Social Darwinism

A historical idealist theory at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century which explains the social and historical phenomena on the basis of Darwin’s theory of evolution. Its premise is that society is a site of competition, and that the development of individuals and norms of behavior should be consistent with Darwin’s view of biological evolution, on the basis of which, Social Darwinism further expounded the economic, political and moral problems of human society.

The founder of Social Darwinism was Spencer. Spencer argued that people of different natures struggled for survival during their survival activities, which resulted in the survival of the fittest through natural selection, and he interpreted this harsh process as social progress. Therefore, Spencer rejected all kinds of means of intervention to effect social reform, holding that the poverty of the proletariat was the inevitable result of the survival of the fittest, and that the emergence and extinction of nations and races was also a process of the survival of the fittest and natural selection which is a process that is moral and infallible. Social Darwinism began to weaken after the 20th century, but Darwinism still has a strong influence in the social biology of deformable bodies.