Page 151 - The Disasters Darwinism Brought To Humanity

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C C A P I T A L I S M A N D T H E F I G H T F O R S U R V I V A L I N T H E E C O N O M Y Y 151
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Richard Milner, senior editor of New York's American Museum of
Natural History's Natural History Magazine writes:
One of Social Darwinism's leading spokesmen, William Graham Sumner of
Princeton, thought millionaires were the 'fittest' individuals in society and
deserved their privileges. They were "naturally selected in the crucible of
competition." 122
As has been seen from these announcements, Social Darwinists used
Darwin's theory of evolution as a "scientific" comment on capitalist societi-
es. As a result of this, human beings began to lose such concepts, which re-
ligion had brought with it, as mutual assistance, philanthropy, and co-ope-
ration, and instead of these virtues to give pride of place to selfishness,
cunning, and opportunism. According to one of Social Darwinism's most
important theorists, the American Professor E. A. Ross, "The Christian cult
of charity as a means of grace has formed a shelter under which idiots and
cretins have crept and bred.". Again in Ross' view, "The state gathers the
deaf mutes into its sheltering arm, and a race of deaf mutes is in process of
formation." Rejecting all these because they prevent natural evolutionary
progress, Ross declared that "The shortest way to make this world a he-
aven is to let those so inclined hurry hell-ward at their own pace." 123
As we have seen, Darwinism forms the philosophical basis of all the
capitalist economic systems in the world and the political systems which
take their shape from them.
It is for this reason that the greatest supporters of Social Darwinism
were owners of capital. The rise of the strong by treading on the weak and
the following of economic policies far removed from feelings of pity, help,
and compassion were no longer to be condemned, because behaviour like
this was accepted as in accordance with "scientific explanations" and "the
laws of nature."
According to Richard Hofstadter, the author of the book Social Darwi-
nism in American Thought, the nineteenth-century railroad magnate Cha-
uncey Depew asserted that the men who attained fame, fortune, and po-
wer in New York City represented the survival of the fittest, through "su-
perior ability, foresight and adaptability." 124 Another railroad baron, James