Pros And Cons Of Darwinism

Despite the relative success of the late Victorian Darwinian Liberals it is arguable that Darwin's biological ideas were too open-ended, matter of fact, rapidly outdated, and ambiguous in how they applied to humanity to be truly applicable to any type of politics. George Bernard Shaw summarised evolution as being borrowed by anyone “who had an axe to grind” in the late Victorian era. While this may appear to be part of his flippant repertoire, there is a lot of truth contained in that statement. It may be that Darwin and Marx were entirely right to be cautious.

The vast majority of “Darwinian” political explanations, values systems, and theories seem to have been built on false premises. As Levine has also showed, Darwinism could be twisted
Serious problems emerged concerning misinterpretation and the crux of Darwinian allegory was effectively lost in the political sphere, which can be as a smaller part of the infamous “Eclipse of Darwinism” demonstrated by Peter Bowler. His political use amongst the left would remain mostly obscure, at least until the rapid rise of challenges from the religious right in America after 1980 which led to the subsequent emergence of the “neo-Darwinian” advocacy
Spencer and the German anti-socialists did achieve far more in terms of demonstrable impact. Origin was effectively fixed to its expressed purpose and too grounded in the ideas of natural competition, Malthus, and fettered by the mainstream liberal conventions of its time.

That is not to say that Haeckel or Spencer “won”. It is a truism that Darwin found a broader, more receptive audience amongst rightist liberalism and advocates of competition during the period. But this was probably more of a reflection of Herbert Spencer's chronically cited early, unfounded speculation and the indomitable position of classic liberalism itself in Victorian political economy. Liberals simply had a better window of opportunity for social allegory through living in highly competitive societies rather than any better claim to validity or natural affinity.

Political biases and frameworks that do not focus on biology alone have tended to clash rather badly with Darwinism. Post-1859 European socialism is not exempt. In terms of Darwinism lending any scientific validity to socialism, at least, Darwin himself was (mostly) right. But in socialist argument, Darwin and Darwinism became invaluable through metaphor, abstraction, and moral allegory. The idea of Darwin as a prophet of “evolutionary”, tiered social progress standing against oppressors was created. It has remained present in Western politics ever