william sumner Social Darwinism?

[soccerballer1600]

what were william sumners views about social darwinism?

[Arbie]

William Graham Sumner generally is considered to be the father of social Darwinism. He and a man named Ward developed this sociological theory subsequent to the Civil War. The idea was to analogize the activity of the free market to the theory of evolution proposed by Charles Darwin. In this adaptation, "survival of the fittest" was used to describe the effects of business competition. As C.H. Wadddington later pointed out, this is a perversion of the Darwinian concept, because in biology, "fitness" has a special, almost tautological meaning. In biology, an organism is "fit" if it is able to survive long enough to pass its genes to the next generation. In biological terms, "survival of the fittest" simply means the organism which survives genetically and can refer equally to a turtle which survives individually for a century or a mayfly which survives individually for a season -- both are equally "fit," and the proof of the "fitness" lies in the continued survival of the race. However, when applied to the business model, the focus shifts from survival of the race to survival of individual firms. "Goodness" and "badness" are posited in these terms. This has nothing to do with the haphazard, statistical workings of biology, in which the survival of any single organism is meaningless.

Interestingly enough, the phrase, "survival of the fittest," does not originate with Darwin but with Herbert Spencer. Spencer was a libertarian radical who advocated such then revolutionary ideas as the right to ignore the state and (lordie, lordie) equal rights for women. Sumner borrowed heavily from both Darwin and Spencer, distorting both their views in the process. This eventually induced Oliver Wendell Holmes to denounce not Sumner or Ward but Spencer, who remains an excellent read if you can find a copy of the original.