”x Breman did not blame Darwin as even a cofounder of Social Darwinism because humankind was not mentioned in his work, but his “pliant use of language admitted of more than one interpretation and provided opportunity to the temptation to apply his insights beyond the realms of flora and fauna.”xi She blamed Spencer as the founder of Social Darwinism and noted that the ambivalence in his work could be utilized to legitimize widely divergent standpoints. Breman noted how others contributed to this scientific racism. For instance, Ludwig Woltmann wrote Die darwinsche Theorie und der Sozialismus (1899) which “introduced the class struggle into the theory (of Social Darwinism).”xii Paul Belloni Du Chaillo hunted gorillas and wrote about it. “Africa especially was pictured as a breeding ground for lewdness.”xiii Chaillo saw gorillas as half man, half beast. He heard stories of gorillas violating indigenous women which sparked his search for offspring. Breman noted “the idea that sexual intercourse between apes and humans really occurred lost ground only gradually”xiv and pointed to the film King Kong as proof. The scientists that promoted Social Darwinism claimed that evolution created different human races and of course the white European was “the most intelligent and most handsome.”xv They desired as much separation as possible between the races. To

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explain how interracial sexual intercourse resulted in offspring, scientists studied animal cross-breeding; camel and dromedary, sheep and goat, and dog and wolf all produced fertile progeny. Paul Broca (1824-1880) studied animal cross-breeding and applied his knowledge to write books about human interracial sex. “Broca’s work became an important factor in the development of racism.”xvi Two other authors, Robert Knox (1793-1862) and Arthur de Gobineau (1816-1882) popularized the idea that “races and classes were identical entities.”xvii They also furthered the idea that powers of social selection deteriorated as civilization advanced, therefore, “Nothing but bold eugenic measures could prevent the demise of civilization.”xviii Ernst Haeckel’s (1843-1919) recapitulation theory explained man by pointing to frogs. Frogs undergo metamorphosis from tadpole to frog; tadpoles looked like fish, so Haeckel reasoned that they underwent fast evolution. In his human studies he noticed a time when the human embryo displayed gills, again he reasoned this was due to fast evolution. Frogs only evolved into frogs, they could not continue on to humans. Haeckel’s recapitulation theory was “a general theory of biological determinism and, once this route was taken, it was possible to compare all ‘lower’ groups, non-white races, women (of all races), Mediterranean Europeans and the proletariat, with white children or prehistoric forebears”xix because they, like the frog, were not as evolved. This “paved the way for patriarchal arbitrariness.”xx Unlike Hofstadter, Breman blamed Social Darwinism for social policies, especially imperialism, where the powerful country would look down upon its subjected colony like its child because they were less evolved. She also pointed out how Darwinism was a religion and how that religion gave credence to ridiculous theories like Haeckel’s.

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Hawkins focused on Social Darwinism, its advocates and their theories, and how they interconnected. He also pointed out that there are “deniers” of the significance of Social Darwinism, so “one of the purposes of the present study is to challenge the revisionists.”xxi He looked at the controversies surrounding Social Darwinism with hope to shed light on the matter. The controversies he pointed to were: What is the definition of Social Darwinism? What are/were the ideological functions of Social Darwinism? How significant was/is Social Darwinism? To answer these questions Hawkins utilized nearly four hundred sources which were published all over Europe and America from the mid-1800s up to the mid-1990s Hawkins defined Social Darwinism for us by first defining the four elements of Darwinism, “(i) biological laws governed the whole of organic nature, including humans; (ii) the pressure of population growth on resources generated a struggle for existence among organisms; (iii) physical and mental traits conferring an advantage on their possessors in this struggle (or in sexual competition), could, through inheritance, spread through the population; (iv) the cumulative effects of selection and inheritance overtime accounted for the emergence of new species and the elimination of others.”xxii Then Hawkins claimed that Social Darwinism added a fifth element to Darwinism, ”this determinism extends to not just the physical properties of humans but also to their social existence and to those psychological attributes that play a fundamental role in social life, e.g. reason, religion and morality.”xxiii Hawkins backed up the fifth element of his definition, but he merely stated the first four as fact, it should be noted that evolution also promotes the idea that all species owe their existence to the process of natural selection. To show the ideological functions and the significance of Social Darwinism, Hawkins pointed out popular Social Darwinists and how they promoted each of the major social/political theories associated with Social Darwinism; those theories were racism,

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imperialism, and eugenics. Laissez-faire was mentioned in this text but Hawkins failed to mention how Social Darwinism affected this particular policy. “(I)t was because social evolution was subsumed under the same laws as evolution in general that a science of society was possible.”xxiv The scientific justification of these socio-political policies gave those that practiced Social Darwinism the moral justification to apply those policies. That moral justification was the improvement of mankind through evolution. Spencer said “the inferior races should be exterminated and their place occupied by the superior races.”xxv In Europe, writing from men like Haeckel and Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855-1927) scientifically justified racism. “Haeckel’s disparaging assessment of the intellectual capabilities of non-whites and his dismissal of their cultures, his attitude to the sick and the insane and his desire to weed out criminals, appear to lend credence to the thesis of his complicity in the elaboration of a proto – Nazi ideology.”xxvi Chamberlain, who was a Briton, in his anti-Semitic literature “came to regard Hitler as a potential savior.”xxvii In America Social Darwinism apparently gave a scientific rationale for the pre-existing racial hierarchy and it legitimated the conceived fate of blacks and Native Americans. Joseph Le Conte (1823-1901) wrote how “slavery was initially optimal for the negro” and “extermination was unavoidable”xxviii for the Native Americans. Le Conte scientifically justified these claims with a theory of racial hierarchy, which of course placed whites on top. Social Darwinism explained and justified imperialist policies. Hawkins showed how this justification popularized imperialism because white people were given a reason to look down upon the “savages” that they colonized. This contempt removed the moral implications that would otherwise go along with putting down resistance. A soldier in the

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Matabele Warsxxix claimed he shot fleeing blacks “with as little compunction as though they were a pack of wild dogs.”xxx By the end of the nineteenth century, Darwin’s theory had been reinterpreted so that evolution did not necessarily mean progress, degeneracy was a possibility. Scientifically justified racism along with the linking of genetics to social undesirables like criminals, the insane, and morons; and the concern that those genetically inferior people could multiply popularized the Eugenics Movement. World-wide, eugenics enjoyed its greatest popularity from 1910 to 1940 and it was not limited to the Nazis; Britain, France, Germany, the U. S. and many others put this social policy into practice. The reason for its popularity is basically due to the popularity of Darwinism; people had faith in science as a dependable source of knowledge, and evolution sparked a belief in the perfectibility of the human species. E. R. Lancaster wrote Degeneration: A Chapter in Darwinism (1880) which promoted the idea that even the white races can degenerate, and we should protect our race.xxxi The writings of Lancaster and others prepared mankind “for intervention and redirection in social affairs on the basis of scientific expertise in order to ensure that the course of evolution remained wholesome.”xxxii Two types of eugenics were practiced; positive eugenics, which was designed to increase the breeding of the upper class, and negative eugenics, which restricted the reproductive capabilities of the undesirables (basically, sterilization). Hawkins’ view on the significance of Social Darwinism agreed with Breman’s; scientific justification helped create racist policies and gave the white races another reason to look down upon the “lower” races. Breman however showed how Darwin’s theory was used to link “other” races with animals, cavemen, or children. Hawkins failed

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to do this when he left that part out of his definition of Darwinism. Because of the little attention paid to laissez-faire, Hawkins apparently would agree with Hofstadter in that Social Darwinism did little to affect this policy, although he did not say. Dickens focused on the current application of Social Darwinism. He did not set out to prove that it is still in use, but he accomplished that when he showed its current application. Dickens looked at texts on Social Darwinism, both old and what he claimed are current, and literature on biology itself. He briefly looked at Social Darwinism’s originators; Darwin, Spencer, and Haeckel, simply to put the subject into context. He wrote that Social Darwinism is “still often based on flawed analogies between evolution in nature on the one hand and that of human society on the other.”xxxiii Dickens argued that there are new subtle types of eugenics. To show the current application of Social Darwinism, Dickens pointed to Herrnstein and Murray’s book The Bell Curve (1994)xxxiv. Its popularity is unquestionable, “This book has sold several hundred thousand copies, been the subject of a presidential press conference and of cover stories in many news and opinion magazines.”xxxv It championed the idea that IQ level equals success level. They also warned that idiots are breeding faster than the intelligent; this high ra...