What Is Social Darwinism?

Social evolution theories in Germany gained large popularity in the 1860s and had a strong antiestablishment connotation first. Social Darwinism allowed to counter the connection of Thron und Altar, the intertwined establishment of clergy and nobility and provided as well the idea of progressive change and evolution of society as a whole. Ernst Haeckel propagated both Darwinism as a part of natural history and as a suitable base for a modern Weltanschauung, a world view based on scientific reasoning in his Monistenbund. Friedrich von Hellwald had a strong role in popularizing it in Austria. Darwin's work served as a catalyst to popularize evolutionary thinking. Darwin himself called Haeckels connection between Socialism and Evolution through

Nonetheless, his ideas received a major boost from Darwin's theories and the general application of ideas such as "adaptation" and "survival of the fittest" to social thought is known as "Social Darwinism". It would be possible to argue that human evolution showed the benefits of cooperation and community. Spencer, and Social Darwinists after him took another view. He believed that society was evolving toward increasing freedom for individuals; and so held that government intervention, ought to be minimal in social and political life.

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Consider Congress. Members’ median net worth, in 2011, was $966,000. “They’re quite wealthy individuals,” Kraus says. “And because they’re wealthy they’re likely to engage in not only these essentialistic processes, but these people actually have power to enact laws to maintain inequality.” A top adviser to the U.K.’s education secretary just produced a report arguing that “discussions on issues such as social mobility entirely ignore genetics.” He claimed that school performance is as much as 70 percent genetic and criticized England’s Sure Start program as a waste of money. (As Scott Barry Kaufman, an intelligence researcher at NYU and the author of Ungifted, points out, “Since genes are always interacting with environmental triggers, there is simply no way to parse how much of an individual child’s performance is due to nature or nurture.”)

Sociologist Herbert Spencer, who coined the term “survival of the fittest” and popularized the idea that competition was good in both nature and society, began espousing his ideas before “The Origin of the Species” was even written. Many of his ideas on evolution came from other biologists and from Victorian culture, not Darwin. (Some now see Spencer as an early