Social Darwinism Research Paper

1. The Term ‘Social Darwinism’

The first persons ever to use the term—among others, Emile Gautier in France and Achille Loria in Italy— criticized more the Spencerian philosophy of the ‘struggle for life’ and the ‘survival of the fittest’ than Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Emile Gautier explains that the selection law does not apply to human societies. He describes this extrapolation as ‘social Darwinism’ and contrasts it with the true social Darwinism which implies reforming society. All this initial confusion has still not been entirely clarified, as is evident with eugenics, a notion mingled with social Darwinism while being distinct from it. Coined by Francis Galton, Charles Darwin’s cousin, and derived from the Greek words eu meaning good and genos meaning stock or race, the term refers to

‘the science of improving stock, which is by no means confined to questions of judicious mating but which, especially in the case of man, takes cognisance of all influences that tend in however remote a degree to give to the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable than they otherwise would have had (Galton 1883, 1951, p. 17)

The starting point of eugenics is that natural selection no longer plays its role in modern society, thus leading to the degeneracy of the human species. Therefore an artificial selection, fully recognized, must be substituted for the failing natural selection. The means that are advocated either refer to ‘negative’ eugenics or ‘positive’ eugenics. ‘Negative’ eugenics aims at preventing people with hereditary diseases and serious deformities from getting married while re-storing to means ranging from segregation to sterilization. ‘Positive’ eugenics aims at encouraging ‘gifted’ or ‘strong’ individuals, that is to say the carriers of favorable physical and intellectual characteristics, to reproduce themselves as much as possible.

2. Was Darwin A Social Darwinist?

While social Darwinists use the term ‘struggle’ in the literal sense and make of the survival of the fittest its legitimate sanction, Darwin points out that he used the term ‘struggle for life’ as a metaphor including different levels of opposition and dependency. The word ‘struggle,’ borrowed from the geologist Lyell, means making efforts in difficult conditions and at the same time facing an opponent. In Darwin the ‘struggle for life’ is not defined as a direct clash involving individuals but as a set of solidarity mechanisms and clashes precariously balanced, and taking into account the milieu in which individuals and species live and fight. Darwin only used the term ‘survival of the fittest’ as late as the fifth edition of The Origin of Species in order to refer to the process of natural selection and not the struggle for life. Then in The Descent of Man (1871), he derived the emergence of morality in humans from animal social instincts. But at the same time, ambiguously enough, Darwin agrees with Galton’s eugenic ideas and claims that the development of social instincts should not eradicate com-petition and the struggle for existence.

3. Unity And Diversity Of Social Darwinism

Social Darwinism can be defined as an ideology, a philosophy of history or a sociology which not only postulates an analogy between the laws of nature and the laws of society but also affirms that the laws of nature are the ‘survival of the fittest,’ the ‘struggle for life,’ and the laws of heredity and that there should be no opposition to this for the welfare of society. At the risk of reducing the great diversity of its forms, historians agree to distinguish two major types of ‘social Darwinism’:

(a) a liberal and individualistic social Darwinism which makes the struggle between individuals the fundamental law of society;

(b) a selectionist and interventionist social Darwinism which can be defined as a sociology of struggle and emphasizes the struggle between races.

3.1 Liberal Social Darwinism

The first social Darwinism, that of Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) appeared before The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man. It can be defined as an evolutionarist philosophy without any connection to biology. Spencer’s concept of the ‘survival of the fittest’ combines natural selection and economic com-petition between individuals. It does not deal with struggles between groups and races.

Whereas Spencer, who was not a Darwinist, referred to the population laws, he did not draw the same conclusions as Malthus: the survivors are those who are endowed with a capacity of self-preservation superior to those who could not participate in life’s banquet. Economic competition is thus part of the laws of nature and nothing should hamper them because the survival of the fittest is the only process capable of ensuring human progress.

The population’s growth not only stimulated com-petition but also is the driving force behind civilization:

‘This constant increase of people beyond the means of subsistence, causes, then, a never-ceasing requirement for skill, intelligence and self-control—involves, therefore, a constant exercise of these and gradual growth of them’ (Spencer 1865–7, pp. 498–99)

The demographic pressure is meant to come to an end when its task has been carried out, bringing the process of civilization to its end. That was not the case in the last third of the nineteenth century.

Even if the changes in English society and increasing state intervention did not correspond to his expectation, Spencer wrote again about the notion of the survival of the fittest in the Principles of Sociology, published from 1876 to 1880. from then he distinguished between two types of modern societies— military societies characterized by an increasing part played by the state, the growing number of civil servants, and faith in authority, and those he thought to be superior forms of society—so-called industrial societies—characterized by the decline of the state and the blooming of personal freedom through the play of competition between individuals. Liberal and individualistic social Darwinism mainly spread through the Anglo-Saxon countries. In the USA the economist William Graham Sumner, the major theoretician of this type of social Darwinism explained that the differences between individuals merely reflect natural inequalities: people are not equal in the state of nature, and this should be taken in account.

Sumner was opposed to any type of state intervention, protectionism, and socialism whose goal is to save the individuals of any society from the difficulties or hardships of the struggle for life and vital com-petition through state intervention.

This type of social Darwinism, which was very popular at the time when liberal ideas gained support in the Anglo-Saxon countries, proved less successful on the European continent. Opponents did not fail to underline the contradictions and weakness of liberal social Darwinism. In the 1890s sociologist Lester Ward explained that economic competition did not result in individual advancement but in big new corporations whose power might need to be controlled and he criticized the social Darwinists’ ‘fundamental error’ that ‘the favors of the world are distributed entirely according to merit.’ This first type of social Darwinism should be distinguished from that of the end of the nineteenth century which is based on a sociology of struggle between groups, collectivities, and races in order to call for state intervention and the control of human procreation.

3.2 Selectionist Social Darwinism And Eugenics

At the end of the nineteenth century this form of social Darwinism, especially in the UK and in the USA has been understood as a eulogy of colonization and imperialism inasmuch as the strongest nations were supposed to be the fittest ones.

Ludwig Gumplowicz developed the concept of race struggle: ‘Under the term race struggle we shall designate the struggles of the most varied and heterogeneous ethnic and social units, groups and com-munities. They are the essence of the historical process’ (Gumplowicz 1893, p. 193). The social Darwinism is also mixed up with eugenics because of similarities and converging views between the two ideas where the postulate that races and individuals are unequal or the role of heredity are concerned.

In the preface to the first translation into French of On the Origin of Species Clemence Royer justified the natural inequalities between people and was opposed to any restriction to competition: ‘Men are unequal by nature: this is where we should start from …’ (Royer 1862). Georges Vacher de Lapouge, the theoretician who first introduced eugenics in France, underlined the hereditary character of inequity:

There are superior peoples and inferior peoples, and among these peoples there are elements more perfect and more imperfect than others. Unequal the classes, unequal the families. Inequality is everywhere and so is differentiation. Individuals are not only unequal but their inequality is hereditary, classes and nations and races are not only unequal but each of them cannot undergo absolute improvement (Vacher de Lapouge 1888).

Vacher de Lapouge explained that in modern societies natural selection no longer played its role and was replaced by what he called social selections leading to the eradication of the fittest and which he qualified as military, political, religious, moral, economical, professional, and urban selection. Consequently an artificial selection must be substituted for it so as to prevent society and civilization from being weighed down by the degenerate and inferior people. He therefore advocated selectionism as the only remedy for ‘senile democracy’ and combined it with socialism.

The German Otto Ammon, a theoretician of anthroposociology like Vacher de Lapouge, developed a less pessimistic vision of the evolution of society inasmuch as the prevailing social order expressed and reproduced the natural inequalities between people. If, due to ‘defects associated with an exclusively intellectual culture and a sedentary life,’ the superior classes are threatened with eradication for the benefit of the inferior classes, the latter can better themselves through education and food, thus contributing to the renewal of the superior classes: The existence of social classes promotes the working of natural selection, restricts also ‘panmixia’, i.e., the pairing of individuals without previous selection, and favors a much more frequent production of highly endowed individuals (Ammon 1895).

Karl Pearson was the major advocate for selectionist social Darwinism in the UK. Though he was a socialist, he was opposed to revolution and he was in favor of gradual reforms allowing society to strengthen and face international competition. In his eyes, eugenics and socialism could be separated—natural selection must give way to artificial selection in order to prevent the unfit from replacing the fit ones. But all these similarities cannot make one forget that many eugenicists were not Darwinist but rather neo-Lamarckians.

4. Social Darwinism Today

The decline of social Darwinism, which was already felt after World War I, has on the one hand been ascribed to the use that has been made of it, especially to justify imperialism, and on the other hand to the atrocities committed by the Nazis in the name of eugenics (mass extermination, euthanasia).

Even if nowadays social Darwinism is not explicitly referred to any more, it is still part of the intellectual scene as the rise of sociobiology shows. The latter is a scientific discipline founded by the zoologist Edward O. Wilson and gave rise to serious ideological controversies in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Wilson (1975, p. 4) defined it as ‘the systematic study of the biological basis of all social behavior.’

The biological basis is provided by the modern theory of evolution as it has developed from Darwin’s work and contemporary genetics. Social behavior is the result of evolution—it has been selected and is therefore determined. In a sense sociobiology is a form of biological determinism without being a form of reductionism at the same time since Wilson contends that humans are the product of the joint influences of heredity and environment. To Wilson biological only meant that there are genetic predispositions contributing to the shaping of social behavior. To his opponents biological meant that social behavior was biologically determined. In the wake of the question of animal social instincts dealt with by Darwin in The Descent of Man, sociobiology strove to shed new light on the problem of altruism.

While natural selection is a selfish process which endows certain individuals with a superior capacity of reproduction, how can one explain the kind of altruism which is noticed among social insects and how can natural selection favor deeds harmful to those who do them? The answer given by sociobiology is that altruistic deeds toward relatives could favor the survival and the dissemination of the altruists’ genes which the parents have in common with them. In the same way, the mother instinct and the care given to the child are explained by social biologists as being the best possible way of arranging gene transmission from one generation to the other.

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