[Dialogue] Of Darwinism and Social Darwinism

[Harry Wainwright]

Colleagues, food for thought. Peace, Harry 
  _____  




Published on Tuesday, November 29, 2005 by Common Dreams.org 

Of Darwinism and Social Darwinism 

by Robert B. Reich

The Conservative Movement, as its progenitors like to call it, is now
mounting a full-throttled attack on Darwinism even as it has thoroughly
embraced Darwin's bastard child, social Darwinism. On the face of it, these
positions may appear inconsistent. What unites them is a profound disdain
for science, logic, and fact. 

In The Origin of the Species, published 150 years ago, Charles Darwin
amassed evidence that mankind evolved through the ages from simpler forms of
life through a process he called "natural selection." This insight became
the foundation of modern biological science. But it also greatly disturbed
those who believe the Bible's account of creation to be literally true. In
recent years, as America's Conservative Movement has grown, some of these
people have taken over local and state school boards with the result that,
for example, Kansas's new biology standards now single out evolution as a
"controversial theory." Until a few weeks ago, teachers in Dover,
Pennsylvania were required to tell their students they should explore
"intelligent design" as an alternative to evolution. (The good citizens of
Dover just booted out the school board responsible for this, summoning a
warning from Conservative Coalition broadcaster Pat Robertson that God would
wreak disaster on them.) 

Social Darwinism was developed some thirty years after Darwin's famous book
by a social thinker named Herbert Spencer. Extending Darwin into a realm
Darwin never intended, Spencer and his followers saw society as a
competitive struggle where only those with the strongest moral character
should survive, or else the society would weaken. It was Spencer, not
Darwin, who coined the phrase "survival of the fittest." Social Darwinism
thereby offered a perfect moral justification for America's Gilded Age, when
robber barons controlled much of American industry, the gap between rich and
poor turned into a chasm, urban slums festered, and politicians were bought
off by the wealthy. It allowed John D. Rockefeller, for example, to claim
that the fortune he accumulated through the giant Standard Oil Trust was
"merely a survival of the fittest, ... the working out of a law of nature
and a law of God." 

The modern Conservative Movement has embraced social Darwinism with no less
fervor than it has condemned Darwinism. Social Darwinism gives a moral
justification for rejecting social insurance and supporting tax cuts for the
rich. "In America," says Robert Bork, "'the rich' are overwhelmingly people
- entrepreneurs, small businessmen, corporate executives, doctors, lawyers,
etc. - who have gained their higher incomes through intelligence,
imagination, and hard work." Any transfer of wealth from rich to poor
thereby undermines the nation's moral fiber. Allow the virtuous rich to keep
more of their earnings and pay less in taxes, and they'll be even more
virtuous. Give the non-virtuous poor food stamps, Medicaid, and what's left
of welfare, and they'll fall into deeper moral torpor. 

There is, of course, an ideological inconsistency here. If mankind did not
evolve according to Darwinist logic, but began instead with Adam and Eve,
then it seems unlikely societies evolve according to the
survival-of-the-fittest logic of social Darwinism. By the same token, if you
believe one's economic status is the consequence of an automatic process of
natural selection, then, presumably, you'd believe that human beings
represent the culmination of a similar process, over the ages. That the
conservative mind endures such cognitive dissonance is stunning, but not
nearly as remarkable as the repeated attempts of conservative mouthpieces
such as the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and the Weekly
Standard to convince readers the conservative movement is intellectually
coherent. 

The only consistency between the right's attack on Darwinism and embrace of
social Darwinism is the utter fatuousness of both. Darwinism is correct.
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. 

A democracy is imperiled when large numbers of citizens turn their backs on
scientific fact. Half of Americans recently polled say they don't believe in
evolution. Almost as many say they believe income and wealth depend on moral
worthiness. At a time when American children are slipping behind on
international measures of educational attainment, especially in the
sciences; when global competition is intensifying; and when the median
incomes of Americans are stagnating and the ranks of the poor are
increasing, these ideas, propagated by the so-called Conservative Movement,
are moving us rapidly backwards. 

Robert B. Reich is Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of
Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in
three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under
President Bill Clinton. He has written ten books, including The Work of
Nations, which has been translated into 22 languages; the best-sellers The
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375725121/102-0571182-2687331?v=glance&n=
283155&s=books&v=glance&tagActionCode=commondreams-20/ref=nosim>  Future of
Success and Locked
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375700617/102-0571182-2687331?v=glance&n=
283155&s=books&v=glance&tagActionCode=commondreams-20/ref=nosim>  in the
Cabinet, and his most recent book, Reason. His articles have appeared in the
New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall
Street Journal. Mr. Reich is co-founding editor of The American Prospect
magazine. 

This article can also be found in The American Prospect, December 2005. 

###

 

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