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social Darwinism

A Dictionary of World History | 2000 | Copyright

social Darwinism A 19th-century theory of social and cultural evolution. Even before Charles Darwin published the Origin of Species (1859), the writer Herbert SPENCER had been inspired by current ideas of evolution to write the Principles of Psychology (1855), where he first applied the concept of evolution to the development of society. The theory, based on the belief that natural selection favoured the most competitive or aggressive individual (the “survival of the fittest”), was often used to support political conservatism. It justified inequality among individuals and races, and discouraged attempts to reform society as an interference with the natural processes of selection of the fittest. In the 20th century it has been used to justify racist ideologies as well as to explain the operations of the “free economy”.

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