On This Page:ToggleWhat is Social Darwinism?Principles of Social DarwinismForms of Social DarwinismControversies and CriticismExamples of Implications
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Summary
What is Social Darwinism?
Social Darwinism is a set of theories and societal practices that apply Darwin’s biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology, economics, and politics.
Darwin’s natural selection modeled the work of many thinkers in the late 19th century.
Many scientists during that period, as well as geographers, described themselves as Darwinian despite displaying the influence of a number of biological evolutionary theories, such as Lamarckism, which emphasized the linear progression of a species.
Sociocultural evolutionary theories developed in parallel to biological theories of evolution rather than emerging from them (Winlow, 2009).
Over the course of the 20th century, Social Darwinism took up negative connotations as it became associated with racism, Nazism, and eugenics (Winlow, 2009).
Principles of Social Darwinism
Social Darwinist theories and the actions that used them as justifications share a few themes in common. These are:
The belief is that humans, like plants and animals, compete in a struggle for existence. The result is the “survival of the fittest;”
Advocating for a laissez-faire political and economic system favoring competition and self-interest in social and business affairs; and,
A justification for the imbalances of power between individuals, races, and nations.
Rather than arguing that the whole human species evolved over time socially, social Darwinism argues that only certain groups of people did.
Thus, some groups of people, in the view of social Darwinistic theories, are superior to others.
Forms of Social Darwinism
Herbert Spencer’s Social Darwinism
Spencer published the book Social Statistics (2021), in which he integrated Lamarck’s ideas around a progressive change in species with laissez-faire economics and developed the metaphor of the social organism.
He used this synthesis of biological, psychological, and social evolution to describe the origin of racial difference, to account for deviations from Lamarck’s one-line sequence of development, and to explain the evolution of high-level brain functioning.
Spencer reasoned that humans adapt to changes in their physical environment through cultural rather than biological adaptation. In doing so, Spencer coined the term “survival of the fittest,” which later became linked to Darwinism.
According to Spencer, those who are most successful at adapting to a changing cultural environment are those most likely to enjoy societal success in the form of status and resources.
These successful individuals pass on their culturally-adaptive advantages to their offspring. Because these people’s offspring enjoy the luxury of a more advantageous position in society, they are in an even better position to evolve further on the socioeconomic ladder.
Spencer argued that this process of cultural evolution was a process that could not be stopped (Delaney, 2009).
In his book (1851), Spencer concluded that the evolution of any human society is a matter of “survival of the fittest.” As evolutionary processes filter out the unfit, the outcome is a more advanced society.
Because the results of interfering with the natural social order cannot be predicted, government intervention could distort the natural and necessary adaptation of society to its environment.
Thus, according to Spencer, governments should not intervene in social problems. Spencer criticized government attempts to regulate levies and opposed subsidies for education and housing.
Additionally, Spencer believed that businesses and institutions that could not adapt to the social environment were unfit for survival.
The government’s support of poorly functioning people, groups, organizations, and institutions allows weak institutions to endure, weakening society. Survival of the fittest, meanwhile, was a honing tool that societies could use to achieve perfection over time.
Spencer also opposed social welfare, believing it to lead to tyrannical and militant social order that entered with natural selection and degraded the species.
In a world without assistance for the poor, the least intelligent could die off, leading to rising levels of general intelligence.
Edward Burnett Tylor’s Cultural Evolutionary Theory
Edward Burnett Tylor’s cultural evolutionary theory also stressed that cultures develop linearly.
Tylor emphasized the earliest stage of “savagery.” The progression from savage to civilized, in Taylor’s view, did not occur evenly or at the same pace in every society; however, the distinct stages were always the same.
Tylor held that the progress of culture entailed a slow replacement of magical thinking with the power of reason. Savage societies, according to Tylor, had global supernaturalism.
This global supernaturalism remained in the barbaric stage with the development of language, laws, and institutions.
Finally, in advanced civilizations, such as Tylor’s own Victorian society, reason and scientific thinking predominate (Tremlett, Harvey, & Sutherland, 2017).
Controversies and Criticism
Evolutionary anthropology came under fire in its early days. The most notable early criticism of social Darwinism came from the German-American anthropologist Franz Boas.
Boas challenged Tylor’s notions that human culture was universal and that this explained the independent invention of different societal structures (Halliday, 1971).
Social Darwinism has also been commonly criticized for its misreading of the ideas first described in Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species.
One element of this criticism regards the evolutionarily short time scales under which the societal changes seen in social Darwinism supposedly take place.
While evolutionarily change takes place over many, many generations, social Darwinism change supposedly happens over a much shorter time period.
Many have called social Darwinism a misnomer in that its two originating theorists — Spencer and Tylor — take more influence from discredited Lamarckian ideas of evolution than Darwinian ones.
In essence, Spencer and Tylor both assumed that sociocultural characteristics acquired over a lifetime could be passed onto offspring, while Darwinism believes that only genetic characteristics can (Halliday, 1971).
Social Darwinism lost favor after the Second World War and the subsequent crash of eugenicist regimes.
For this reason, the field carries the connotation of a justification for forced sterilization and a number of policies leading to the deaths and domination of many from groups determined to be “inferior.”
Examples of Implications
Eugenics
Eugenics is the theory and practice involving the belief that control of reproduction can improve human heredity.
Although the concept dates to at least the ancient Greeks, the modern eugenics movement arose in the 19th century when Galton (1883) applied his cousin Charles Darwin’s theories to humans.
Imperialism
Social Darwinism was also used as a justification for imperialism in the 19th and 20th centuries. During this time, the British Empire, in particular, controlled large portions of the globe and exerted dominion over the conquered peoples of their territories.
The work of Charles Darwin and Henry Lamarck — and the sociocultural theorists such as Spencer and Tylor, who extrapolated upon it — became a scientific explanation for the dominance of Europeans.
This provided a moral and rational justification for continued dominion (Koch, 1984).
Social Inequality
Social Darwinism has also played a large control in justifying various social inequalities from the 19th century to the present (Rudman & Saud, 2020).
In doing so, the researchers conducted two studies. In each of these studies, participants filled out a scale measuring the extent to which they believed that a person’s traits and abilities are ingrained in their race or economic status and the extent to which they can be changed.
Rudman Saud considered those who scored high on these scales to be high in essentialism.
In both studies, Rudman and Saud (2020) found that those who had beliefs aligning with social Darwinism were more likely to justify police brutality and support the reduction of social safety nets.
References
Bock, G. (2013). Antinatalism, maternity and paternity in National Socialist racism (pp. 122-152). Routledge.
Delaney, T. (2009). Social spencerism. Philosophy Now, 71, 20-21.
Galton, F. (1883). Inquiries into human faculty and its development. Macmillan.
Halliday, R. J. (1971). Social Darwinism: a definition. Victorian Studies, 14(4), 389-405.
Koch, H. W. (1984). Social Darwinism as a Factor in the ‘New Imperialism’. In The Origins of the First World War (pp. 319-342). Palgrave, London.
Paul, D. B. (2003). Darwin, social Darwinism and eugenics. The Cambridge Companion to Darwin, 214(10.1017).
Rudman, L. A., & Saud, L. H. (2020). Justifying social inequalities: The role of social Darwinism. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 46(7), 1139-1155.
Spencer, H., & Taylor, M. (2021). Social statics. Routledge.
Tremlett, P. F., Harvey, G., & Sutherland, L. T. (Eds.). (2017). Edward Burnett Tylor, religion and culture. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Winlow, H. (2009). Darwinism (and Social Darwinism). International Encyclopedia of Human Geography.
Saul McLeod, PhD
BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester
Saul McLeod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.
Charlotte NickersonResearch Assistant at Harvard UniversityUndergraduate at Harvard UniversityCharlotte Nickerson is a student at Harvard University obsessed with the intersection of mental health, productivity, and design.
Charlotte NickersonResearch Assistant at Harvard UniversityUndergraduate at Harvard University
Charlotte Nickerson
Research Assistant at Harvard University
Undergraduate at Harvard University
Charlotte Nickerson is a student at Harvard University obsessed with the intersection of mental health, productivity, and design.
