Herbert Spencer: Survival of The Fittest
Herbert Spencer: Survival of The Fittest
Herbert Spencer: Survival of The Fittest
Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) was an English philosopher who initiated a philosophy called
‘Social Darwinism’. He coined the term ‘survival of the fittest’ seven years before Darwin’s
publication of his theory of natural history, The Origin of the Species in 1859. Spencer
became an enthusiastic supporter of Darwin’s theory of evolution, believing it could also be
applied equally well to human societies.
After Darwin published his theories on biological evolution and natural selection, Herbert
Spencer drew further parallels between his economic theories and Darwin’s scientific principles.
Spencer applied the idea of “survival of the fittest” to so-called laissez faire or unrestrained
capitalism during the Industrial Revolution, in which businesses are allowed to operate with
little regulation from the government. Unlike Darwin, Spencer believed that people could
genetically pass learned qualities, such as frugality and morality, on to their children. Spencer
opposed any laws that helped workers, the poor, and those he deemed genetically weak. Such
laws, he argued, would go against the evolution of civilization by delaying the extinction of the
“unfit.” Another prominent Social Darwinist was American economist William Graham Sumner.
He was an early opponent of the welfare state. He viewed individual competition for property
and social status as a tool for eliminating the weak and immoral of the population.
Nazi Germany
Adolf Hitler, one of the world’s most notorious eugenicists, drew inspiration from California’s
forced sterilizations of the “feeble-minded” in designing Nazi Germany’s racially based policies.
Hitler began reading about eugenics and social Darwinism while he was imprisoned following a
failed 1924 coup attempt known as the Beer Hall Putsch. Hitler adopted the social Darwinist
take on survival of the fittest. He believed the German master race had grown weak due to the
influence of non-Aryans in Germany. To Hitler, survival of the German “Aryan” race depended
on its ability to maintain the purity of its gene pool. The Nazis targeted certain groups or races
that they considered biologically inferior for extermination. These included Jews, Roma
(gypsies), Poles, Soviets, people with disabilities and homosexuals. By the end of World War
II, social Darwinist and eugenic theories had fallen out of favor in the United States and much of
Europe—partly due to their associations with Nazi programs and propaganda, and because these
theories were scientifically unfounded.