Social Darwinism, as a direction, was formed in the 19th century. The works of the founders of the doctrine had a tremendous impact on contemporaries. Naturally, the Darwin law itself, being a large-scale scientific event, could not help but affect the field of public knowledge. In England, Spencer and Begggot were systematically applying the doctrine to real life. The latter, as a journalist, economist, tried to use the principles on which the direction in question was constructed when studying historical processes in society. And by the end of the 19th century, Spencer's ideas were assimilated by leading figures Giddings and Ward.
Social Darwinism. Key concepts
For all social science of the 19th century, and especially its second half, a number of priority moments became characteristic. These key concepts were highlighted by Darwin himself. The theory that scientists followed after it became a kind of paradigm that penetrated into various areas of social thought. These basic concepts were “natural selection”, “survival of the fittest”, “struggle for existence”. In this regard, social Darwinism has acted not only as a special direction.
Categories inherent in the doctrine began to be applied in those areas of knowledge that were initially somewhat hostile to it. For example, Durkheim applied some of the concepts included in social Darwinism. Despite his rather radical anti-reductionism in the study of social phenomena, as well as an emphasis on the importance of solidarity, he considered the division in social work as a somewhat softened form of a certain struggle for existence.
Social Darwinism at the end of the 19th century
By the end of the nineteenth century, the ideas of “natural selection” went beyond the scientific sphere and became very popular in business, journalism, mass consciousness, and fiction. Representatives of, for example, the economic elite, business tycoons, based on the theory of evolution, concluded that they are not only successful and talented, but are also considered the visible embodiment of victory in the struggle for existence in their particular sphere. In this regard, according to researchers, it is erroneous to consider social Darwinism a teaching based only on biological aspects and being a simple continuation of them. It can be defined as a direction that reduces the laws of social development to the principles of natural evolution. Social Darwinism, in particular, views the struggle for survival as a defining aspect of life. At the same time, the non-biological principles of the doctrine indicate that, in a certain sense, old social thought has been actualized and justified. Among all the signs of the direction under consideration, one of the main is considered to be life as a kind of arena in which there is a widespread and continuous struggle, conflicts, clashes between individuals, societies, groups, customs, institutions, cultural and social types.