Social Darwinism and politics

Social Darwinism and politics

The application of evolutionary theory to political thought produced a surprisingly wide range of responses, which undermines the assumption that an extreme form of laissez- faire liberalism was the natural social concomitant to Darwinism. What unites the various political strands of this type of Social Darwinism is not the specific political stance assumed, but the application of the idea of social evolution to a higher societal type on the basis of competition between ‘fit’ and ‘unfit’ groups and individuals, whose ‘fitness’ or ‘value’ to society could be defined in various ways.

Liberals adapted evolutionism in a variety of ways, often following the recommendation offered by Darwin himself in the Descent of Man, that a society which promoted ‘open competition for all men’ and enabled ‘the most able’ to rear the largest number of offspring was the natural social and political concomitant to the principles of natural selection. One of the first liberals to apply evolution was WALTER BAGEHOT (1826–77), whose Physics and Politics (1869) tried to prove that liberal democracy guaranteed evolutionary progress and suited higher forms of social growth. To Bagehot constitutional Government permitted looser social bonds than military despotism, while only those societies that permitted political freedom could in his view promote those evolutionary variations which were necessary for the higher progression of the species. Analogously, competition in the world of ideas would also promote the development of better ideas (as J.S.MILL had suggested in On Liberty, 1859, ch. 1). Because the notion of ‘fitness’ in Social Darwinism was frequently linked to ideas of economic competition and efficiency, it was easily adaptable as a radical critique of the existing aristocracy (as W.R.Greg suggested), a class deriving its wealth from privilege rather than merit, and idleness rather than effort (as classical political economy had also sometimes suggested). By the early 1880s such discussions became much more acute, as poverty deepened in Britain and elsewhere. Although Herbert Spencer continued to argue, in a series of influential articles in the Contemporary Review written against Beatrice Webb in particular, that state intervention to limit poverty would end social progress, since no mechanism would exist to weed out the ‘unfit’, the tide of thought had begun to move in

a much more collectivist direction. In the USA similar themes were pursued by J.D.Rockefeller and W.G.Sumner, while in Belgium liberal political economy was assimilated to Darwinism by Gustave de Molinari. In Britain, however, there now began

a substantial turning away from the association of evolution with laissez-faire liberalism that Darwin himself, among others, had assumed to be normal inthe 1870s.

Typical of ‘New Liberal’ arguments in this period was the work of David Ritchie (1853–1903), notably Darwinism and Politics (1889), whose central contention was that evolutionary theory ‘lends no support to the political dogma of Laissez faire’. Instead, for Ritchie, it was the duty of the state to act as a benevolent institution, raising individuals above the mere necessity of a ‘struggle for life’ to a higher social and cultural level. In The Principles of State Interference (1891), Ritchie confronted Spencer directly, contending that if the history of progress was ‘the record of a gradual diminution of waste…the State is the chief instrument by which waste is prevented’. Like Greg, Ritchie supported the view that aristocracy functioned as an anti-evolutionary institution. A similar ideal with respect to morality was upheld by T.H.Huxley (1825–95), who agreed that while a crude struggle for existence characterized the early stages of society, the

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emergence of moral feeling altered evolution. The state had a particular duty to educate the poor, since overpopulation might lead to reversion to an earlier stage (see Evolution and Ethics, 1893). Writers like Patrick Geddes, similarly, were to argue that moral evolution was towards ‘the golden rule of sympathy and synergy’, while BENJAMIN KIDD’s Social Evolution (1894) adopted the German naturalist August Weissmann’s arguments against the inheritance of acquired characteristics to argue for an altruistic basis for human social behaviour, and thus the ultimate value of various social reforms. Kidd was also notable for the stress he gave to non-rational factors in human evolution, especially religion, which he believed increased solidarity and efficiency by promoting the sacrifice of self-interest to that of the community.

A similar line of argument was followed by those anarchist thinkers who treated evolutionism, notably PIETR KROPOTKIN (1842–1921), whose assumption of a natural human sociability is developed in Mutual Aid (1902). This argued that groups which had been most successful from the evolutionary standpoint had developed practices of mutual assistance, in the form of clans, village communities and medieval cities. Such forms of solidarity for Kropotkin were destroyed by the modern centralized state, which needed to

be replaced by a commune of freely associated producers. A similar line of argument was developed by the French anarchist Emile Gautier in Le Darwinisme social (1880).

Once it could be demonstrated that evolutionism could be bent in a collectivist direction, socialists were bound to take up its postulates. This happened earlier in Germany than elsewhere, somewhat to Darwin’s dismay. Marx famously wanted to dedicate the first volume of Capital (1867) to Darwin, and his son-in-law, Paul Lafargue, became a zealous interpreter of Darwinian ideas (see MARX AND MARXISM). Many socialists applauded what they saw as the secularist implications of the Darwinian system. Like some liberals, socialists contended that the inheritance of wealth and prestige inhibited the promotion of ‘fitness’ (e.g. Enrico Ferri, Socialism and Positive Science, 1894). The most famous socialist to adapt evolutionism was of course its codiscoverer, A.R.Wallace, who promoted plans for land nationalisation and co-operative industry. (It might be added, however, that Herbert Spencer in fact applauded the aims of Wallace’s Land Nationalization Society, and agreed that the land ought to become public property and the landlord merely a tenant upon it.) Another writer, Karl Pearson (1857– 1936), who became professor of eugenics in 1911, interpreted Darwinism from a socialist viewpoint in The Ethic of Freethought (1887) and The Chances of Death, and Other Studies in Evolution (1897). His principal argument for socialism, which included the collectivization of production and universal moral duty to work for the community, was again its probable greater efficiency in the production and distribution of resources, and its greater capability to limit the struggle for existence. Pearson’s emphasis on ‘efficiency’ matched similar proposals elsewhere round the turn of the century, when an ‘efficiency movement’ began to develop (see, e.g., Arnold White, Efficiency and Empire, London, 1901, which links eugenics to efficiency). The general arguments respecting the application of evolution to socialism are summarized in F.W.Headley, Darwinism and Modern Socialism (1909).

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