Social Darwinism

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Social Darwinism is a theory that claims that the law of the "survival of the fittest" seen in nature by Charles Darwin can be applied to human societies.

History[edit]

Origins[edit]

Although this ideology became famous in the 1870s, its origins are very ancient. In fact, ideologies like Jansenism or Calvinism already justified wealthiness and poverty with "divine will".

Linnaeus also supported this ideology, looking for how the white man is different and superior to black, yellow, red, so that he can dominate them. In Linnaeus, extraneous to any idea of evolution, there is no phylogenetic scale that leads to the white man, but a scale of races proposed by Nott and Gliddon, which wants to show unscientifically an aesthetic progress incorrectly.

Thomas Hobbes had described human society as: "bellum omnium contra omnes", a concept very similar to that of Plautus who described the relationships between men with the phrase: "homo homini lupus".

Popularization[edit]

Social Darwinism became very famous with the work of Herbert Spencer called "Social Statics" (1851) which was based on the theses of Thomas Robert Malthus.

Ideology[edit]

Theoretical bases[edit]

Social Darwinists say that society is like a living organism that evolves, becoming more and more complex. However, to arrive at this complexity, they say that all those defined as "weak" must be eliminated. This thought was born from Malthus' 1798 work "An Essay on the Principle of Population" in which 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.

Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton, argued that mental qualities like talent and gifted intelligence were hereditary just like physical traits. So, Galton suggested that social morals should make heredity a conscious choice, so that the unfit people couldn't over-breed and fit people could survive and become stronger. He thought that welfare and insane asylums were empowering the "inferior" humans and that said humans were reproducing at faster rates than the "superior". So, he proposed that the weak should be purged to prevent the weakening of the human race.

Also, social Darwinists believed that humanity, especially males, grows through fighting and became stronger with it. So, they believed that the poor should become stronger by itself and not with the help of external forces.

Other related ideologies[edit]

Nazism[edit]

Social Darwinism is one of the fundamental parts of Fascism, especially for Nazism. The Nazis thought that the Aryan nation and race should eliminate anyone deemed weak, inferior, or an obstacle to the expansion and strengthening of the Aryan race. Nazi Germany used eugenics to control birth, so that the "weak" couldn't reproduce while the "strongs" and "Aryans" could. Most of the atrocieties made by Nazis like Action T4 or the Holocaust were because of this ideology.

Imperialism[edit]

Social Darwinism was one of the justification of imperialism during the age of New Imperialism. In that period, this concept along with evolution were the main justifications for exploiting primitive societies by the European settlers.

Elitism[edit]

Social Darwinism was also a part of elitism. In fact, elitists believe that strong societies were made out of white people who were successful at expanding their empires, thus these nations would survive in the fight for dominance, because of being composed by such people.

Proponents[edit]

Individuals[edit]

Groups[edit]