Wealthy industrialists and the practice of Social Darwinism in nineteenth-century America

Social Darwinism

Statement of the Issue

Beginning with a discussion of Social Darwinism's inherent logical fallacy, this study examines whether or not wealthy industrialists of the nineteenth century actually practiced what Social Darwinism called for. By considering the history of the concept and its relation to capitalism, it becomes clear that not only did wealthy industrialists practice Social Darwinism, but that they embraced it precisely because it provided a justification for the unethical business practices they were already engaged in.

Analysis

Though not called Social Darwinism until much later, the collection of ideas regarding the social application of "survival of the fittest" emerged near the end of the nineteenth century, as Darwin's theory of evolution was permeating the public consciousness (Bannister, 1993, p. 4). To begin, it is worth noting that a number of historians and apologists maintain the position that while "it is true that in the last half of the 19th century great numbers of Americans were ideologically committed to the notions of competitions, merited success, and deserved failure […] it is not true that this commitment was grounded on Darwinian premises" (Wilson qtd. In Bannister, 1993, p. 7). This position essentially attempts to separate wealthy industrialists like Andrew Carnegie or John D. Rockefeller from the now-pejorative term Social Darwinism, but it does so by confusing the order of things. Put simply, Social Darwinism was not the basis for capitalist beliefs regarding competition, exploitation, and social disregard, but rather a justification for it after the fact. In this sense, it does not matter if certain wealthy industrialists explicitly supported Social Darwinism, because regardless of their specific statements, Social Darwinism supported them.

Secondly, it is important to note that Social Darwinism did not constitute a widely-accepted mode of social thought, but rather the extreme arguments that, while likely not convincing a majority of the population, nevertheless shifted the boundaries of acceptable rhetoric towards notions of survival and competition, rather than cooperation and development. For the most part, "social Darwinism was nasty business and was recognized as such" by the public, but it nevertheless provided some cover for those industrialists who might want to justify their success at the expense of the poor and politically powerless by appealing to supposedly "natural" laws or phenomenon (Bannister, 1993, p. 10). In the same way that later applications of Social Darwinism would provide pseudo-scientific cover for eugenics and genocide, so too did the Social Darwinism of the later nineteenth century provide cover for the appalling treatment of laborers during the Industrial Revolution.

From here, one may begin to consider how wealthy industrialists of the nineteenth century most certainly did practice Social Darwinism, regardless of whether or not they explicitly preached it themselves. The history of the Industrial Revolution is a history of exploitation and abuse of the politically and economically weak in the service of the already-powerful, and to argue otherwise is to engage in a form of historical revision so blatant as to border on delusion. That the public, or at least public commentators, recognized this is evidenced in the political cartoons and literary jeremiads directed against wealthy industrialists and their political lackeys, from Rockefeller and Carnegie to Boss Tweed in Tammany Hall. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, these men, and others like them, were portrayed, either explicitly or implicitly, as powerful animals (such as lions, tigers, or octopuses), because their "primitive strength and violent nature were already pervasive in the human imagination" (Teorey, 2006, p. 47). Taking a cue from the proponents of Social Darwinism themselves, editorial cartoonists and muckraking authors portrayed wealthy industrialists as violent animals in order to demonstrate how their business practices and political influence represented the imposition of a violent, cruel form of natural selection onto the otherwise developing social world. Rather than recognizing that "surviving and surviving well […] require that competition takes place within a cooperative context," these industrialists imagined themselves animalistic kings, whose political and economic power was legitimated purely through their use of force, whether that force was economic, or in many cases physical (Klein, 2003, p. 397).

Conclusion

One may conclude this study by reiterating the claim that regardless of whether or not specific industrialists in the nineteenth century purported to believe in or support Social Darwinism, the fact remains that they acted as such, and furthermore, that Social Darwinism served to justify their actions. Thus, the wealthy industrialists of the nineteenth century not only practiced what they preached, but preached what they practiced, because Social Darwinism emerged as a justification for capitalist exploitation long after that exploitation had been going on. By examining the logical problems with Social Darwinism as such as well as its history as a social concept, it becomes clear that the theory was created and perpetuated to justify the excesses of the Industrial Revolution, and that it was seized upon by wealthy industrialists who were more than happy to find a kind of pseudo-scientific justification for their ethically and morally unjustifiable actions.