Anthony Gadzi '22 — Utopia is Dystopian: Social Darwinism Defeats Communism

Utopia is Dystopian: Social Darwinism Defeats Communism

Anthony Gadzi ’22

Karl Marx is widely considered the “Father of Communism”. As renowned historian Robert C. Tucker argues, “[n]o other intellectual influence has so powerfully shaped the mind of modern left-wing radicalism,” and as Marx put it himself, the duty of philosophers was not only to “interpret the world,” but to “change it” (Tucker ix; Marx and Engels 145). Born in Prussia on May 5, 1818, Karl Marx became a pioneering scholar and philosopher, and he published many critiques of modern capitalism and its effects on society, including his famous Capital. In these critiques, Marx exposed how capitalism, a system that exploits the productive forces of labourers, is inherently unfair to the majority. In 1842, he met fellow philosopher and future collaborator Frederick Engels, who would prove to be a key contributor to the majority of Marx’s best works, including his solution to capitalism in The Communist Manifesto and the second and third volumes of his Capital (Tucker xv-xviii).

Though Herbert Spencer, self-educated English philosopher and biologist, agreed with Marx in that “the great aim of education is not knowledge but action”, he was the embodied opposition to the ideologies of Marx and Engels (“Herbert Spencer Quotes”). Spencer’s theories instead centred around his transfusion of Darwinian principles of Evolution into social theories, aptly named Social Darwinism, that he applied to humankind. Contrary to Marx’s criticisms of capitalism, Spencer viewed the exploitation of members of society as a necessary and beneficial expression of human nature that would lead to our evolution as a species and society, and would propagate the “survival of the fittest” as he coined it.

Marxist and Spencerian logic thus represent the peaks of two contending and towering ideologies, and naturally neither is a perfect model for society to follow. Ultimately, although Marx and Spencer similarly recognized the inequalities within modern society, Spencerian logic better explains the necessity of inequity and exploitation than Marxist logic can refute them, lending Social Darwinism superior utility in shaping our future when compared to Marxist Communism.

While their ideologies contradict each other, the Marxist and Spencerian views of modern society are mostly analogous. It is well understood that Marx criticised modern capitalism while Spencer wished to build upon its powers, indicating that both philosophers view capitalism as the foundation of modern civilisation. Their works were often attempts to debate the dialogue about modern capitalism, Spencer as a supporter of the massive industrial expansion, and Marx as a disputer of the entire system. Additionally, though Spencer was ideologically a conservative, he never held back his critique of government. For example, both thinkers were highly critical of modern charity. As the philosopher Oscar Wilde explains, Marxist thinking denies the idea of charity, because "[i]t is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought” (Zizek), and charity merely inhibits society’s ability to find optimal solutions to the suffering of others. Spencer also opposed charity, as he believed those individuals in need of charity are “unfit, and should be eliminated” (Hofstadter 392). As a result of acknowledging capitalism as the prevailing global system, both thinkers also had to accept the idea of "survival of the fittest". Spencer was a large proponent of this concept, and the "fitter" individuals in society, namely the bourgeoisie, welcomed “the expansive evolutionary optimism of the Spencerian system” (Hofstadter 393). Marx, while seeing it as a burden on society rather than a benefactor, also viewed the increased survival and livelihood of the bourgeoisie as the defining element of capitalism. He believed that the current socio-economic system is based on "capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form this daily exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians” (Marx and Engels 487). While one sees great promise in the future following our current trajectory, and the other doubts the viability of capitalism, both philosophers largely agree on the current state of exploitation and inequity within our modern society.

Despite their similar understandings of standing socio-economic and political structures, their ideologies directly oppose each other in nearly all other facets. As alluded to prior, though they both criticise charity, it is from opposite ends of the political spectrum. Spencer dissented with the idea of charity or any aim to establish relative equity, as he wished for only those who can “prove their worth” to be able to survive and be survived by an abundant lineage (Hofstadter 392). He believed in establishing a laissez-faire marketplace as an extension of Darwinism, as both thinkers believed that the power of natural selection will more often than not grant those with favourable traits the ability to propagate their genes throughout their species. Social Darwinism wishes to let this process occur within human societies, with minimal governmental interference, and thus inequity is necessary to establish a pecking order among the civilised, and inequality is a natural result of society wishing to keep those at the top of the order on top.

Marx, on the other hand, opposed charity because he viewed it as practically incapable of doing enough to counteract the inequalities presented by the current system of capitalism. He viewed the relation between the bourgeoisie and proletariat as akin to that between “[f]reeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf,” and that the only true means to an end would be “a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or the common ruin of contending classes” (Marx and Engels 473-474). As aforementioned, charity is sympathy with the suffering of members of the proletariat, and through a Marxist lens, charity is merely a prolongation of suffering, and true positive change can only be achieved through that "revolutionary reconstitution". The natural extension of this logic, which Spencer opposes, is that "[t]he necessary consequence [of capitalism] was political centralisation,” and that strong governmental regulations are needed in order to restrict the exploitative powers of capitalism (Marx and Engels 477). Marx did not subscribe to the ideology of "survival of the fittest", because he instead agreed with a separate Darwinian principle, and that is the belief in challenging standing systems in favour of more logical ones. In The Communist Manifesto, Engels believed that communism was “destined to do for history what Darwin’s theory has done for biology” (Marx and Engels 6). This statement perfectly captures the radical ideology and intent of Marx & Engels, and their desire to tear down all the existing systems Spencer wished to build upon in society.

Through their ideologies, Marx and Spencer envisioned two opposing futures, though Spencerian Social Darwinism has more inherent beneficiary components than Marxist Communism. Though a biologist and not a philosopher, Darwin still recognized the influence of diversified conditions in civilised nations, where members of society hold ranks and fill different occupational roles, observing that these conditions produced on average a greater range of characters than uncivilised nations did (Darwin 196). He also asserted that genius tends to be inherited (196). Building upon these observations by Darwin, Spencer envisioned a society where the fittest individuals will naturally reach a level of superiority over the rest of the population to where they can successfully propagate the spread of their genetics over all other classes of society, and this dominance will continue until a fitter group emerges from that group ant prevails. In an ideal expression of Social Darwinism, this system would continue, and humanity would benefit overall from this competitive evolution, while the weaker or those born into unfortunate situations would be exploited and left behind. Spencer viewed this system as the right of the bourgeoisie to control, as he claimed, “[t]he growth of a large business is merely a survival of the fittest,” and that free individual enterprise without governmental interference is simply an expression of “the constitutional ban upon interference with liberty and property without due process of law” (Hofstadter 394). The American Revolution was fought by Americans in large part to gain the freedom to control their own capitalist future, Columbus set out to explore not based solely on curiosity, but in hopes of Multiplying Investments (Harari 353). As Yuval Harari puts it in Sapiens, “to understand modern economic history, you need to understand just a single word. The word is growth” (341). Spencer’s ultimate goal for society was growth: growth of the economy, growth of our social and political ideologies, growth of our innate capabilities through natural selection.

Marx wished to essentially return to the trading and bartering system that stagnated global progression for centuries. Due to his opposition to exploitation, Marx by default opposes the majority of growth-economics: since all the available labour in a communist system will have to be traded for its exact worth, the aggregation of wealth and labour power that results in capitalism becomes impossible. In capitalism, this aggregation of wealth by the capitalist is coupled with labourers selling their labour power, and the capitalist can exploit this labour power to an extent impossible in communism, to an extent that catalyses economic growth in the society, as production outpaces labour force, and revenue generated outgrows the cost of wages. In communism, such an imbalance is prohibited, and so the labourer producing a certain amount of labour receives the same overall wage value in return, and so each member of society serves no larger purpose but to sustain the system with their productive power. Although largely an immobile state of living economically, Marx’s utopia aims not for economic satisfaction, but for every individual to have equal opportunities in life and to abolish the widespread inequalities and inequity between classes that accompanies capitalism. Some of the ten demands he views as necessary to achieve this include:

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. 3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance. 5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly. 6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State. 8. Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture. (Marx and Engels 490)

Naturally, neither extreme philosophy is a perfect set of ideals to live by, and each presents impracticalities that hinder their actualisation. The main philosophical danger of Marxism is the threat of absolute equality and equity, which is an almost guaranteed result of actualising communism. Marxism supports the “[c]onfiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels [to the communist system]” (Marx and Engels 490), and so it becomes clear that his vision of equality does not equate to freedom for all. As Kurt Vonnegut satirically observes, in order for true equality to be reached, the government would have to utilize “mental handicappers” to prevent smarter individuals from “taking advantage of their brains” (Vonnegut 1). None of us are born equal, and so to fight for equality that leads to relative equity is to fight with human nature, human rights, and natural selection itself, which is a battle man will always lose. One needs but to look to the former Soviet Union and to the Chinese Communist party to see some of these flaws present themselves in the real world. Soviet Russia tried to confiscate private property and institute a system where individuals work for the government, in order to level the playing field, but by the 1980’s nearly every citizen had lost favor with that mode of life, and it was overthrown. The difference between the USSR and China was that “China placed an emphasis on the economy rather than on political reform” to the point where it became one of the global leaders in industrial production, and operates in a socialist system more akin to restricted capitalism than to communism ("Why Did Communism Survive in China"). To call China a success would not be wrong, but the reason they succeeded is because they embraced industry and exploitation, and avoided the Marxist principles that fail in practical application.

“ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS” read the one constitutional right remaining of a former list of seven (Orwell 40). There are many flaws present within Marxist communism, and the novel Animal Farm, by George Orwell, brings light to the most pressing concern: greed and corruption. Though the story is centered around barnyard animals, the principle remains the same: in a system such as communism where class antagonisms disappear, and everyone feels they have reached the perfect state of equality, the members of society will believe they are working in a perfect system for the people and by the people. Thus, society will become complacent, and lose the incentive to question the government, and those who do discover corruption will be disbelieved until corruption has returned to a visible extent. Consider the following examples: one driving on a newly tarred road will seldom look out for potholes, those blind from birth are content without sight, the uneducated cannot question what they do not know. Even if not for the first hundred years in a communist system, cunning individuals will eventually corrupt society. Feudalism and Capitalism dictate as much about the innate human desire to live above and control others. By establishing a society where everyone is a member of the proletariat, more power is simply consolidated in the hands of the government, and the chances of an oligarchy forming are much higher than the chances that the leaders abandon government once ‘true communism’ is reached.

The relative lack of free will in this system, as previously highlighted, brings about the concern of who takes action and/or moral responsibility when the system fails, or grows past containment. In a system where everyone lives in equality, and thus where the full expression of every productive individual’s labour power would result in relative equity, there is little incentive to work beyond sustenance, and so the individuals who are too disabled to contribute to society will heavily burden those who can work, and force them to (likely unwillingly) shoulder their labour cost. According to Malthusian principles, the society will also reach a point where the population exceeds the amount of sustainable resources. While this is an accepted truth and occasional occurrence in capitalist society, it cripples communist systems, such as the famines that lead to revolt in both the USSR and Maoist China. Due to the aforementioned principle of society operating as one, resource scarcity would lead to the collective detriment of a truly communist world.

While not nearly as problematic, there are still a few major issues with Social Darwinism, and these concerns center around the fairness of the system. These issues arise from the level of absolute capitalism that Spencer insisted upon, which would allow for inequalities within society to eventually grow stronger than capability even the strongest genetics would have to overcome the environmental setbacks of being born into the proletariat. As a rule of genetics, fitter individuals are not always born to the fitter families, due to the complexity of genetic crossing, and as exemplified by the classic rags to riches "nouveau riche" who find ways to climb the ranks, sometimes even without aid from the higher class. In a complete laissez-faire system, there would be no regulation on the monopolization of businesses, or the collusion against labourers in their plight for more capital, and thus the labourers would no longer be able to protect themselves and their labour power (Harari 368). No more nouveau riche breakthroughs, save the few allowed here and there to appease the proletariat masses. There is also the threat, in an unregulated market, of “thieves and charlatans” using their natural cunning to cheat their way to the top of society, thus breaking the trust in the credit system that allows capitalism to expand at the rate it does (Harari 367). Therefore, a somewhat fluid model of economics must be instituted that allows individuals born into lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder to prove their worth and make it up, until natural selection can consistently produce fitter individuals from fitter families.

Ultimately, the flaws in Social Darwinism, though critical enough to be problematic, can be resolved through utilising Marxist logic to achieve relative equality while maintaining inequity. Adam Smith, the "Father of Economics", coined the phrase “Egoism is Altruism” to describe the potential for the dominance of the few in a capitalist system to lead to the collective benefit of the many (Harari 348). The line of thinking is that as long as a capitalist is expanding their capital in search of more wealth, while they may decrease the complexity of labour tasks in search of efficiency, the overall expansion of capital and production outweighs the downsides to labour. As more labour power needs to be recruited by the capitalist in order to sustain their growth, both the capitalist and the proletariat get richer. Social Darwinism, if maintained properly, can help not only support the proletariat class, but can prove to be a system superior to charity by its greater motivation to make those who can work work, and prevent those who cannot from suffering for multiple generations. As harsh as it may sound, it is the utilitarian truth that society is better off conserving only those who contribute to society.

The most important adjustmenfts to be made to Social Darwinism are those that, surprisingly enough, find their homes in Marxist ideology. The Spencerian mode of capitalism can be adjusted by introducing systems as proposed by Marx to enable movement between classes, and enabling anyone regardless of birth situation to grow, while concurrently maintaining class separations and exploitation overall. These systems can include introducing scholarship and internship opportunities into areas with mean incomes lower than the median income in the nation, which can be achieved by increasing taxes, but not to the extent where equity is approached. Another alternative is to raise the standard of public education, while not doing away with private educational institutions.

A generally laissez-faire government can be instituted to allow the evolution of society and of humans to take its natural course, while basic regulations to protect the mental and physical health of workers, and prevent basic human rights abuses can simultaneously be maintained. This balance can be achieved through sustaining the legality of Workers Unions, while also making it legal for workers to suffer the consequences of union-related insurrections, in order to maintain a good balance between group benefit and individual preservation within the proletariat class.

Through sufficient development, Spencer’s theory of Social Darwinism can grow from Marxist ideology until it becomes a viable system for global use. “Exploration is gathering information, and exploitation is using the information you have to get a known good result” (Christian and Griffiths 31). Marxist ideology searches for a new mode of socio-economic operation, while history has demonstrated that the most optimal known way is capitalism: an exploitation of the majority of society rather than an exploration of every member’s ability. Individuals, including Marx, tend to over-explore — to favour the new disproportionately over the best, which hinders their ability to optimize existing systems (Christian and Griffiths 52).

It would additionally be best to take action to unify economic regulations on capitalism sooner rather than later. When facing socialist conditions that are unfavourable for their capitalist expeditions, the wealthy bourgeoisie, such as Elon Musk, simply leave the region and take their capital with them (Chang and Chakrabarti). This exodus widens the GDP per capita between communities, and creates economic imbalances that lead to the detriment of communities who cannot attract businesses and their entrepreneurs into their society. Finally, there is evidence that genetic evolutionary change based on socio-economic status is around the corner. Studies have shown that families with high generational material wealth demonstrate genotypic and phenotypic variance from the average individual, such presenting lower infant mortality rates (Mulder). There are many factors as to why we should place our faith as a species into Natural Selection, and if we do so by embracing Social Darwinism, then our growth as a species will be nigh endless.

Works Cited

Chang, Jonathan, and Meghna Chakrabarti. “‘California Exodus’: Why Are So Many People Leaving The Golden State? | On Point.” WBUR. Org, 11 Feb. 2021, www.wbur.org/onpoint/2021/02/11/whats-driving-californias-exodus.

Christian, Brian, and Tom Griffiths. Algorithms to Live by: The Computer Science of Human Decisions. 2016.

Darwin, Charles. Darwin, edited by Philip Appleman. 3rd ed., New York, Norton, 2001.

Harari, Yuval N. Sapiens : A Brief History of Humankind. Harper, 2015.

“Herbert Spencer Quotes.” BrainyQuote.com. BrainyMedia Inc, 2021. 15 March 2021. https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/herbert_spencer_109568.

Hofstadter, Richard. -”The Vogue of Spencer.” 1955. Rpt. in Darwin, 3rd ed., W. W. Norton & Company Inc, 2001, pp. 389-395.

Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. International Publishers Corporation, 1948.

———. The Marx-Engels Reader, edited by Robert C. Tucker, 2nd ed., W.W. Norton & Company, 1978.

Mulder, Monique Borgerhoff, and Bret A Beheim. “Understanding the Nature of Wealth and Its Effects on Human Fitness.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 12 Feb. 2011, www.ncbi. nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3013473/.

Orwell, George. Animal Farm. Harlow: Longman, 1989.

Tucker, Robert C. Preface. The Marx-Engels Reader, by Tucker, WW. Norton & Company, 1984,

Vonnegut, Kurt. “Harrison Bergeron.” 1961. https://www.bpi.edu/ourpages/auto/2017/10/14/55813476/Harrison%20Bergeron.pdf

"Why Did Communism Survive in China but Not in the USSR?” E-International Relations, 17 Nov. 2010, www.e-ir.info/2010/11/17/whydid-communism-survive-in-china-but-not-in-the-ussr.

Žižek, Slavoj. “RSA ANIMATE: First as Tragedy, Then as Farce.” YouTube, uploaded by RSA, 28 July 2010, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=hpAMbpQ8J7g