Ship of Fools: darwinism, social darwinism, and American Christians

Thread: darwinism, social darwinism, and American Christians Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Josephine (# 3899) on :

This essay is old, but it's interesting. Especially this point:

quote:
During the first few decades after the publication of The Origin of Species, for instance, Americans had good reason to reject the theory of natural selection and to treat public intellectuals with suspicion. From the beginning, Darwin's theory was mixed up in the US with the brutal philosophy - now known as social Darwinism - of the British writer Herbert Spencer. Spencer's doctrine, promoted in the popular press with the help of funding from Andrew Carnegie, John D Rockefeller and Thomas Edison, suggested that millionaires stood at the top of a scala natura established by evolution. By preventing unfit people being weeded out, government intervention weakened the nation. Gross economic inequalities were both justifiable and necessary.

Darwinism, in other words, became indistinguishable from the most bestial form of laissez-faire economics. Many Christians responded with revulsion. It is profoundly ironic that the doctrine rejected a century ago by such prominent fundamentalists as William Jennings Bryan is now central to the economic thinking of the Christian right. Modern fundamentalists reject the science of Darwinian evolution and accept the pseudoscience of social Darwinism.

The idea that American Christians rejected Darwinism because it was tainted by social Darwinism makes sense. But the embrace of social Darwinism by the Christian right makes no sense. What happened?

Posted by OliviaG (# 9881) on :

Christians changed? [Frown]

OliviaG

Posted by Josephine (# 3899) on :

quote:
Originally posted by OliviaG:
Christians changed? OliviaG

But how, and when, and why?

Posted by Louise (# 30) on :

George Monbiot is a journalist and polemicist skating over the subject in an article - it's actually quite a complicated history of ideas question,

This looks useful as does this.

It looks like William Jennings Bryan made much play of opposing some ideas which were later labelled 'Social Darwinism' (which is a misnomer - the ideas usually covered by this were invented by Spencer and nothing to do with Darwin who rejected them) but this was not Jennings Bryan's principal plank - which was that he believed embracing evolution weakened faith.

However in contrast to him there were many other theologians who accepted evolution and did not draw conclusions like Spencer from it. There were lots of mainstream evangelicals who were 'Old Earth' creationists who could easily square their faith with evolution. This made them neither 'social darwinists' nor Darwin deniers. So Monbiot I think is wrong to make so much play of evolution/ laissez faire capitalism being 'mixed up' from the beginning or 'indistinguishable' to such a degree. Lots of Christians were quite capable of disentangling things, and not so misinformed or opportunist as to lump both strands of thought together like that.

For every Carnegie who leapt at Spencer's ideas you could also find liberal Christian, socialist or even anarchist attempts at application of evolution to sociology. In fact a lot of what is thought of as 'Social Darwinism' was basically a distortion caused by later historians looking back on the pre-WW2 period and retrospectively labelling right-wing uses of Evolution as 'Social Darwinism' and a Bad Thing leading to Nazis and eugenics, but ignoring progressive/liberal uses. This article is helpful too

quote:
Overall, the label of “Social Darwinism” is unhelpful and misleading. In its established context it serves the purpose of tolerating “Darwinism” in biology but entirely excluding it from social science. It lumps together and dismisses a whole host of varied and important developments in the 1870–1914 period that in some way developed or maintained links between biology and the social sciences, including the careful use of biological analogies in the analysis of social evolution (Hodgson, 2004). We should be critical of
racist, sexist and imperialist ideologies, but these emanate neither from the act of linking biology with the social sciences, nor from the principles of Darwinism.

The woods can be dangerous. So we might tell children stories
of woodland beasts or bogeymen, to warn them away from the
forest. Similarly, prevailing accounts of “Social Darwinism” have been invented as bogeyman stories, to warn all social scientists away from the darkened woodland of biology. We are told that any use of ideas or analogies from biology in the social sciences is unsafe. We are warned not to stray into that biological zone, for terrible things might happen, as they surely happened before. But scientists should not be treated like children. And some accounts of the history of “Social Darwinism” are false or misleading in several crucial details.
It would be better if the use as a descriptive term of the highly
ambiguous and imperfectly grounded phrase “Social Darwinism” were discontinued.

So basically, it would seem to me that Monbiot is massively overstating his case and basing it mostly around one person without even stopping to unpack the problems of what he is labelling as 'Social Darwinism'.

I seriously doubt (though I could be wrong I'm not an expert) that all or even the majority of 1920s fundamentalists were anti-capitalist campaigners who were basing their opposition to evolution on opposition to Spencer, although it could well have looked like a handy stick to be wielded on occasion. (I'm sure it was a strand, but since even for Jennings Bryan it wasn't his main reason for rejecting Evolution, it raises doubts for me as to how influential a strand that was)

With regard to a later embrace of laissez-faire capitalism, I would guess that showing your opposition to Godless Commies in the Cold War by being Capitalists - red only in tooth and claw - would put Christian anti-capitalism clean out of favour.

cheers,
L

[ 19. September 2011, 02:27: Message edited by: Louise ]

Posted by OliviaG (# 9881) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:

quote:
Originally posted by OliviaG:
Christians changed? OliviaG
But how, and when, and why?

I date it back to Reagan's presidency. He and the other neo-cons convinced a lot of Americans that God helps those who help themselves and that wealth is a sign of God's favour. They also pushed the idea that "immoral" people deserve whatever happens to them. Both are pretty profoundly un-Christian ideas, but they have been taken up quite enthusiastically by many American Christians, after being dressed up in words like "freedom" and "personal responsibility". OliviaG

Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on :

The larger question is "why does the underclass vote against its own interest?" Joe Bageant has explored this at considerable length.

Self-reliance is a great virtue in the eyes of farmers and other country folk. Bageant's grandfather belonged to a local patriotic club one of whose activities was to keep a fund to help defray funeral costs of any member for whom a death in the family caused financial hardship. This compassionate, thoughtful, fraternal gesture had to be stopped when a lawyer from the insurance industry threatened to turn the club in for running an illegal insurance racket.

After the death of a child in Bageant's own extended family, the family ordered and received a rosewood coffin. But on the day of the funeral, they were horrified to discover that a cheaper pinewood coffin had been substituted. The underhanded undertaker knew that the family would neither delay the funeral nor countenance a later exhumation in the name of getting their money's worth. So he got away with a brazen swindle.

It doesn't take many long-remembered incidents like these to maintain a deep-seated suspicion of city folk on the part of country folk. Farmers speak of "city rats", Bageant explained, because they eat inexorably into the harvest. One says "it's about values" without always being able to specify what one means. His writings are rather an eye-opener in some ways.

[ 20. September 2011, 22:12: Message edited by: Alogon ]

Posted by OliviaG (# 9881) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
... Self-reliance is a great virtue in the eyes of farmers and other country folk. ...

Canadian farmers tend to be more collectivist, I think. There's co-op stores that supply anything and everything, there are marketing boards and wheat pools. The general strike was in Winnipeg, the CCF was founded in Regina. Medicare got its start in Saskatchewan and Alberta. OliviaG

Posted by ProgenitorDope (# 16648) on :

If I could offer a grunt's eye view--that is to say, strictly in my own limited experience--the modern schema you're referring to (for the majority at least) isn't so much Social Darwinism as it is just wanting what's fair. "Fairness" in this case being that a man reaps what he sows.

Me personally, though: speaking as one of the few actual Social Darwinists, I've been like that ever since I went to college and lost all faith in humanity and anything tangentially related to it. But that's just me.

Posted by ToujoursDan (# 10578) on :

quote:
Originally posted by OliviaG:

quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:

quote:
Originally posted by OliviaG:
Christians changed? OliviaG
But how, and when, and why?
I date it back to Reagan's presidency. He and the other neo-cons convinced a lot of Americans that God helps those who help themselves and that wealth is a sign of God's favour. They also pushed the idea that "immoral" people deserve whatever happens to them. Both are pretty profoundly un-Christian ideas, but they have been taken up quite enthusiastically by many American Christians, after being dressed up in words like "freedom" and "personal responsibility". OliviaG

But doesn't the idea that God rewards the Elect with earthly success and punishes the Wicked go back to the kind of Calvinism as practised by the Puritans? I seem to remember reading that one can tell who is in God's favour by their earthly success in colonial American literature, and that this was partially where the Protestant work-ethic came from. A similar idea certainly played a part in the slavery debate (Africans having the mark of Cain and born to serve White people) in the 19th Century.

I think all Reagan did was water a seed that had been laying dormant since the development of egalitarianism in the 1930s or so. He certainly used some racist and classist dog whistles (i.e., [black] Cadillac driving welfare mothers popping out more kids to get more $ handouts from hard working [white] taxpayers) to help push his policies through, but these dog whistles wouldn't have worked if they weren't a part of our culture milieu.

Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
The larger question is "why does the underclass vote against its own interest?" Joe Bageant has explored this at considerable length.

The larger question is "do they?"

The idea that the Republicans or the Tea Party represent the poor is a myth. The Republicans are a mostly middle class group and educationally are strongest amongst those with undergraduate degrees (but not higher ones). And the Tea Party likewise. The Tea Party appears to consider their interests to be to keep people under them.

quote:
Farmers speak of "city rats", Bageant explained, because they eat inexorably into the harvest.

Farmers are not an underclass and never have been. In order to farm, you need land. You need assets. Now if you're talking about transient farm labourers you might have a point. But not static farmers.

Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
The larger question is "do they?"

Well, Republicans get elected. When wealth is more concentrated in a few hands than at any time since the eve of the Great Depression (if then), and more people can't pay their bills, the Republicans have hopes of recapturing the White House while trumpeting policies that can only exaggerate this concentration further. They make fewer bones about it all the time. States like Wisconsin (where I was born and raised) and Pennsylvania (where I live now) used to have "progressive" Republican traditions, but these are suddenly a thing of the past. Many people are either voting against their economic interest or are allowing this to happen by not voting at all.

quote:

The idea that the Republicans or the Tea Party represent the poor is a myth.

Clearly. So why do so many people believe it?

quote:
Republicans are a mostly middle class group and educationally are strongest amongst those with undergraduate degrees (but not higher ones).

By and large, then, you would expect the suburbs around Philadelphia to be solidly Republican. Some of them are, but they can't be taken for granted. Many of them have gone 'blue.' These areas are not the home of "the base." For that, go to the interior of the state.

quote:
Farmers are not an underclass and never have been.

True-- and even if some of them were, they'd never admit it-- but that's not the end of the story. There are far more ex-farmers or children-of-farmers than farmers today. Many of them abandoned farming with great regret because it had become unprofitable (e.g. my own brother in law). The lucrative farming is agribusiness (and this probably did not happen by accident). These families were uprooted from homes that might have been theirs for generations and forced to take often menial jobs in cities. That's where things get tragic.

Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:
The idea that American Christians rejected Darwinism because it was tainted by social Darwinism makes sense. But the embrace of social Darwinism by the Christian right makes no sense. What happened?

Does the American right use social Darwinist rhetoric, though?

I've always heard the argument for small-government capitalism (both here and from what filters across from the US) put in terms of people being allowed to keep what's theirs, money and property which they worked for, rather than have it taken by the government. Romanlion's thread in Purgatory at the moment is a good example. It's not an inherent part of that argument that the economic model which results sorts the weak from the strong or the meritorious from the feckless. One might advance it while believing (or purporting to believe) that the vast majority of people would be much better off with less state control.

Rhetoric which depicts the less well off as losers is probably a non-starter for mass appeal, but rhetoric that says that people get to keep what they have does have an appeal. If you have very little, and distrust your government, I suspect it has a great deal of appeal. If I were struggling on a low wage, I'd probably find it comforting to be told by my political representative that there were reasons of principle, as well as ones of policy, that would stop him raising taxes. If I didn't trust any political party to make my life better, I might still vote for one that at least promised to leave me alone and not make my life worse. And you could then try to sell laissez faire capitalism to me on that basis, without mentioning social Darwinism.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
Rhetoric which depicts the less well off as losers is probably a non-starter for mass appeal

It depends on how it's framed. If it's framed in such a way that the audience think it's depicting people less well off than them as losers it generates quite a lot of appeal. My impression is that a lot of politicians can pull off that trick a lot of the time.

Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:

quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
Rhetoric which depicts the less well off as losers is probably a non-starter for mass appeal
It depends on how it's framed. If it's framed in such a way that the audience think it's depicting people less well off than them as losers it generates quite a lot of appeal. My impression is that a lot of politicians can pull off that trick a lot of the time.

Yes, fair enough, but it needs to target minorities: possibly 'welfare mothers' and illegal immigrants in the states; the 'work shy' and incapacity benefit claimants over here; might be examples. People who can be alleged to owe their disadvantage to some moral failing. The way it works, though, is to emphasise the failing and minimise the disadvantage. The rhetorician doesn't point to those groups' poverty, and argue for their unworthiness from that - he points to their unworthiness and their (alleged) unfair relative prosperity compared to the bulk of the hard-working and more deserving of the less well off.

What doesn't work is to say that mass of ordinary people are losers (they are always 'hard-working' and 'decent'). The less well off as a class (as distinct from minorities within that class) are not usually condemned by right-wing rhetoric these days.

Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
Well, Republicans get elected.

By two groups IME. The middle classes who are more concerned by keeping themselves above others than what those above them do, and the rural. Oh, and Authoritarians. And a lot of issues in American politics are on an urban/rural split - for instance gun control is split basically on whether a bullet fired at random will shoot into the side of a hill (or a field in states with almost no hills) endangering no one, or whether it will hit the side of a house and probably punch through the wall.

quote:
Clearly. So why do so many people believe it?

Marketing.

quote:
By and large, then, you would expect the suburbs around Philadelphia to be solidly Republican. Some of them are, but they can't be taken for granted. Many of them have gone 'blue.' These areas are not the home of "the base." For that, go to the interior of the state.

See my comments on the rural/urban split above and gun control. There are other such issues where what's best rurally isn't what's best for an urban population and vise-versa. And the Democratic party normally goes hard urban on such issues from what I can tell.

Posted by OliviaG (# 9881) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
... Rhetoric which depicts the less well off as losers is probably a non-starter for mass appeal, ...

Actually, I think it does work, because it taps into what I can only call the "ha-ha" instinct. There is something in us that likes to see bad things happen to some people. No matter how evolved we get, we still laugh at people falling down. The hard sell is that losers deserve our help, not our scorn.

I was musing on the parable of the Good Samaritan this morning, and it occurred to me that the neo-cons, or whatever we want to call them, are like the the priest and the Levite. Their religion of individualism and irresponsiblity, which they call freedom, is so important to them that they have completely lost sight of compassion, of humanity itself. (Vide the "let him die" crowd.)

What really bothers me about this attitude is that it ignores a very basic biological fact about humans: we are a social species. We need each other to survive and thrive. If our proto-human ancestors hadn't been able to organize themselves collectively, they would have all ended up as baboon snax and cats with opposable thumbs would be living on Mars by now. "Darwinism" says we must look after each other, and so does Christianity. So much for all their guff about America being a Christian country. Their brand of Christianity like tinsel on a dead tree - all sparkle with no life.

The horror of "big government" in and of itself makes no sense to me. Government, especially in a democracy, is what the citizens make it (or allow it to become). How do we even measure bigger or smaller? Some people's perceptions of big or small are decidedly off, such as the folks who what to keep government out of Medicare. [Roll Eyes]

The larger political entities grow, the less all the members have in common. However, that also means that the things they do have in common are therefore more universal, more basic, and more important to our existence. Things like food, shelter, useful work, health, and education are universally important - why wouldn't we want to have as many people as possible sharing the effort of procuring them with us? Do they really want us to gradually and eventually devolve back to the smallest of groupings, like clans or tribes? 'Cause we've already been there. OliviaG

Posted by Timothy the Obscure (# 292) on :

There have been several recent articles (scholarly and popular) on "last-place aversion." What it amounts to is that people hate to see themselves at the bottom of a hierarchy. The experiment goes like this: people are given an amount of money, and told where this places them in the ranking of all participants. Then they get $2, which they must give away to another participant. If they give it to the person below them in the ranking, that person will leapfrog over them. People higher in the ranking will give the money to those below. The people in the next-to-lowest rank will give the money to the person above them rather than allow the person below them to jump over, leaving them in the lowest place.

Posted by ProgenitorDope (# 16648) on :

Look, I'm sorry, but I still fail to see why Social Darwinism as a system is being regarded as inherently evil. Now, I'll concede 3 things: (a) it is an easy system to exploit in that the strong may not help the weak improve like they're supposed to, (b) I am biased (long story, don't ask) and most importantly, (c) not everyone can reach their full potential under SD.

At the same time, though, why does it seem assumed that there are few to none that would reach their full potential without having their feet held to the fire? From where I stand, the positives of forcing one to sink or swim still outweighs the above negatives, at least as long as approached with the correct mindset.

Posted by Timothy the Obscure (# 292) on :

Can you clearly define your version of Social Darwinism? Just so we know what to attack. (For a start, there is no version of Social Darwinism that has anything at all to do with Darwin).

Posted by ProgenitorDope (# 16648) on :

Fair enough. Granted, I don't think these things through as well as I probably should, but for me its just basically if someone isn't even trying to pull their weight they get left behind.

Like I said, my own experiences color this. The big one being that when I was in school, almost every time I got forced into a group project, I ended up doing most of the work and the ingrates that did nothing ended up sharing the grade. Also, just in general, people seem to work harder when faced with the choice to either prosper or fail.

Here, though, I'm not saying my ideal system is perfect. All I'm saying is I don't think a pure socialist system works for everyone, just as the system--which I call SD for lack of a better term--doesn't work for everyone either.

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ProgenitorDope:
...its just basically if someone isn't even trying to pull their weight they get left behind.

How naive! The world has developed many, many, systems for ensuring that the idle rich never get left behind however little work they do.

Posted by Josephine (# 3899) on :

PD, you might want to learn at least a little bit about Social Darwinism before you say you're in favor of it.

Social Darwinism isn't a system where, if you work hard, you succeed, and if you're lazy and refuse to work, you fail. That sounds like what you're talking about, and it isn't social Darwinism.

Social Darwinism takes the idea of survival of the fittest through natural selection and uses the fallacy of equivocation to make them apply to people. In nature, the animals that are most fitted for their environment succeed by surviving to reproduce. The fact that they survived and reproduced is proof that they're superior to the animals that didn't. That the inferior animals die without reproducing is not a bad thing; it's a good thing. It means that the population of animals becomes ever stronger and more fit. People who succeed (not by reproducing, but by becoming rich and powerful) are the most fit for the human environment; their success is proof that they are superior to the people who aren't successful. That the inferior people are poor and malnourished and homeless is not a bad thing; it's the entirely natural outcome of their inferiority. Further, you wouldn't want to interfere with this natural outcome, because if you allow the processes to work out among people the way they do among animals, the human population will become stronger as the superior people replace the inferior people.

Eugenics is a natural corollary of social Darwinism. Since the inferior people somehow keep having more children than the superior people, the superior people need to make sure things work out properly by preventing the inferior people from reproducing.

And because eugenics is a natural corollary of social Darwinism, it's absolutely plain that it has nothing at all to do with Darwinism. The idea that the rich and powerful deserve their riches and power existed long before Darwin; Darwin's theories just allowed them to develop a modern, "scientific" excuse for their selfishness and injustice.

Posted by ProgenitorDope (# 16648) on :

Okay, okay, I surrender. I'm man enough to admit I was wrong and that it's time to reflect on my worldview (or at least what I call it).

I can't promise I'll change much though: my belief in survival of the fittest is the only thing giving me solace and keeping me going these days. But you've all given me something to think about at least, so for what little it's worth: thanks. [Smile]

Posted by Timothy the Obscure (# 292) on :

The main thing to keep in mind is that if the class structure of society was truly Darwinian, the poor would become extinct and eventually all people would be rich. Nuff said?

Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Timothy the Obscure:
The main thing to keep in mind is that if the class structure of society was truly Darwinian, the poor would become extinct and eventually all people would be rich. Nuff said?

At which point the 'social ecosystem' would have radically altered and the riches that are considered to be a mark of 'fitness' may no longer benefit survival. To ensure their continued 'fitness' the rich would need to ensure that the poor are always with us.

I'm not sure what's more obscene - keeping the poor in poverty and misery or eugenics.

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