"The Survival of the Fittest is our Doctrine": History or Histrionics?

Abstract

Whatever their differences American reformers of the late nineteenth century reached unusual agreement on one point. Opponents of increased state action, they alleged, were engaged in a highly dubious enterprise of wedding Darwinism to the virtues of classical economics, thus trading illicitly on the prestige of the new science. In Progress and Poverty (1879), Henry George charged that Malthusianism was now "buttressed" by the new science, and bemoaned "a sort of hopeful fatalism, of which current literature is full." "The final plea for any form of brutality in these days," wrote the Nationalist Edward Bellamy, "is that it tends to the survival of the fittest." "The survival of the fittest is our doctrine," echoed the reformer Henry Demarest Lloyd. "The representatives of science" noted the sociologist Lester Ward more soberly, "stand boldly in the track of current events." Ward acknowledged that appeals to "natural law" antedated the Darwinian doctrines of "survival of the fittest" and "natural selection." But, he added, "it cannot be denied that these doctrines ... have greatly strengthened this habit of thought."' This testimony is important for two reasons. Urging programs that ranged from the Single Tax to socialism, these reformers were in common battle against theories of laissez-faire, individualism, and related success mythologies that had bloomed during America's first stage of industrialism. The charge that defenders of laissez-faire had misappropriated Darwinism was an important part of their struggle since it usually prefaced a "correct" reading of evolution, the "reform Darwinism" that informed many socialist and neo-liberal proposals. Moreover, these same charges were widely quoted in historical accounts of "social Darwinism" which appeared during the 1940's and 1950's, the most important of which is Richard Hofstadter's Social Darwinism in American Thought (1944). Darwinism-as embodied in the popular catchwords "struggle for existence," "natural selection," and "survival of the fittest," as well as in a general evolutionism-was, Hofstadter

Compassion in the Context of Capitalistic Organizations: Evidence from the 2011 Brisbane Floods

“…Nobel prize-winning economist Milton Friedman (Friedman 1970, p. 173) asserts that business executives who contribute corporate resources to social causes are engaged in "pure and unadulterated socialism" and that business "cannot be said to have responsibilities" because "only people have responsibilities." Darwinian notions of survival of the fittest have been used to justify ideas about business as inherently brutal and ruthless (Bannister 2000). Capitalistic practices operating under this theory are considered to have detrimental effects (a) on the environment, (b) on the well-being (psychological and physical) and mortality of employees (through stressful, unhealthy and unsafe working environments), and (c) on clients, by fostering destructive appetites and addictions (Kanter 2011;Pfeffer 2010aPfeffer , 2011.…”

Herbert Spencer and the Political Economy of Mean-Spiritedness Revived

“…2 Lodged in the Hobson papers at the archives of Hull University in Hull, England, the letter and an enclosure sent with it to Hobson deal with jingoism and advocate denial of mass access to public education so that the working class, part of it as yet The author may be contacted at 809 Murray Rd., Flagstaff, AZ 86001-1237, USA. 'See Turner (1985), Bannister (1988), Perrin (1983, Intro., Chapt. 1), and Perrin (1976, pp.…”