Politics of the Two Darwinisms
Discussion
From a review by Dennis Hodgson:
1. The First Darwin of the Origin of Species
"Piers Hale in Political Descent makes a strong case that Darwin’s decision to base “natural selection” in his landmark On the Origin of Species (1859) on Malthus’s vision of individuals competing for subsistence in a world incapable of providing for all was not just fortuitous but also quite strategic. Hale sees Darwin as “a deeply political character” who “consciously constructed his theory of evolution by means of natural selection to vindicate and naturalize the political views that he hoped to see widely adopted” (p. 352). At mid-century Darwin was part of a progressive Whig coalition of new industrialists and their middle-class allies who emphasized liberty, tolerance, and free trade when battling with their entrenched Tory opponents, representatives of the landed aristocracy and of tradition, for expanding suffrage. Well before Darwin’s 1859 work, various strands of evolutionary thought had made their appearance, many of which accommodated quite rapid biological and social change. Erasmus Darwin, Darwin’s grandfather, and other early-nineteenth-century radicals had outlined a process of change in which acquired characteristics could be inherited. Within this perspective the significant changes associated with the move from agriculture to industry were compelling individuals to adopt dramatically new behaviors, ones that could be inherited by their offspring. Within this schema a “new man” could quickly emerge and societies could undergo rapid transformations. Hale contends that when Darwin was writing On the Origin of Species he felt the need to distance his new theory from the taint of political radicalism associated with such past thought. Darwin’s goal was acceptance in the halls of academia and the larger society. Employing a “Malthusian” selection process where individuals were forced to compete for subsistence in a world of limited resources produced a theory of evolutionary change less compatible with a radical political agenda."
2. The Second Darwin of the Descent of Man
"After his theory had gained widespread acceptance Darwin did turn to this topic, publishing Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex in 1871. By this time the excesses of unfettered competition in the capitalist system were becoming more obvious and a subject of great political debate in Great Britain. Darwin’s treatment of evolution in humans, a social species in which individuals necessarily fulfilled their basic needs through interaction with fellow group members, contributed to this new debate. Darwin argued that natural selection did not work along simple Malthusian lines in humans. At the group level, cooperation, not individual struggle, often enhanced survival chances (Hale, p. 132). In fact, in a group context “natural selection” could become a force for moral behavior, favoring individual altruistic actions that enhance group survival chances while simultaneously running counter to the best interest of the individual actor. Darwin traced the origin of other-regarding behaviors in humans to a variety of sources, all quite distinct from the self-interested individual actor implicit in the Malthusian selection process. He thought that parental and filial affections that induced individuals to undergo great sacrifices for close kin were instinctual, instincts that in the case of humans had gradually broadened to include groups increasingly larger than the immediate family. He also argued that in humans a distinct sexual selection process emerged from the struggle for progeny that also fostered other-regarding behaviors. Darwin contended that female choice was common in many human groups and that females tended to select as mates those males best able to defend and support them. This tendency worked to establish “heroic” other-regarding traits within the male population. In the end, according to Hale, Darwin elaborated in Descent of Man an evolutionary theory that offered support for “the foundation of liberal humanistic ethics, of a politics that would spread from the family to the tribe, to the nation and race, and eventually to include men and women of all races” (p. 148). The political lessons buried in Descent of Man clearly were different from those in On the Origin of Species.