What is Social Darwinism, and what role has it played in the history of social and political ideas? These questions, the point of departure for the present study, are simple to formulate but, as the historiography of Social Darwinism attests, difficult to answer. Anyone consulting the vast literature on Social Darwinism in the hope of resolving them is likely to experience confusion rather than enlightenment. What he or she will encounter are heated controversies over a number of issues. First, scholars dispute the definition of Social Darwinism and, as a consequence, who is to count as a ‘genuine’ Social Darwinist. Second, they disagree over the ideological functions of Social Darwinism with some insisting on its conservative bias whereas others emphasise its reformist – even radical – orientation. Third, there is controversy over the significance of Social Darwinism, with positions ranging from the claim that it was both widespread and influential, to the contrary view that its importance has been grossly exaggerated by hostile commentators. Finally, scholars contest the relationship between Social Darwinism and Darwin himself, broadly dividing between those who see a connection and those who insist on a radical difference between the work of the English naturalist and the ideological uses to which his ideas were put.

This dissension has helped to define the aims and the contents of this book. Indeed, it is my view that any attempt to understand the emergence and history of Social Darwinism must first come to grips with these disputes: appreciating the points at issue and the controversies they have aroused is a first step towards a different approach to the subject.

Introduction

There is a sense in which many of the theorists discussed thus far could be regarded as ‘reform Darwinists’. A. R. Wallace was a socialist; Lombroso, Brace, Haeckel, Royer and Büchner advocated considerable social and political change; and even Spencer and Sumner could be highly critical of contemporary values and institutions. With the extension of democracy during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, though, there came an intensification of debates over universal suffrage, equality, the emancipation of women, welfare provision and international fraternity. Darwinism was enlisted by protagonists on all sides of these debates: the concern of this chapter is with theorists supportive of socio-political change in the direction of greater equality, public welfare, and democracy. They ranged from Marxist revolutionaries through to democratic socialists and ‘New Liberals’ – all sharing a commitment to the use of state power in order to achieve their goals – but also included anarchists desirous of radical change but opposed to the state in any form.

The purpose of this examination is two-fold. The first is to argue that although there was a genre of reformist and socialist Darwinism, some of what has been subsumed under this label was actually opposed to Darwinism as defined in this study. The second aim is to explore the discursive limits of the world view. No matter how polysemous the elements of Social Darwinism were, their integration into a systematic whole acted as a constraint upon their appropriation by any and every ideological and theoretical enterprise. We have already encountered examples of how such constraints generated tensions within theories which presented peaceful cooperation as an ultimate social objective.

Introduction

There is a widely held view among historians and social scientists that Social Darwinism declined in popularity after World War II due to its association with racism and Nazism. The belief is that in the post-war democratic consensus that emerged in the Western states there was little tolerance for theories which apparently gave a biological justification for racism, war or exploitation. The American historian Degler considers these circumstances were not just uncongenial for Social Darwinism but actually fatal to it. ‘Social Darwinism’, he writes, ‘was definitely killed, not merely scotched …’

The thesis that Social Darwinism is dead is false, as will be shown below. The weaker claim that it declined in importance during the immediate post-war period is plausible although the detailed studies required to substantiate it have yet to be made. In any case, by the mid- 1960s Social Darwinism had re-emerged and was reaching wide audiences in Britain and the USA. It took the form of popular writings about the evolutionary heritage of humans that were the forerunners of sociobiology which itself, I shall argue, is a particularly powerful example of Social Darwinism. It is possible that Social Darwinism was manifested in other currents of thought in the post-war era, and that accounts of its decline have been exaggerated, but an investigation of this possibility is outside the scope of this study.

Introduction

Before Darwin published his Descent in 1871, Europeans and Americans had already started to explore the social and psychological implications of Darwinism. As a German enthusiast wrote: ‘from the first appearance of the Darwinian doctrine, every moderately logical thinker must have regarded man as similarly modifiable, and as the result of the mutability of species’. Though exaggerating the acceptance of Darwinism this statement accurately conveys the realisation by many intellectuals that this was a theory rich in implications for the study of human society. Within a quarter of a century of the appearance of the Origin there had emerged a literature devoted to exploring these implications in a wide range of contexts: social and psychological development, class, race and gender, religion and morality, war and peace, crime and destitution. Well before the label itself, Social Darwinism was established as a rich and versatile theoretical resource.

These pioneering examples of Social Darwinism are the focus of this and the next three chapters. The intention is not to provide a comprehensive account of the emergence of Social Darwinism, but rather to investigate the manner in which the world view was deployed in a variety of discursive contexts. This chapter deals with several very early examples which appeared in the 1860s and 1870s in Europe and the USA.

Brace and the evolution of racial harmony

A popular and persistent interpretation of Social Darwinism associates it with doctrines of racial hierarchy and conflict. It certainly was adapted for these purposes at an early stage. In Germany, for instance, a geologist, Friedrich Rolle, in a text published in 1866, emphasised the role of struggle and selection in human history and drew attention to the ‘struggle for space’ between races.

The Lamarckian world view

At this juncture I propose to explore the distinctiveness of Social Darwinism by comparing it, first, to the ideas of the French naturalist Lamarck, and second, to some earlier examples of evolutionary thought.

Jean Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829) elaborated a systematic and influential account of evolution based upon a complex philosophy of life. Although Darwin publicly acknowledged Lamarck's contribution to the theory of evolution, he privately dismissed the Frenchman's work, claiming he had derived nothing from it. There may have been pragmatic reasons for repudiating Lamarck which will be considered below. Other contemporaries of Darwin certainly had a high opinion of Lamarck and I have already drawn attention to Darwin's own endorsement of ‘Lamarckian’ evolutionary mechanisms like the use and disuse of organs and the inheritance of acquired characters. Thus the relationship between the two theories is a matter of importance since some historians have suggested that what has been passed off as Social Darwinism would actually be far more accurately designated Social Lamarckism.

Lamarck's biological theory – he actually coined the word ‘biology’ in the early nineteenth century – was heavily influenced by the idéologues: late eighteenth-century French philosophers dedicated to the creation of a science of mankind. Lamarck extended their project by insisting that humans were part of nature and subject to its laws. Far from constituting a special creation, people differed only quantitatively from other creatures in that they possessed more complex faculties than animals but nothing uniquely human, including the ability to reason. In his Zoological Philosophy of 1809, Lamarck asserted the existence of an evolutionary progression from the simplest to the most complex forms of biological organisation.

Introduction

Sexual – like racial – characteristics have visible manifestations capable of being ordered and classified, read as symbols for other differences, and assigned values. Concern with such characteristics, both physical and mental, and with their meaning, have a long pedigree in Western thought. What invested this concern with particular urgency from the mid-nineteenth century on was the interface of two processes: political agitation for female emancipation and a reinterpretation of nature.

The growth of movements throughout Europe and the USA dedicated to the extension of civil and political rights to women created an intense interest in what became known, both to sympathisers and opponents, as the ‘Woman Question’. These movements challenged prevailing notions of the appropriate division of labour between the sexes and in so doing raised issues about the respective ‘nature’ of men and women and the extent to which these natures were biologically or culturally determined. Feminism, therefore, posed a comprehensive and disturbing challenge in ways not matched by class or even racial issues. As Cynthia Eagle Russett has argued, it not only encompassed education, occupation and legal issues, but intruded into such intimate areas as personal and matrimonial relationships.

The debate was complicated by the fact that while nature often acted as a court of appeal for the protagonists, the understanding of nature was itself undergoing a transformation. There was a long-standing tendency – general if not universal – to personify nature as a female, as at once both a physical and spiritual presence, nurturing, caring and erotic. But this imagery, as much a conception of femininity as of nature, had been undergoing revision even prior to the publication of the Origin.

Introduction

For many people the name of the English philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) would be virtually synonymous with Social Darwinism. Not only did Spencer coin the expression ‘the survival of the fittest’ and apply it to social evolution, he was also instrumental in popularising the term ‘evolution’ in its modern sense. Although his influence waned in the twentieth century, during the last three decades of the nineteenth century he enjoyed a world-wide reputation: his books were translated into many languages and at times there were over a million copies in print. Spencer appears to be not only a quintessential Social Darwinist, therefore, but also a highly influential one.

As was noted in the introduction, however, this identification of Spencer with Social Darwinism has been questioned by modern historians who have denied the existence of specifically Darwinian elements in Spencer's thought. Some commentators have gone so far as to suggest that to interpret Spencer as a Social Darwinist is to misrepresent and even to caricature his work. Others focus upon Spencer's political theory and pay less attention to his evolutionary arguments. Contrary to both these tendencies, I am going to argue, first, that Spencer was a Social Darwinist; and second, that the relation ship between Spencer's evolutionary and political thought is fundamental for an understanding of this latter aspect of his work.

At the age of sixteen, Spencer published a defence of the new Poor Laws in which he invoked scriptural authority for his assertion that the idle and improvident should not be allowed to prosper at the expense of the thrifty and diligent.

Introduction

There is an enormous scholarly literature on Nazism and Fascism, one that is marked by controversy over how the two movements are to be defined, over their origins, sources of support, ideologies and significance. The genocidal policies of the Nazi regime in Germany from 1933 to 1945, culminating in the Holocaust against the Jews, raise additional issues concerning the causes of such actions and the roots of anti-Semitic and racial thinking and policies in German, and more generally, European, culture and history. It has also inclined some commentators to question the extent to which Fascism and Nazism can be considered as members of the same ideological and political family, and to suggest that the latter may be a distinctive and unique phenomenon.

One point on which scholars do seem to have reached a consensus relates to the role of Social Darwinism in both Nazi and Fascist ideology. Social Darwinist ideas are cited as underpinning Nazi policies on war, eugenics and race, and providing a rationale for the emphasis on struggle and conflict found in Italian and French Fascism. Yet there is to date no detailed analysis of the nature and function of Social Darwinism within Nazism and Fascism, or of whether the two ideologies exhibited any significant differences in these respects. The purpose of this chapter is to make a start at filling this lacuna by conducting such an investigation. For the sake of convenience I will deal with German Nazism and Italian Fascism separately, and then conclude by making some general comparative observations.

Introduction

The story of the various national eugenics and racial hygiene movements has been told many times, and it is not my intention to reproduce these histories here. My interest is in the relationship between these movements and Social Darwinism. As I argued in the introduction, eugenics and Social Darwinism should not be conflated for it was possible to endorse one and not the other. Nevertheless, Darwin himself prefigured the concerns of the eugenics movements. In his Descent Darwin signalled his anxiety about the possibility of biological decline caused by social practices that cushioned the unfit from the impact of natural selection. Whereas among ‘savages’ mentally and physically defective individuals were quickly eliminated, in civilised societies such persons were sustained by various medical and charitable practices:

In the closing pages of the book Darwin returned to this topic to suggest that ‘all ought to refrain from marriage who cannot avoid abject poverty for their children’, pointing out that ‘if the prudent avoid marriage whilst the reckless marry, the inferior members tend to supplant the better members of society’.

Introduction

When Darwin published the Origin Americans were preoccupied with slavery, the future of their nation, and the likelihood of war: indeed, the Civil War may have impeded the reception of Darwinism during the 1860s. By this time, however, the United States was experiencing many of the social and political problems besetting Britain, in addition to the divisive issue of slavery, which made race a more immediate domestic concern and one, moreover, that was to be constantly fuelled by successive waves of immigration. This provided a fertile context for ‘scientific’ approaches to and resolutions of these problems, and Darwinism was soon enlisted to these ends, as is evident from Brace's writings on race and class.

Thanks to the efforts of Darwin's supporters, Darwinism had become well established by the 1870s, although not all American scientists were prepared to endorse natural selection fully, and neo-Lamarckism remained influential throughout the century. The position of the distinguished palaeontologist Edward Drinker Cope (1840–97) exemplifies both the continued hold of Lamarck on American naturalists and the powerful fascination exercised by Darwinism. Cope conceded that natural selection performed a culling action upon organic variations but insisted it was unable to account for the variations themselves. These he explained as the consequence of growth forces which increasingly came under the control of ‘intelligent choice’ as one ascended the animal scale. Despite this refusal to grant natural selection a wider role, Cope was profoundly affected by Darwinism. Prior to the publication of the Ascent he had signalled his hostility to natural selection as a cause of progress while simultaneously perceiving the relevance of Darwinism to human evolution.

The structure of social theory

Before proposing a conceptualisation of Social Darwinism, I need to make a detour by way of some brief observations on the structure of social and political theory. As will become evident during the course of this chapter, this digression is central to my argument about the nature of Social Darwinism.

Social and political theory in the West, from the Greeks until the present time, consists of two structural components, which I am going to label a world view and an ideology. The first component consists of a set of assumptions about the order of nature and of the place of humanity within it, and how this order relates to and is affected by the passage of time. It also usually contains a view of social reality and where this fits into the overall configuration of nature, human nature and time.

The second component comprises a theory of human interactions and how these are mediated by institutions. It will therefore contain a descriptive element that purports to explain some features of social and psychological existence; a critique of certain aspects of this existence, and probably of other theories as well; and a prescription for how the sociopolitical system ought to be organised. The ideological aspect of a theory thus contains both descriptive and evaluative features which often makes difficult the separation of the empirical and normative claims that are being made. Theories may vary according to the prevalence of one or other of these sorts of claims, but both are integral to their articulation.