Editing Social Darwinism (section)

==Other regional distributions==
===United States===
Within American society, ideas of social Darwinism reached their greatest prominence during the [[Gilded Age]]. Some argue that the rationale of the late 19th-century "[[captains of industry]]" such as [[John D. Rockefeller]] (1839–1937) and [[Andrew Carnegie]] (1835–1919) owed much to social Darwinism,<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|title= BRIA 19 2 b Social Darwinism and American Laissez-faire Capitalism|url= https://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-19-2-b-social-darwinism-and-american-laissez-faire-capitalism.html|access-date= 27 June 2020|website= Constitutional Rights Foundation | quote = Captains of industry like John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie made fortunes. They also preached "survival of the fittest" in business. }}</ref> and that monopolists of this type applied Darwin's concept of [[natural selection]] to explain corporate dominance in their respective fields and thus to justify their exorbitant accumulations of success and social advancement.<ref name=":2">{{Cite web|last= Reich |first= Robert|date=20 November 2005|title=The Two Darwinisms|url= https://prospect.org/api/content/90c0b968-51b7-5d34-b17c-4e0cfb8296d7/|access-date=27 June 2020|website=The American Prospect|language=en-us}}</ref> Rockefeller, for example, proclaimed: "The growth of a large [[company|business]] is merely a survival of the fittest{{nbsp}}... the working out of a law of nature and a law of God."<ref>{{Cite web|last= Felix|first= Elving |title= Research Guides: John D. Rockefeller: Topics in Chronicling America: Introduction|url=https://guides.loc.gov/chronicling-america-john-rockefeller |access-date=27 June 2020|website=guides.loc.gov|language=en}}</ref> [[Robert Bork]] (1927–2012) backed this notion of inherent characteristics as the sole determinant of survival in the business-operations context when he said: "In America, the rich are overwhelmingly people—entrepreneurs, small-business men, corporate executives, doctors, lawyers, etc.—who have gained their higher incomes through intelligence, imagination, and hard work."<ref>{{Cite book|last= Reich|first= Robert B.|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=wCcuUX4pYs0C&q=the+rich%27+are+overwhelmingly+people+--+entrepreneurs%2C+small-business+men%2C+corporate+executives%2C+doctors%2C+lawyers%2C+etc.+--+who+have+gained+their+higher+incomes+through+intelligence%2C+imagination%2C+and+hard+work.&pg=PA118|title= Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America|date= 2005|publisher= Vintage Books|isbn= 978-1400076604|language= en}}</ref> Moreover, [[William Graham Sumner]] (1840–1910) lauded this same cohort of magnates, and further extended the theory of "corporate Darwinism". Sumner argued that societal progress depended on the "fittest families" passing down wealth and genetic traits to their offspring, thus allegedly creating a lineage of superior citizens.<ref name=":1" /> However, contemporary social scientists reject such claims and have understood that economic status is largely a result of other factors.<ref>{{Cite web|last= Reich |first= Robert | author-link1 = Robert Reich |date=20 November 2005|title= The Two Darwinisms|url= https://prospect.org/api/content/90c0b968-51b7-5d34-b17c-4e0cfb8296d7/|access-date= 30 September 2021|website= The American Prospect|language= en-us | quote = Scientists who are legitimized by peer review and published research are unanimous in their view that evolution is a fact, not a theory. Social Darwinism, meanwhile, is hogwash. Social scientists have long understood that one's economic status in society is not a function of one's moral worth. It depends largely on the economic status of one's parents, the models of success available while growing up, and educational opportunities along the way.}}</ref>

In 1883 Sumner published a highly-influential pamphlet entitled "What Social Classes Owe to Each Other", in which he insisted that the [[social class]]es owe each other nothing, synthesizing Darwin's findings with [[free enterprise|free-enterprise]] capitalism for his justification.{{citation needed|date= June 2012}} According to Sumner, those who feel an obligation to provide assistance to those unequipped or under-equipped to compete for resources, will lead to a country in which the weak and inferior are encouraged to breed more like themselves, eventually dragging the country down. Sumner also believed that the best equipped to win the struggle for existence was the [[American businessman]], and concluded that taxes and regulations serve as dangers to his survival. This pamphlet makes no mention of Darwinism, and only refers to Darwin in a statement on the meaning of liberty, that "There never has been any man, from the primitive barbarian up to a [[Alexander von Humboldt|Humboldt]] or a Darwin, who could do as he had a mind to."<ref>{{Cite book|url= https://www.gutenberg.org/files/18603/18603-h/18603-h.htm|title= The Project Gutenberg eBook of What Social Classes Owe To Each Other, by William Graham Sumner.|date=16 June 2006|via= www.gutenberg.org|access-date=15 April 2018}}</ref>

Sumner never fully embraced Darwinian ideas, and some contemporary historians do not believe that Sumner ever actually believed in social Darwinism.<ref>"<cite>A careful reading of the theories of Sumner and Spencer exonerates them from the century-old charge of social Darwinism in the strict sense of the word. They did not themselves advocate the application of Darwin's theory of natural selection.</cite>" [https://books.google.com/books?id=7BJUIOnC534C&dq=bannister+social+darwinism&pg=PA33 The Social Meaning of Modern Biology: From Social Darwinism to Sociobiology]</ref> The great majority of American businessmen rejected the anti-philanthropic implications of Sumner's theory. Instead they gave millions to build schools, colleges, hospitals, art institutes, parks and many other institutions. [[Andrew Carnegie]], who admired Spencer, was the leading philanthropist in the world in the period from 1890 to 1920, and a major [[leader]] against [[imperialism]] and warfare.<ref>"At least a part—and sometimes a generous part" of the great fortunes went back to the community through many kinds of philanthropic endeavor, says {{cite book |first=Robert H. |last=Bremner |title=American Philanthropy |edition=2nd |year=1988 |isbn=978-0226073248 |page=86 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xRIodAUj1-wC&pg=PA86 }}</ref> For these and other reasons (such as the general lack of interest in academic pursuits most Gilded Age barons displayed) other writers, such as [[Irvin G. Wyllie]] and [[Thomas C. Leonard]], argue that businessmen in the Gilded Age in fact displayed little support for the ideas of social Darwinism.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Wyllie |first1=Irvin G. |title=Social Darwinism and the Businessman |journal=Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society |date=1959 |volume=103 |issue=5 |pages=629–635 |jstor=985421 |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/985421 |access-date=14 May 2024 |issn=0003-049X}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Leonard |first1=Thomas C. |title=Origins of the myth of social Darwinism: The ambiguous legacy of Richard Hofstadter's Social Darwinism in American Thought |journal=Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization |date=July 2009 |volume=71 |issue=1 |pages=37–51 |doi=10.1016/j.jebo.2007.11.004 |url=https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167268109000584 |access-date=14 May 2024}}</ref>

The Englishman [[H. G. Wells]] (1866–1946) was heavily influenced by Darwinist thought, but reacted against social Darwinism.<ref>
{{cite book
 | last1 = Page
 | first1 = Michael R.
 | year = 2012
 | chapter = 'Dim Outlines on a Desolate Beach': H.G. Wells
 | title = The Literary Imagination from Erasmus Darwin to H.G. Wells: Science, Evolution, and Ecology
 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=WYC1CwAAQBAJ
 | location = London
 | publisher = Routledge
 | publication-date = 2016
 | page = 162
 | isbn = 978-1317025276
 | access-date = 30 September 2021
 | quote = The Traveller's conjectures allow Wells to make a startling critique of social Darwinism [...] and to suggest an alternative evolutionary trajectory that moves beyond the desire for utopia: in the end, human evolution will reverse itself and witness an inevitable decline; progress itself must inevitably result in degeneration.
}}
</ref> American novelist [[Jack London]] (1876–1916) wrote stories of survival that incorporated his views on social Darwinism.<ref>"<cite>Borrowing from Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, social Darwinists believed that societies, as do organisms evolve over time. Nature then determined that the strong survive and the weak perish. In Jack London's case, he thought that certain favored races were destined for survival, mainly those that could preserve themselves while supplanting others, as in the case of the White race.</cite>" [http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/London/Essays/philosophy.html The philosophy of Jack London] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051027154902/http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/London/Essays/philosophy.html |date=27 October 2005 }}</ref> American film-director [[Stanley Kubrick]] (1928–1999) has been described as "just an old-fashioned social Darwinist".<ref>
{{cite book
 | last1=Herr |first1=Michael |title=Kubrick |publisher=Grove Press |isbn=978-0802138187
 | page=[https://archive.org/details/kubrick00herr/page/11 11]
 | url=https://archive.org/details/kubrick00herr |url-access=registration
 | access-date=20 February 2016|year=2000
 | quote =  He was just an old-fashioned social Darwinist (seemingly) [...].
}}</ref>

On the basis of U.S. theory and practice, '''commercial Darwinism''' operates in [[Market (economics)|market]]s worldwide, pitting [[corporation]] against corporation in struggles for survival.<ref>
{{cite book
 | last1 = Vengrow
 | first1 = Jeffrey
 | last2 = Voehl
 | first2 = Frank
 | chapter = Value Stream Quality System
 | editor1-last = Stein
 | editor1-first = Martin
 | editor2-last = Voehl
 | editor2-first = Frank
 | title = Macrologistics Management: A Catalyst for Organizational Change
 | date =  2020
 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=OqD5DwAAQBAJ
 | edition = reprint
 | publisher = CRC Press
 | page =
 | isbn = 978-1000162240
 | access-date = 30 September 2021
 | quote = In the global marketplace, commercial Darwinism is alive and well. Survival of the fittest in this sense has little to do with genetics, but it has everything to do with developing a competitive advantage. [...] Survival is often associated with adaptation and change.
}}
</ref>

===Japan===
{{See also|Eugenics in Japan}}
Social Darwinism has influenced political, public health and social movements in Japan since the late 19th and early 20th century. Social Darwinism was originally brought to Japan through the works of Francis Galton and Ernst Haeckel as well as United States, British and French Lamarckian eugenic written studies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.<ref>{{cite journal |title=Eugenics in Japan: some ironies of modernity, 1883–1945 |last1=Otsubo |first1=S. |last2=Bartholomew |first2=J. R. |journal=Sci Context |year=1998 |volume=11 |issue=3–4 |pages=545–565 |doi=10.1017/S0269889700003203 |pmid=15168677 |s2cid=840243 }}</ref> Eugenism as a science was hotly debated at the beginning of the 20th century, in ''Jinsei-Der Mensch'', the first eugenics journal in the empire. As Japan sought to close ranks with the west, this practice was adopted wholesale along with colonialism and its justifications.

===China===
Social Darwinism was formally introduced to China through the translation by [[Yan Fu]] of Huxley's ''Evolution and Ethics'', in the course of an extensive series of translations of influential Western thought.<ref>[[Jonathan D. Spence]]. ''[[The Search for Modern China]]''. [[W.W. Norton]], 1990, [https://books.google.com/books?id=vI1RRslLNSwC&q=social+darwinism p. 301].</ref> Yan's translation strongly impacted Chinese scholars because he added national elements not found in the original. Yan Fu criticized Huxley from the perspective of Spencerian social Darwinism in his own annotations to the translation.<ref>{{Cite journal |doi = 10.1017/S0007087418000808|pmid = 30587253|title = Translation and transmutation: The Origin of Species in China|journal = The British Journal for the History of Science|volume = 52|pages = 117–141|year = 2019|last1 = Jin|first1 = Xiaoxing|issue = 1|s2cid = 58605626}}</ref> He understood Spencer's sociology as "not merely analytical and descriptive, but prescriptive as well", and saw Spencer building on Darwin, whom Yan summarized thus:
{{blockquote|Peoples and living things struggle for survival. At first, species struggle with species; as they [people] gradually progress, there is a struggle between one social group and another. The weak invariably become the prey of the strong, the stupid invariably become subservient to the clever.<ref>Spence (1990), p 301</ref>}}
By the 1920s, social Darwinism found expression in the promotion of eugenics by the Chinese sociologist [[Pan Guangdan]]. When Chiang Kai-shek started the New Life movement in 1934, he "...{{nbsp}}harked back to theories of Social Darwinism", writing that "only those who readapt themselves to new conditions, day by day, can live properly. When the life of a people is going through this process of readaptation, it has to remedy its own defects, and get rid of those elements which become useless. Then we call it new life."<ref>Spence (1990), pp. 414–415.</ref>

[[Zhang Jingsheng]] was a notable proponent of Social Darwinism, eugenics, and scientific racism in 20th-century China. His chosen name, Jingsheng, translated to "competition for survival".<ref name="Sex, Eugenics, Aesthetics">{{cite thesis|first=Leon Antonio|last=Rocha|title=Sex, Eugenics, Aesthetics, Utopia in the Life and Work of Zhang Jingsheng (1888–1970)|degree=PhD|publisher=[[University of Cambridge]]|date=2010}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |first=Charles Leland |last=Leary |title=Intellectual Orthodoxy, the Economy of Knowledge and the Debate Over Zhang Jingsheng's ''Sex Histories'' |journal=Republican China |volume=18 |issue=2 |date=1993 |pages=99–13|doi=10.1080/08932344.1993.11720223 }}</ref> He advocated a form of [[positive eugenics]], recommending [[interracial marriage]] with Europeans and the Japanese to combat what he perceived as "weaknesses" of the [[Zhonghua minzu|Chinese race]].<ref name="Sex, Eugenics, Aesthetics" /><ref>{{cite journal|title=Epistemic Modernity and the Emergence of Homosexuality in China|first=Howard|last=Chiang|doi=10.1111/j.1468-0424.2010.01612.x|journal=[[Gender & History]]|volume=22|issue=3|date=2010|pages=629–657 }}</ref>

===Germany===
In the 1860s and 1870s, social Darwinism began to take shape in the interaction between Charles Darwin and his German advocates, namely [[August Schleicher]], [[Max Müller]] and Ernst Haeckel. [[Evolutionary linguistics]] was taken as a platform to construe a Darwinian theory of mankind. Since it was thought at the time that the [[orangutan]] and human brain were roughly the same size, Darwin and his colleagues suspected that only the invention of language could account for differentiation between humans and other [[Great Ape]]s. It was suggested that the evolution of language and the mind must go hand in hand. From this perspective, empirical evidence from languages from around the world was interpreted by Haeckel as supporting the idea that nations, despite having rather similar physiology, represented such distinct lines of 'evolution' that mankind should be divided into nine different species. Haeckel constructed an evolutionary and intellectual hierarchy of such species.<ref name="Richards_2013">{{cite book |last=Richards |first=R. J. |year=2013| title=Was Hitler a Darwinian?: Disputed Questions in the History of Evolutionary Theory | publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0226058931 }}</ref> In a similar vein, Schleicher regarded languages as different species and sub-species, adopting Darwin's concept of selection through competition to the study of the history and spread of nations.<ref name="Aronoff_2017">{{cite book |last=Aronoff|first=Mark |editor-last1=Bowern | editor-last2=Horn | editor-last3=Zanuttini |title=On Looking into Words (and Beyond): Structures, Relations, Analyses|publisher=SUNY Press |year=2017|pages=443–456 |chapter=Darwinism tested by the science of language | url=https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/151| access-date=3 March 2020 |isbn= 978-3946234920}}</ref> Some of their ideas, including the concept of [[Lebensraum|living space]] were adopted to the Nazi ideology after their deaths.<ref name="Richards_2013"/>

Social evolution theories in Germany gained large popularity in the 1860s and had a strong antiestablishment connotation first. Social Darwinism allowed people to counter the connection of ''[[Relations between the Catholic Church and the state|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 [[World view|Weltanschauung]], a world view based on scientific reasoning in his Monist League. [[Friedrich von Hellwald]] had a strong role in popularizing it in Austria. Darwin's work served as a catalyst to popularize evolutionary thinking.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Oxc_CwAAQBAJ|title=Sozialdarwinismus als wissenschaftliches Konzept und politisches Programm, in: Gangolf Hübinger (ed.), Europäische Wissenschaftskulturen und politische Ordnungen in der Moderne (1890–1970) (= Schriften des Historischen Kollegs, Kolloquien 77), München 2014, pp. 99–121.|last=Puschner|first=Uwe|date=2014|publisher=Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG|isbn=978-3110446784|language=de}}</ref>

A sort of aristocratic turn, the use of the struggle for life as a base of social Darwinism ''[[sensu stricto]]'' came up after 1900 with [[Alexander Tille]]'s 1895 work ''Entwicklungsethik'' ('Ethics of Evolution'), which asked to move "from Darwin till [[Friedrich Nietzsche|Nietzsche]]". Further interpretations moved to ideologies propagating a racist and hierarchical society and provided ground for the later radical versions of social Darwinism.<ref name=":0" />

Social Darwinism came to play a major role in the ideology of [[Nazism]], which combined it with a similarly [[pseudo-scientific]] theory of [[racial hierarchy]] to identify the Germans as a part of what the Nazis regarded as an [[Aryan race|Aryan]] or [[Nordic race|Nordic]] [[master race]].<ref name=Baum2006_156>{{cite book|last=Baum|first=Bruce David|year=2006|title=The Rise and Fall of the Caucasian Race: A Political History of Racial Identity|location=New York City/London|publisher=New York University Press|page=156}}</ref> Nazi social Darwinist beliefs led them to retain business competition and private property as economic engines.<ref name="economics">Barkai, Avaraham 1990. ''Nazi Economics: Ideology, Theory and Policy.'' Oxford Berg Publisher.</ref><ref name="university28">Hayes, Peter. 1987 ''Industry and Ideology IG Farben in the Nazi Era.'' Cambridge University Press.</ref>  Nazism likewise opposed [[social welfare]] based on a social Darwinist belief that the weak and feeble should perish.<ref name="evans">{{cite book|last=Evans|first=Richard J.|author-link=Richard J. Evans|year=2005|title=The Third Reich in Power|publisher=[[Penguin Books]]|location=New York|isbn=978-0143037903|title-link=The Third Reich in Power|pages=[https://archive.org/details/thirdreichinpowe00evan/page/483 483–484]}}</ref> This association with Nazism, coupled with increasing recognition that it was scientifically unfounded, contributed to the broader rejection of social Darwinism after the end of [[World War II]].<ref name=History>{{cite web|access-date=31 May 2019|title=Social Darwinism|url=https://www.history.com/topics/early-20th-century-us/social-darwinism|website=History.com|date=21 August 2018 }}</ref><ref name=Encarta>{{cite encyclopedia|title=Social Darwinism|encyclopedia=Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2000|year=2000|url=http://autocww.colorado.edu/~toldy2/E64ContentFiles/SociologyAndReform/SocialDarwinism.html|last=Bannister|first=Robert C.|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191002062953/http://autocww.colorado.edu/~toldy2/E64ContentFiles/SociologyAndReform/SocialDarwinism.html|archive-date=2019-10-02}}</ref>