Social Darwinism
"Social Darwinism" is a name given to various theories emerging in the United Kingdom, North America, and western Europe in the 1870s that claim to apply biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology and politics. According to their critics, at least, social Darwinists argue that the strong should see their wealth and power increase while the weak should see their wealth and power decrease. Different social-Darwinist groups have differing views about which groups of people are considered to be the strong and which groups of people are considered to be the weak, and they also hold different opinions about the precise mechanisms that should be used to reward strength and punish weakness. Many social Darwinists stress competition between individuals in laissez-faire (hands-off) capitalism. Social Darwinism—as well as the notions of evolution and Charles Darwin—are frequently linked with racialism, nationalism, imperialism, and eugenics. Many critics note that social Darwinism became one of the pillars of fascism and Nazi ideology; Nazi Germany's application of policies of "survival of the fittest" eventually created a very strong backlash against the theory.
Darwinist Collectivism
A different form of social Darwinism was part of the ideological foundations of Nazism and other fascist movements. This form did not envision survival of the fittest within an individualist order of society, but rather advocated a type of racial and national struggle in which the state directed human breeding through eugenics. Terms such as "Darwinian collectivism" or "Reform Darwinism" have been suggested to describe these views, in order to differentiate them from the individualist type of social Darwinism.
Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner
Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher, biologist, anthropologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era. Spencer proved to be a popular figure in the 1880s primarily because his application of evolution to areas of human endeavor promoted an optimistic view of the future. In the United States, writers and thinkers of the Gilded Age such as Edward L. Youmans, William Graham Sumner, John Fiske, and John W. Burgess developed theories of social evolution as a result of their exposure to the works of Darwin and Spencer.
In 1883, William Graham Sumner published a highly influential pamphlet entitled What Social Classes Owe to Each Other, in which he insisted that the social classes owe each other nothing, synthesizing Darwin's findings with free-enterprise capitalism to provide his justification. According to Sumner, those who feel an obligation to provide assistance to those unequipped or under-equipped to compete for survival will create a country in which the weak and inferior are encouraged to breed more of the like, which will eventually drag the country down. Sumner also believed that the best equipped to win the struggle for survival was the American businessman, and concluded that taxes and regulations serve as dangers to his survival.
Impact
These ideas did have influence on American politics. For example, The Bourbon Democrats supported a free-market policy, with low tariffs, low taxes, less spending and, in general, a laissez-faire government. However, the great majority of American businessmen rejected the anti-philanthropic implications of the theory. Instead, they gave millions of dollars to build schools, colleges, hospitals, art institutes, parks, and many other institutions. Andrew Carnegie, who admired Spencer, was the leading philanthropist in the world (1890–1920), and a major critic of imperialism and warfare.
William Graham Sumner
William Graham Sumner's 1883 pamphlet, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other was highly influential.