The lapse of a third of a century since these passages were published, has brought me no reason for retreating from the position taken up in them. Contrariwise, it has brought a vast amount of evidence strengthening that position. The beneficial results of the survival of the fittest, prove to be immeasurably greater than [I formerly recognized]. The process of “natural selection,” as Mr. Darwin called it… has shown to be a chief cause … of that evolution through which all living things, beginning with the lower, and diverging and re-diverging as they evolved, have reached their present degrees of organization and adaptation to their modes of life.
But putting aside the question of Darwin’s particular influence, the more important, underlying point remains firm: the theory of Social Darwinism (or social Spencerism) rests upon a set of analogies between the causes of change and stability in biological and social systems—and on the supposedly direct applicability of these biological principles to the social realm. In his founding document, the Social Statics of 1850, Spencer rests his case upon two elaborate analogies to biological systems.
1. The struggle for existence as purification in biology and society. Darwin recognized the “struggle for existence” as metaphorical shorthand for any strategy that promotes increased reproductive success, whether by outright battle, cooperation, or just simple prowess in copulation under the old principle of “early and often.” But many contemporaries, including Spencer, read “survival of the fittest” only as overt struggle to the death—what T. H. Huxley later dismissed as the “gladiatorial” school, or the incarnation of Hobbes’s bellum omnium contra omnes (the war of all against all). Spencer presented this stark and limited view of nature in his Social Statics:
Pervading all Nature we may see at work a stern discipline which is a litde cruel that it may be very kind. That state of universal warfare maintained throughout the lower creation, to the great perplexity of many worthy people, is at bottom the most merciful provision which the circumstances admit of…. Note that carnivorous enemies, not only remove from herbivorous herds individuals past their prime, but also weed out the sickly, the malformed, and the least fleet or powerful. By the aid of which purifying process… all vitiation of the race through the multiplication of its inferior samples is prevented; and the maintenance of a constitution completely adapted to surrounding conditions, and therefore most productive of happiness, is ensured.
Spencer then compounds this error by applying the same argument to human social history, without ever questioning the validity of such analogical transfer. Railing against all governmental programs for social amelioration— Spencer opposed state-supported education, postal services, regulation of housing conditions, and even public construction of sanitary systems—he castigated such efforts as born of good intentions but doomed to dire consequences by enhancing the survival of social dregs who should be allowed to perish for the good of all. (Spencer insisted, however, that he did not oppose private charity, primarily for the salutary effect of such giving upon the moral development of donors. Does this discourse remind you of arguments now advanced as reformatory and spanking-new by our “modern” ultraconservatives? Shall we not profit from Santayana’s famous dictum that those ignorant of history must be condemned to repeat it?) In his chapter on poor laws (which he, of course, opposed), Spencer wrote in the Social Statics:
We must call those spurious philanthropists who, to prevent present misery, would entail greater misery on future generations. That rigorous necessity which, when allowed to operate, becomes so sharp a spur to the lazy and so strong a bridle to the random, these paupers’ friends would repeal, because of the waitings it here and there produces. Blind to the fact that under the natural order of things society is constandy excreting its unhealthy, imbecile, slow, vacillating, faithless members, these unthinking, though well-meaning, men advocate an interference which not only stops the purifying process, but even increases the vitiation—absolutely encouraging the multiplication of the reckless and incompetent by offering them an unfailing provision…. Thus, in their eagerness to prevent the salutary sufferings that surround us, these sigh-wise and groan-foolish people bequeath to posterity a continually increasing curse.
2. The stable body and the stable society. In the universal and progressive “evolution” of all systems, organization becomes increasingly more complex by division of labor among the growing number of differentiating parts. All parts must “know their place” and play their appointed role, lest the entire system collapse. A primitive hydra, constructed of simple “all purpose” modules, can regrow any lost part, but nature gives a man only one head, and one chance. Spencer recognized the basic inconsistency in validating social stability by analogy to the integrated needs of a single organic body—for he recognized the contrary rationales of the two systems: the parts of a body serve the totality, but the social totality (the state) supposedly exists only to serve the parts (individual people). But Spencer never allowed himself to be fazed by logical or empirical difficulties when pursuing such a lovely generality. (Huxley was speaking about Spencer’s penchant for building grandiose systems when he made his famous remark about “a beautiful theory, killed by a nasty, ugly little fact.”) So Spencer barged right through the numerous absurdities of such a comparison, and even claimed that he had found a virtue in the differences. In his famous 1860 article, “The Social Organism,” Spencer described the comparison between a human body and a human society: “Such, then, are the points of analogy and the points of difference. May we not say that the points of difference serve but to bring into clearer light the points of analogy.”
Spencer’s article then lists the supposed points of valid comparison, including such far-fetched analogies as the historical origin of a middle class to the development, in complex animals, of the mesoderm, or third body layer between the original ectoderm and endoderm; the likening of the ectoderm itself to the upper classes, for sensory organs that direct an animal arise in ectoderm, while organs of production, for such activities as digesting food, emerge from the lower layer, or endoderm; the comparison of blood and money; the parallel courses of nerve and blood vessels in higher animals with the side-by-side construction of railways and telegraph wires; and finally, in a comparison that even Spencer regarded as forced, the likening of a primitive all-powerful monarchy with a simple brain, and an advanced parliamentary system with a complex brain composed of several lobes. Spencer wrote: “Strange as this assertion will be thought, our Houses of Parliament discharge in the social economy, functions that are in sundry respects comparable to those discharged by the cerebral masses in a vertebrate animal.”
Spencer surely forced his analogies, but his social intent could not have been more clear: a stable society requires that all roles be filled and well executed— and government must not interfere with a natural process of sorting out and allocation of appropriate rewards. A humble worker must toil, and may remain indigent forever, but the industrious poor, as an organ of the social body, must always be with us:
Let the factory hands be put on short time, and immediately the colonial produce markets of London and Liverpool are depressed. The shopkeeper is busy or otherwise, according to the amount of the wheat crop. And a potato-blight may ruin dealers in consols…. This union of many men into one community—this increasing mutual dependence of units which were originally independent— this gradual segregation of citizens into separate bodies with reciprocally-subservient functions—this formation of a whole consisting of unlike parts—this growth of an organism, of which one portion cannot be injured without the rest feeling it—may all be generalized under the law of individuation.
Social Darwinism grew into a major movement, with political, academic, and journalistic advocates for a wide array of particular causes. But as historian Richard Hofstadter stated in the most famous book ever written on this subject—Social Darwinism in American Thought, first published in 1944, in press ever since, and still full of insight despite some inevitable archaisms?
??the primary impact of this doctrine lay in its buttressing of conservative political philosophies, particularly through the central (and highly effective) argument against state support of social services and governmental regulation of industry and housing:
One might, like William Graham Sumner, take a pessimistic view of the import of Darwinism, and conclude that Darwinism could serve only to cause men to face up to the inherent hardship of the battle of life; or one might, like Herbert Spencer, promise that, whatever the immediate hardships for a large portion of mankind, evolution meant progress and thus assured that the whole process of life was tending toward some very remote but altogether glorious consummation. But in either case the conclusions to which Darwinism was at first put were conservative conclusions. They suggested that all attempts to reform social processes were efforts to remedy the irremediable, that they interfered with the wisdom of nature, that they could lead only to degeneration.
The industrial magnates of America’s gilded age (“robber barons,” in a terminology favored by many people) adored and promoted this argument against regulation, evidendy for self-serving reasons, and however frequently they mixed their lines about nature’s cruel inevitability with standard Christian piety. John D. Rockefeller stated in a Sunday school address:
The growth of a large business is merely a survival of the fittest…. The American Beauty rose can be produced in the splendor and fragrance which bring cheer to its beholder only by sacrificing the early buds which grow up around it. This is not an evil tendency in business. It is merely the working-out of a law of nature and a law of God.
And Andrew Carnegie, who had been sorely distressed by the apparent failure of Christian values, found his solution in Spencer’s writings, and then sought out the English philosopher for friendship and substantial favors. Carnegie wrote about his discovery of Spencer’s work: “I remember that light came as in a flood and all was clear. Not only had I got rid of theology and the supernatural, but I had found the truth of evolution. ‘All is well since all grows better’ became my motto, and true source of comfort.” Carnegie’s philanthropy, primarily to libraries and universities, ranks as one of the great charitable acts of American history, but we should not forget his ruthlessness and resistance to reforms for his own workers (particularly his violent breakup of the Homestead strike of 1892) in building his empire of steel—a harshness that he defended with the usual Spencerian line that any state regulation must derail an inexorable natural process eventually leading to progress for all. In his most famous essay (entided “Wealth,” and published in North American Review for 1889), Carnegie stated:
While the law may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department. We accept and welcome, therefore, as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves, great inequality of environment, the concentration of wealth, business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of a few, and the law of competition between these, as being not only beneficial, but essential for the future progress of the race.
I don’t want to advocate a foolishly grandiose view about the social and political influence of academic arguments—and I also wish to avoid the common fallacy of inferring a causal connection from a correlation. Of course I do not believe that the claims of Social Darwinism direcdy caused the ills of unrestrained industrial capitalism and the suppression of workers’ rights. I know that most of these Spencerian Unes functioned as mere window dressing for social forces well in place, and largely unmovable by any academic argument.
On the other hand, academic arguments should not be regarded as entirely impotent either—for why else would people in power invoke such claims so forcefully? The general thrust of social change unfolded in its own complex manner without much impact from purely intellectual rationales, but many particular issues—especially the actual rates and styles of changes that would have eventually occurred in any case—could be substantially affected by academic discourse. Millions of people suffered when a given reform experienced years of legislative delay, and then became vitiated in legal batdes and compromises. The Social Darwinian argument of the superrich and the highly conservative did stem, weaken, and slow the tides of amelioration, particularly for workers’ rights.
Most historians would agree that the single most effective doctrine of Social Darwinism lay in Spencer’s own centerpiece—the argument against state-enforced standards for industry, education, medicine, housing, public sanitation, and so on. Few Americans, even the robber barons, would go so far, but Spencerian dogma did become a powerful bludgeon against the regulation of industry to ensure better working conditions for laborers. On this particular point—the central recommendation of Spencer’s system from the beginning— we may argue for a substantial effect of academic writing upon the actual path of history.
Armed with this perspective, we may return to the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, the deaths of 146 young workers, and the palpable influence of a doctrine that applied too much of the wrong version of Darwinism to human history. The battle for increased safety of workplaces, and healthier environments for workers, had been waged with intensity for several decades. The trade union movement put substantial priority upon these issues, and management had often reacted with intransigence, or even violence, citing their Spencerian rationale for the perpetuation of apparent cruelty. Government regulation of industry had become a major struggle of American political life—and the cause of benevolent state oversight had advanced from the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890 to the numerous and crusading reforms of Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency (1901–9). When the Triangle fire broke out in 1911, regulations for the health and safety of workers were so weak, and so unenforceable by tiny and underpaid staffs, that the company’s managers—cynically and technically “up to code” in their firetrap building—could pretty much impose whatever the weak and nascent labor union movement couldn’t prevent.
If the standard legend were true—and the Triangle workers died because all the doors had been locked by cruel owners—then this heart-wrenching story might convey no moral beyond the personal guilt of management. But the loss of 146 lives occurred for much more complicated reasons, all united by the pathetic weakness of legal regulations for the health and safety of workers. And I do not doubt that the central thrust of Social Darwinism—the argument that governmental regulation can only forestall a necessary and natural process—exerted a major impact in slowing the passage of laws that almost everyone today, even our archconservatives, regard as beneficial and humane. I accept that these regulations would eventually have been instituted even if Spencer had never been born—but life or death for the Triangle workers rode upon the “detail” that forces of pure laissez-faire, buttressed by their Spencerian centerpiece, managed to delay some implementations to the 1920s, rather than acceding to the just demands of unions and social reformers in 1910.
One of the two Triangle stairways almost surely had been locked on that fateful day—although lawyers for company owners won acquittal of their clients on this issue, largely by using legal legerdemain to confuse, intimidate, and draw inconsistencies from young witnesses with poor command of English. Two years earlier, an important strike had begun at the Triangle company, and had spread to shirtwaist manufacturers throughout the city. The union won in most factories but not, ironically, at Triangle—where management held out, and compelled the return of workers without anything gained. Tensions remained high at Triangle in 1911, and management had become particularly suspicious, even paranoid, about thefts. Therefore, at quitting time (when the fire erupted, and against weakly enforced laws for maintaining multiple active exits), managers had locked one of the doors to force all the women to exit by the Greene Street stairwell, where a supervisor could inspect every handbag to guard against thefts of shirtwaists.
But if the bosses broke a weak and unenforceable law in this instance, all other causes of death can be traced to managerial compliance with absurdly ina
dequate standards, largely kept so weak by active political resistance to legal regulation of work sites, buttressed by the argument of Social Darwinism. Fire hoses could not pump above the sixth floor, but no law prevented the massing of workers into crowded floors above. No statute required fire drills or other forms of training for safety. In other cases, weak regulations were risibly inadequate, easy to flaunt, and basically unenforced in any case. For example, by law, each worker required 250 cubic feet of air space—a good rule to prevent crowding. But companies had managed to circumvent the intent of this law, and maintain their traditional (and dangerous) density of workers, by moving into large loft buildings with high ceilings and substantial irrelevant space that could be included in calculating the 250-cubic-foot minimum.
When the Asch Building opened in 1900, an inspector for the Buildings Department informed the architect that a third staircase should be provided. But the architect sought and received a variance, arguing that the single fire escape could count as the missing staircase required by law for structures with more than ten thousand square feet per floor. Moreover, the single fire escape— which buckled and fell during the fire, as a result of poor maintenance and the weight of too many workers trying to escape—led only to a glass skylight in a closed courtyard. The building inspector had also complained about this arrangement, and the architect had promised to make the necessary alterations. But no changes had been made, and the falling fire escape plunged right through the skylight, greatly increasing the death toll.