Darwin was a scientist - not a politician.
His development of his Theory of Evolution had nothing to do with or be
dependent on your nonsense!
Quit twisting science ot justify your religious imagination.
"Sound of Trumpet" <soundoftrumpet@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:08a7ecdc-a086-4f5a-88f1-249ad195000d@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
's Influence on Ruthless Laissez-Faire Capitalism
Culture/Society Miscellaneous Keywords: EVOLUTION, DARWINISM,
CAPITALISM
Source: Institute for Creation Research/Acts and Facts
Published: March 2001 Author: by Jerry Bergman, Ph.D
Posted on 03/28/2001 12:28:13 PST by Wallace T.
Darwin's Influence on Ruthless Laissez-Faire Capitalism
by Jerry Bergman, Ph.D.*
Abstract
A review of the writings of several leading "robber baron" capitalists
shows that many of them were influenced by the Darwinian view that the
strong eventually will overcome the weak. Their faith in Darwinism
helped them to justify this view as morally right and completely
natural. As a result, they thought that their ruthless (and often
unethical or even illegal) business practices were justified by
science, and that Darwinistic concepts and conclusions were an
inevitable part of the "unfolding of history," and for this reason
were justified.
Introduction
The Darwinian worldview was critical, not only in influencing the
development of Nazism and communism, but also in the rise of the
ruthless capitalists that flourished in the late 1800s and early 1900s
(Morris and Morris, 1996). A key aspect of this brand of capitalism
was its extreme individualism which indicated that other persons count
for little, and that it is both natural and proper to exploit "weaker"
companies. The socalled robber barons often concluded that their
behavior was justified by natural law and was the inevitable outcome
of history (Josephson, 1934). Many were raised as Christians, but
rejected their Christianity or modified it to include their socialist/
Darwinian ideas. Gertrude Himmelfarb noted that Darwinism may have
been accepted in England in part because it justified the greed of
certain people.
The theory of natural selection, it is said, could only have
originated in England, because only laissezfaire England provided the
atomistic, egotistic mentality necessary to its conception. Only there
could Darwin have blandly assumed that the basic unit was the
individual, the basic instinct selfinterest, and the basic activity
struggle. Spengler, describing the Origin as: "the application of
economics to biology," said that it reeked of the atmosphere of the
English factory . . . natural selection arose . . . in England because
it was a perfect expression of Victorian "greed-philosophy" of the
capitalist ethic and Manchester economics (1962, p. 418).
Rachels noted that "the survival of the fittest" theory in biology was
quickly interpreted by capitalists as "an ethical precept that
sanctioned cutthroat economic competition" (1990, p. 63, see also Hsü,
1986, p. 10). Julian Huxley and H. B. D. Kittlewell even concluded
that social Darwinism "led to the glorification of free enterprise,
laissez-faire economics and war, to an unscientific eugenics and
racism, and eventually to Hitler and Nazi ideology" (in Huxley and
Kittlewell, 1965, p. 81).
Ruthless Capitalism
Darwinism helped to justify not only the ruthless exploits of the
communists, but also the ruthless practices of capitalist monopolists
such as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller. Kenneth Hsü (1986, p.
534) noted:
Darwinism was also used in a defense of competitive individualism and
its economic corollary of laissezfaire capitalism in England and in
America.
Like Stalin, Marx, Lenin, and Hitler, Carnegie also once accepted
Christianity, but abandoned it for Darwinism and became a close friend
of the famous social Darwinist, Herbert Spencer. Carnegie stated in
his autobiography that when he and several of his friends came to
doubt the teachings of Christianity,
.. . . including the supernatural element, and indeed the whole scheme
of salvation through vicarious atonement and all the fabric built upon
it, I came fortunately upon Darwin's and Spencer's works. . . . 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, my
true source of comfort. Man was not created with an instinct for his
own degradation, but from the lower he had risen to the higher forms.
Nor is there any conceivable end to his march to perfection (1920, p.
327).
Carnegie's conclusions were best summarized when he said:
the law of competition, be it benign or not, is here; we cannot evade
it; no substitutes for it have been found; and while the law may be
sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it
ensures the survival of the fittest in every department (quoted in
Hsü, 1986, p. 10).
John D. Rockefeller re****tedly once said that the "growth of a large
business is merely a survival of the fittest . . . the working out of
a law of nature . . ." (Ghent, 1902, p. 29). The Rockefellers, while
maintaining a Christian front, fully embraced evolution and dismissed
the Bible's early books as mythology (Taylor, 1991, p. 386). When a
philanthropist pledged $10,000 to help found a university named after
William Jennings Bryan, John D. Rockefeller Jr. retaliated the very
same day with a $1,000,000 donation to the openly anticreationist
University of Chicago Divinity School (Larson, 1997, p. 183). Morris
and Morris noted that the philosophy expressed by Rockefeller also was
embraced not only by railroad magnate James Hill, but probably most
other capitalists of his day (1996, p. 87). Morris and Morris have
suggested that many modern evolutionists:
.. . . deplore the excess of the social Darwinism. The fact is,
however, that it [Darwinism] became very popular among the
laissezfaire capitalists of the 19th century because it did, indeed,
seem to give scientific sanction to ruthless competition in both
business and politics (p. 83).
Morris and Morris also noted that both the left wing Marxist-Leninism
and the right wing ruthless capitalists were anticreationists and
"even when they fight with each other, they remain united in
opposition to creationism . . ." (p. 82). Many capitalists did not
discard their Christianity, but instead tried to blend it with
Darwinism. The result was a compromise somewhat like theistic
evolution. Although most American businessmen were probably not
consciously social Darwinists,
.. . . they attributed such success as they had to their industry and
virtue, rather than their achievement in trampling on their less
successful competitors. After all, most of them saw themselves as
Christians, adhering to the rules of "love thy neighbor" and "do as
you would be done by." So, even though they sought to achieve the
impossible by serving God and Mammon simultaneously, they found no
difficulty in accommodating Christianity to the Darwinian ideas of
struggle for existence and survival of the fittest, and by no means
all of them consciously thought of themselves as being in a state of
economic warfare with their fellow manufacturers (Oldroyd, 1980, p.
216).
Several studies have do***ented the im****tant contribution of Darwin
to laissezfaire capitalism: An analysis of the Anthracite Coal Strike
Commission (1902_1903) hearings found:
". . . the coal trust preached a social Darwinist ideology, conflating
`survival of the fittest' with freedom and individual rights" (Doukas,
1997, p. 367). This study concluded that "the popularity of social
Darwinism in the US national ideology should be comprehended as an
innovation of cor****ate capitalism" (Doukas, 1997, p. 367).
Rosenthal (1997) showed that, historically, biogenetic doctrines had
the effect of promoting an attitude of acceptance of the problems of
racism, ***ism, war, and capitalism. The field of biogenetics has
offered no new scientific evidence that human social behavior has a
biogenetic basis, or that business/social competition, male dominance,
aggression, territoriality, xenophobia, and even patriotism, warfare,
and genocide are genetically based human universals. Yet biogenetic
doctrines have occupied a prominent place throughout most of American
sociological history. Rosenthal noted that Cooley, Sorokin, Sumner,
Ross, and even Park adhered to biological racist doctrines that in the
past have signaled and encouraged reactionary social policy.
Darwinism Persists Today in Business
The Darwinian concept, applied to business, still is very much with us
today. Robert Blake and his coauthors in their 1996 book, Cor****ate
Darwinism, attempted to apply modern Darwinism to business. They
concluded that business evolves in very predictable ways, specifically
in defined stages very much like the stages of human evolution. This
"business evolution" is natural; business in keeping with Darwinian
principles either swallows the competition, or finds that it will be
swallowed by that competition.
Summary
Darwin's ideas played a critically im****tant role in the development
and growth, not only of Nazism and communism, but also of the ruthless
form of capitalism as best illustrated by the robber barons. While it
is difficult to conclude confidently that ruthless capitalism would
not have blossomed as it did if Darwin had not developed his evolution
theory, it is clear that if Carnegie, Rockefeller, and others had
continued to embrace the unadulterated JudeoChristian worldview of
their youth and had not become Darwinists, capitalism would not have
become as ruthless as it did in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Morris
and Morris (p. 84) have suggested that other motivations (including
greed, ambition, even a type of a missionary zeal) stimulated the
fierce, unprincipled robber baron business practices long before
Darwin. Darwinism, however, gave capitalism an apparent scientific
rationale that allowed it to be taken to the extremes that were so
evident in the early parts of last century.
Acknowledgments: I want to thank Bert Thompson, Ph.D., Wayne Frair,
Ph.D., and John Woodmorappe, M.A., for their comments on an earlier
draft of this article.
References
Blake, Robert, Warren Avis and Jane Mouton. 1966. Cor****ate Darwinism.
Houston, TX: Gulf Pub.
Carnegie, Andrew. 1920. Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie, ed. John C.
Van Dyke. 1986; reprint, Boston: Northeastern University Press.
Doukas, Dimitra. 1997. "Cor****ate Capitalism on Trial: The Hearings of
the Anthracite Coal Strike Commission, 1902_1903." Identities: Global
Studies in Culture and Power, 3(3):367_398.
Ghent, William. 1902. Our Benevolent Feudalism. New York: Macmillan.
Himmelfarb, Gertrude. 1962. Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution. New
York: W.W. Norton.
Hsü, Kenneth. June 1986. "Darwin's Three Mistakes," Geology, (vol.
14),
p. 532-534.
Hsü, Kenneth. 1986. The Great Dying: Cosmic Catastrophe, Dinosaurs and
the Theory of Evolution. NY: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.
Huxley, Julian and H.B.D. Kittlewell. 1965. Charles Darwin and His
World. New York: Viking Press.
Josephson, Matthew. 1934. The Robber Barons. New York: Harcourt and
Brace.
Larson, Edward J. 1997. Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and
America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion. New York: Basic
Books.
Morris, Henry and John D. Morris. 1996. The Modern Creation Trilogy.
vol. 3. Society and Creation. Green Forrest, AR: Master Books.
Oldroyd, D.R. 1980. Darwinian Impacts. Atlantic Highlands, NJ:
Humanities Press.
Rachels, James. 1990. Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of
Darwinism. New York: Oxford University Press.
Rosenthal, Steven J. 1977. Sociobiology: New Synthesis or Old
Ideology? American Sociological Association.
Taylor, Ian T. 1991. In the Minds of Men: Darwin and the New World
Order. Minneapolis: TFE Publi****ng.
*Dr. Bergman is on the Biology faculty at Northwest State College in
Ohio
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One of the enduring myths in both the common and elite perceptions of
history is that the Robber Baron era was the culmination of
Northeastern Protestant (Puritan) culture. There is, according to this
myth, a logical progression from the Puritans' "city on a hill" to the
Robber Barons' pursuit of wealth without regard to moral scruples. As
this article points out, there was a specific rejection of the
Biblical worldview for a materialist one (Andrew Carnegie) or an a
synthesis of elements of Christianity and social Darwinism (John D.
Rockefeller). Not mentioned in this article, but also significant,
were the effects of both the philosophies of William James and John
Dewey in the academic community and modernism and higher Biblical
criticism in the mainline Protestant churches. Despite the outward
piety and prudishness in American society during the Victorian Era and
the early 20th Century, the underlying foundation was ****fting
radically.
(In fairness to Darwin, I am not aware that he was a Social Darwinist
or a white supremacist. The views of Herbert Spencer or the
"scientific" racists were not, to my knowledge, endorsed by the
English scientist.)
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