Social Darwinism

Social darwinism asserts that humans compete with one another and all of the plant and animal inhabitants of the biosphere for dominance, and that dominance is ceded to the species and the members of that species who are the fittest and most capable of competing.

Though based in part on British naturalist Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection forwarded 30 years earlier in his 1859 Origin of Species, it was British Victorian biologist and social philosopher Herbert Spencer who coined the phrase “survival of the fittest.” Spencer and the other leading 19th century promoters of social Darwinism, Walter Bagehot in Britain, and William Graham Sumner in the United States where the philosophy was more accepted, asserted that societies are organisms the evolution of which is dominated and shaped by those people and species more fit to survive than others. Social Darwinism was used at times to rationalize the disregarding of environmental concerns and the denial of social responsibility for the care of poor and weak members of human society.

According to social Darwinism, the strong (i.e., the rich and powerful) are superior and possess the evolutionary advantage in any competition over the weaker members of society and the weaker species within the biosphere. The strong win in war, business, and life because they are better suited to dominate society and the biosphere than those who are less fit, less able to compete on the same level. Thus, social stratification, inequities in wealth, wars, and use of social, political, and economic power by superior beings to dominate, control, and abuse inferior people or species are all part of the natural process of life. The rich and powerful are rich and powerful because they adapt better to changing social, political, and economic conditions than the poor and weak members of society. The ascendancy of the rich and powerful is natural and proper because it is nothing more than the superior animal or plant surviving the natural selection process.

In a similar vein, the children of the rich and powerful have the natural advantage over the children of the poor and weak in future competitions just as the next generation of plants and animals descended from the dominating variation within their species and against other species have the hereditary advantage passed to them. Slowly and inexorably the rich and powerful get richer and more powerful and the poor and weak get weaker and less powerful. It [Page 1622]is the survival and thriving of the fittest. Human society evolves just as animals and plants evolve with the superior or fitter within human society dominating the less fit or less competitive.

Just as inferior species die off naturally as the superior species dominates more and more and requires more and more of the available resources, so it should be with inferior races and individuals in human society. Social Darwinists asserted that the weaker members of society should be allowed to naturally lose their position in society. It is therefore counterintuitive, counterproductive, and wasteful to promote the survival, elevation, and reproduction of those who cannot compete in human society. The same is true for plant and animal species driven to extinction by the superior human species. The extinction of these species is natural and should not be avoided.

...