Darwin & the survival of the fittest.

 

Leading Fabian's like the Webb's (Sidney and Beatrice Webb), and George Bernard Shaw, were huge fans of the dictator Joseph Stalin and his so-called Soviet Communist Regime. The Webb's wrote a two-volume study called 'Soviet Communism: A New Civilization?' which was published in 1935. They also supported Stalin's show trials and the purges. They believed in a kind of enlightened despotism and rule by technocrats and experts.

Shaw was a eugenicist who advocated compulsory sterilisation for people deemed "feeble minded", but so did Winston Churchill. He advocated for the sterilisation of the mentally unfit. Winston Churchill did say that the best argument against democracy was a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

I recently saw film footage of George Bernard Shaw which is circulating on Facebook where he was arguing for tribunals to set up which we would be forced to attend, to justify our existence. He was basically saying that some people have no right to exist because they're not useful to society. If some people have no right to exist, then what are you going to do with them?

What is called "social Darwinism" and the "survival of the fittest" has nothing really to do with Charles Darwin. He never used the term and didn't support its core premises. It has more to do with the ideas of Herbert Spencer and Darwin's cousin Francis Galton. It was used to justify social inequality, imperialism, laissez-faire capitalism and eugenics.

Charles Darwin once asked a breeder of racing dogs, how he got a winner. The dog breeder told him that he bred many and hanged many. It is a bit more difficult to do that with human beings.