Tornado Alley (PROG)

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3Saints .. Social Darwinism

Larry Arnhart - 10/12/10

Ever since the publication of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871), Darwinian biology has influenced American conservative thought through an intellectual movement commonly called “social Darwinism.” Darwin’s ideas about “the struggle for existence” and “survival of the fittest” in social evolution seemed to show the natural roots of the free competition of individuals favored by libertarian conservatives, which suggested that laissez-faire economics was dictated by natural law. Herbert Spencer, an English philosopher, was the most important interpreter of social Darwinism as a radical libertarianism that shaped the thought of American conservatives such as William Graham Sumner and Albert Jay Nock. Recently, some conservatives have adopted Edward O. Wilson’s sociobiology as a new form of social Darwinism. Other conservatives, however, scorn Darwinian social theory as dangerous because of its association with a deterministic materialism that denies human freedom and dignity. Moreover, some religious conservatives reject Darwinism even as a biological theory because it denies God’s activity as Creator. The fundamental issue is whether modern natural science is compatible with the conservative understanding of human nature.

Few people today are willing to identify themselves as social Darwinists because the term has become associated with eugenics and Nazism. Darwin himself praised the work of his cousin Francis Galton in founding the eugenics movement, and he spoke of racial differences in ways that could be interpreted as racist. Adolf Hitler, in Mein Kampf (1925), argued that in the Darwinian struggle for existence nature favored the stronger race over the weaker. Consequently, many conservatives avoid any association with social Darwinism for fear of appearing racist.

In defense of social Darwinism, it can be argued that Darwin and Spencer did not glorify brutal selfishness as the primary motive of human nature or deny the importance of social cooperation. In The Descent of Man, Darwin emphasized the “social instincts” that human beings share with other social animals; he insisted that the “moral sense” of human beings set them apart from all other animals. Spencer interpreted “survival of the fittest” in its ethical sense as the principle that “each individual ought to receive the good and the evil which arises from its own nature”; and he spoke of the uniquely human capacity for altruistic sympathy as the ground for the human sense of justice. Both Darwin and Spencer saw the family as a natural basis for social cooperation; and social Darwinist John Fiske, in The Meaning of Infancy (1909), argued that maternal care for children during their long period of dependency was the natural root of human morality. Edward Westermarck’s The History of Human Marriage (1889) used Darwin’s theory to defend the view that marriage and the family expressed natural human instincts. It is not surprising, therefore, that contemporary conservatives who are at least somewhat sympathetic to social Darwinism—people like George Gilder, Thomas Fleming, Charles Murray, and Francis Fukuyama—defend traditional family life as the primary experience through which human beings fulfill their social nature.

It is true, however, that Darwinism can be interpreted as promoting a crudely materialist view of human nature that would subvert the moral dignity of human beings. Darwin, in one of his private notebooks, wrote: “Why is thought, being a secretion of brain, more wonderful than gravity a property of matter? It is our arrogance, it is our admiration of ourselves.” Remarks like that can be quoted by conservative critics like Gertrude Himmelfarb as evidence of a dogmatic materialism that leaves no room for human freedom and rationality.

In considering how to apply natural science to human morality and politics, which is the aim of social Darwinism, conservatives must ponder the ambiguity of our human place in nature: we are both a part of and apart from the order of nature. Our thinking and choosing are not completely determined by nature, but our capacities for thinking and choosing are part of our nature. We are free when we do what we want to do, but what we want to do is to satisfy the desires that constitute our nature.

Further Reading

Darwin, Charles. The Descent of Man. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981.
Fleming, Thomas. The Politics of Human Nature. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1988.
Hawkin, Mike. Social Darwinism in European and American Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Himmelfarb, Gertrude. Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution. New York: W. W. Norton, 1959.
Hofstadter, Richard. Social Darwinism in American Thought. Boston: Beacon Press, 1955.
Spencer, Herbert. The Principles of Ethics. 2 vols. Indianapolis, Ind.: Liberty Press, 1978.

http://www.firstprinciplesjournal.com/articles.aspx?article=1031&theme=home

Social Darwinism is the Ron Paul ride. Seriously, you really should read this one, too ..

The Libertarian Fallacy: How an Unregulated Market Would Lead to Economic Totalitarianism
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=88481311

then tell us how in reality how it is that you believe economic totalitarianism would be positive for the social fabric of any country.