Socialist Darwinism

Robert E. Wright  – October 24, 2021 

Occasionally, a human being of more than median understanding of the social world will say to me something like “Libertarianism smacks too much of Social Darwinism.” Such comments always strike me as absurd because all environments, including social(ist) ones, create selective pressures. In other words, societies necessarily encourage the reproductive success of people with certain traits more than people with other traits. The strength of those selective pressures, however, varies inversely with each society’s productivity (roughly, its real per capita output).

Selective pressures manifest as differential probabilities of reproductive success (living to sexual maturity and successfully raising offspring who also achieve reproductive success). Anything heritable, from physical traits to behavioral tendencies, is subject to selection. Old debates about “nature vs. nurture” have, thankfully, finally fallen by the wayside. We now understand that almost everything that contributes to reproductive success is partly due to genetics, partly due to environmental factors, from culture to nutrition, and largely due to the interaction between the two. And, again, selective pressures are probabilistic so no one’s reproductive outcomes are preordained, just more or less likely within a complex, stochastic system. Luck still matters, come to find out..........To Read More........