Social Darwinism

Not publicly supported by Darwin himself. Social Darwinism has been used to support right wing political ideologies and has been used as a means to perpetuate existing stratified social structures. It main doctrine is that a factor such as intelligence or likely-hood to commit violent crime is predetermined at birth. Much of the evidence was found in concordances between monozygotic twins.

The discovery of was a revelation for social theorists. However application of selective breeding among domesticated animals is centuries old. Prior to the publications of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species (published 1858), English political economist Robert Malthus (1766-1834) was first to suggest the potential benefits of selective breeding among human beings. Malthus is famous for his scientific contribution of Malthusian growth, which you may recognise from when we looked at ecology. Robert also devised the Malthusian catastrophe an idealised situation in which he discussed the benefits of famines and diseases in aid of wiping out the lower strata’s of society. Charles Darwin’s half cousin Francis Galton (1822-1911) coined the term eugenics and created new with it a new biosocial movement Galton feared the effects human civilisation would have on the natural selection of mankind and predicted a degeneration of the quality of the human gene pool. During World War II the grim reality of the application of human breeding programs and sterilisation, euthanasia and extermination of undesirables became realised under the rule of Adolf Hitler who became leader of the Nazi party in 1921 until his eventual suicide in 1945.