Yeah, if you mean those better adapted to their environment then I agree with you.
Have you actually read Spencer, Malthus, Darwin, Begehot, Lombroso, and other "founders" of what came to be called Social Darwinism?
Spencer (like most) posited a hierarchy among species and humans. However, unlike some (notably Darwin and Malthus), his was based on a fertility continuum. The lower the species, the more offspring it had. This "species" differentiation included humans. He specifically uses the Irish as an example of "lower" species because of the amount of children in a typical Irish family. Malthus believed that a lack of resources would hold back populations, in that overpopulation would mean not enough to go around and many would die, returning the overall population to some sort of equilibrium. Darwin had similar ideas, only for him it was selection and adaption.
Spencer, on the other hand, who actually coined the phrase "survival of the fittest", began with different ideas and although he incorporated some of Darwin's into his own model, but from his early work on population until the end, his model of "evolution" had much to do with fertility and rates of offspring: a species which isn't as "fit" has to produce more, because more offspring are likely to die. However, the "fitter" the species, the less likely to die, and thus the less the need for more offspring.
He extends this to humans, not just in the essay I linked to, but even more extensively in his
The Principles of Biology (vol. 2). Here he uses the "African peasantry", the "French Canadians", and again the Irish to demonstrate that more offspring even among humans is a useful metric for how "high" on the hierarchy some group falls (and suprise, suprise, the English or "Anglo-Saxons" are thus more evolved than the other races).
And how does he deal with cases where his "rules" don't hold?
"It is likely to be urged that since the civilzed races are, on the average, larger than many of the uncivilized races; and since they are also somewhat more complex aas well as active; they ought, in conformity with the alleged general law, to be less proflific. There is, however, no evidence to prove that they are so: on the whole, they seem rather the reverse"
Contrary evidence! A whole theory threatened! But wait, there's more! All this can be explained:
"The reply is that were all other things equal, these superior varieties of men should have inferior rates of increase. But other things are not equal; and it is to the inequality of other things that this apparent anomaly is attributable."
And what, you might ask, does Spencer posit as the reason behind why the superior peoples like the English don't fit into his population/evolution model? The answer is...food.
"There is the difference in amount of food. Australians, Fuegians, and sundry races that might be named as having low rates of multiplication, are obviously underfed." He goes on about food at some length, but in such a way that one wonders how he can use his original metric (fertility rates) as an indicator when it doesn't hold most of the time (the Irish have more offspring and are inferior despite poverty, while the Australians and "sundry races" are
also inferior, but the lack of food means they don't have more offspring).
More importantly, however, (as this is where the "social Darwinism" component comes in) is that for Spencer, "The survival of the fittest must nearly and always further the production of modifications which produce fitness, whether they be incidental modifications, or modifications caused by direct adaption." (from volume of his
Principles of Biology).
In other words, you don't need random mutations producing adaptive characteristics. And this is especially true with humans, according to Spencer. And as we know (thanks to Spencer's ironclad logic) what consitutes superiority, we can ensure it ourselves. For humans, intelligence is what matters. Before, wars kept the population in check and meant bigger, stronger people triumphed. But now human evolution is all about brain power. So how will population be held in check?
"Hence the particular kind of further evolution which Man is hereafter to undergo, is one which, more than any other, may be expected to cause a decline in his power of reproduction."
Great. So, less children, obviously, because the fewer offspring a species requires to continue means the more "adaptive" it is. But what's going to cause humans to have fewer children? Brain power!
"As, even when relieved from the pressure of necessity, large-brained Europeans voluntarily enter on enterprises and activities which the savage could not keep up even to satisfy urgent wants; so, their still larger-brained descendants will, in a still higher degree, find their gratifications in careers entailing still greater mental expenditures."
So Europeans will keep on getting smarter, but not decrease the activities required to sustain them even after they are no longer required. They'll
want to do more, and while they're at it have less children. But what if this doesn't happen, or what if it could happen faster? IT CAN! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, for only $19.99 and a little genocide, you can grow stronger, faster, better, because
"mankind cannot but continue to undergo changes of environment, physical and moral, analogous to those which they have thus far been undergoing. Such changes may eventually become slower and less marked; but they never cease. And if they never cease, there can never arise a perfect adaption of human nature to its conditions of existence." (the environment is always going to be changing, in other words, which means humans need a new way to adapt that allows them to do so in spite of their environment or regardless of it).
"Hence though the number of premature deaths may ultimately become very small,
it can never become so small as to allow the average number of offspring from each pair to fall so low as two."
So we can't expect external changes to bring about perfection, but we can limit how many offspring humans have. But Spencer has just spouted on and on about how the Irish, the Australians, and all the other "savages" out there seem to multiply with or without food, so how are we going to ensure population is stable and yet also ensure that humans (well, Europeans at least, or rather Anglo-Saxons and maybe some others) will continue to have bigger and bigger brains?
No problem:
"Changes numerical, social, organic, must, by their mutual influences, work unceasingly towards a state of harmony- a state in which each of the factors is just equal to its work. And this highest conceivable result must be wrought"
All we have to do to maintain "equilibrium" is to have the right social changes and so forth. But what kind of "social changes"? Spencer's 2 volume work on "biology" doesn't provide much detail here. However, other works, such as his
Man Versus the State give us all the detail needed. For example, what's to be done about those like the Irish or even the lower-class English who lack money and means?
(emphasis added)
"'They have no work', you say. Say rather that they either refuse work or quickly turn themselves out of it.
They are simply good-for-nothings, who in one way or another live on the good-for-somethings-- vagrants and sots, criminals and those on the way to crime, youths who are burdens on hard-worked parents, men who appropriate the wages of their wives, fellows who share the gains of prostitutes; and then less visible and less numerous, there is a corresponding class of women."
Time to pay attention, folks, because here's where Spencer brings it all together:
"
social arrangements which retard the multiplication of the mentally best, and facilitate the multiplication of the mentally worst, must be extremely injurious"
So we make sure only the superior people reproduce? That reminds me of some german fellow...Whister? Hilster? Hitler? Something like that.
To his credit, however, while later Social Darwinists favored "social arrangements" far more extreme than anything Spencer would have approved of, he himself believed that all one needed was to let the poor, the mentally ill, the handicapped, etc., to just suffer and die either by starvation, execution, disease, etc. You don't need
actual genocide, says Spencer, because it will happen on its own as long as we don't interfere with "
that natural process of elimination by which a society purifies itself." (from Spencer's
Study of Sociology). As long as we supply prisons rather than places for the homeless, executions rather than treatment for the mentally ill, and starvation for the poor rather than welfare, the "lesser" people will die out on there own.
Yep, he was a real progressive, that one.
This is just inaccurate and false. They would either learn to adapt or not adapt at all.
Have you read his stuff? How would they "adapt"? Are the paralyzed going to be able to walk all of a sudden? Poor children receive manna from heaven?
He didn't believe in exterminating those lesser adapted to their environment.
Right. He just wanted to ensure that nothing was in place, from mental wards to welfare, to care for anybody (even children) who needed it. That way, the "lesser" people would die on their own.
So do you a support of people acting like tyrants and savage beasts or being educated and learning how to live and get along with one another?
You added "beasts". He wasn't talking about "beast" but about lesser species of humans. They were "savages" because they weren't elite Europeans. As for education, you show me where Spencer wrote about offering education to people who couldn't afford it.
