Religiocentrism or religio-centrism is defined (Corsini 1999:827) as the "conviction that a person's own religion is more important or superior to other religions." In analogy to ethnocentrism, religiocentrism is a value-neutral term for psychological attitude.
Although the precise origins of religiocentrism and religiocentric
remain unclear, the words have been used since the early 20th century.
The American economist Adrian Augustus Holtz (1917:15) described how
early German school reforms were "carried on in a way that allowed for a
religio-centric educational system." Sinclair Lewis's Main Street (1920:307) said, "Maud Dyer was neurotic, religiocentric, faded; her emotions were moist, and her figure was unsystematic."
The related term Christocentric theologically means "forms of Christianity that concentrate on the teaching of Jesus Christ", but is sometimes used as a near synonym of religiocentric.
For instance (Hamilton 2002), "No matter where it appears,
government-sponsored Christocentrism, or even religiocentrism,
undermines this nation's ideals."
The Australian social psychologists John J. Ray and Dianne Doratis defined religiocentrism.
"Ethnocentrism" is the social scientist's value-neutral
term for ethnic or racial prejudice. It refers to ethnically-based
sentiments of exclusiveness without any implication of their moral worth
or justifiability... By analogy, the term religiocentrism is derived
here to mean religiously based sentiments of
exclusiveness—beliefs that one should marry within one's own religion,
work with members of one's own religion, and in general prefer members
of one's own religion above others. This will also entail ipso facto devaluative judgments of other religions. (1971:170)
Ray and Doratis designed a groundbreaking attitude scale to measure
religiocentrism and ethnocentrism. Their religiocentrism scale comprises
33 items (for instance, "I think my religion is nearer to the truth
than any other" and "Most Moslems, Buddhists and Hindus are very stupid
and ignorant"), with five-point Likert scale psychometric response options from "Strongly agree" (Scored 5) to "Strongly disagree" (1). To verify internal consistency
among respondents, 11 items were reverse scored ("It makes no
difference to me what religion my friends are" is the converse of "I
think that it's better if you stick to friends of the same religion as
your own"), resulting in a reliability coefficient
of .88 among 154 first-year university students. The authors tested
attitudes among Australian fifth-form students in two Catholic and two
public schools, and discovered that neither ethnocentrism nor
religiocentrism showed any correlation with religious background. Ray
and Doratis concluded (1971:178), "Ethnocentrism, religiocentrism and
religious conservatism were all shown to be separate and distinct
factors of attitudes in their own right. They are not just three aspects
of the one thing. Religiocentric people do however tend to be both
religiously conservative and ethnocentric."
The Hungarian-Jewish historian and anthropologist Raphael Patai mentions religiocentrism as a variable in relationships between religion and culture,
Each religion also has a definite outlook on its own
value in relation to that of other religions. Its relationship to other
religions may range from complete toleration to the complete lack of it,
with a corresponding range of self-evaluation. This variable, best
called religio-centrism (on the analogy of ethnocentrism), can serve as
an additional avenue of approach to the study of our subject. (1954:234)
Comparing Middle Eastern, Far Eastern, and Western cultures, Patai finds,
Religion in the Far East is characterized by the absence
of religio-centrism: there is a marked toleration of other religions and
a mutual borrowing and influencing; in the Middle East and in the West
there is a high degree of religio-centrism, with intolerance and scorn
of other religions: each religion is exclusive and regards itself as the
"one and only" true faith. (1954:252)
In a later survey of the potentials for world peace, Patai
differentiated the major modern religions between "theistic" and
"nontheistic".
The three great monotheistic religions of the Middle East
and the West, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, are the foremost
theistic religions and the dominant faiths of about one half of mankind.
Common to all theistic religions is a pronounced religiocentrism,
expressed most poignantly in the conviction that one's own religion is
the one and only true one, and that all the other faiths are erroneous
and hence depreciable. In this conviction were rooted the great
religious wars which pitted, not only Muslims against Christians, but
also various Muslim sects against one another, and likewise made various
Christian denominations bitter enemies... The situation is more hopeful
in the great nontheistic religions of South, Southeast, and East Asia.
These religions, notably Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism,
Confucianism, and Taoism, lack the element of self-assurance and
certainty that each is the exclusive possessor of the only truth.
(1987:24-25)
In response, Andrew Wilson, Professor of Scriptural Studies of the Unification Theological Seminary,
criticized Patai's opinion as theologically plausible but historically
erroneous, citing examples (1987:28) of "rampant communal violence
between Hindus and Buddhists in Sri Lanka and between Sikhs and Hindus
in India."
Religiocentrism has a specialized meaning for sociologists
(Chalfant, Beckley, and Palmer 1994:51). "This term is related to a
common word used in sociological literature, ethnocentrism. Similarly, we might refer to feelings of rightness and superiority resulting from religious affiliation as religiocentrism. Religiocentrism inhibits the ability of a society to achieve adaptation, integration and goal-attainment."
Mohammed Abu-Nimer, the Director of the Peacebuilding and Development Institute at American University, distinguishes between religiocentrism and "religiorelativism".
A religiorelative person is firm in his/her belief that
other religions have the right to exist and be practiced, even if such
norms and beliefs are contradictory to one's own set of religious
beliefs. Such a person is prone not to engage in violence or
discriminatory actions against the others. In contrast, a religiocentric
person is a believer who denies other religions' "truth" and who holds
an absolute truth that leaves no room for different religious practices.
Such a person becomes more prone to dehumanize, exclude, and
discriminate against other religious groups and individuals. Often, as a
result of negative and destructive exposure and experience with
conflict and war, religiocentric beliefs not only are exacerbated and
easily translated into violence against the enemy (that is, the
different other), but also actually grow and prohibit human and peaceful
contact with the other. However, there are conflict resolution and
peace-building activities and forums that can assist peace workers in
such settings to transform a religiocentric into a religiorelative
believer. (2004:497)
Abu-Nimer (2004:479-501) analyzes three typical reactions of a religiocentric person to another religion: denial (e.g., Israel not allowing Arabs to purchase or use state land), defense mechanisms ("There is no salvation outside the Church"), and minimization ("We are all the children of God").
Ethnocentrism is a term used in social sciences and
anthropology to describe the act of judging another culture and
believing that the values and standards of one's own culture are
superior – especially with regard to language, behavior, customs, and
religion. These aspects or categories are distinctions that define each ethnicity's unique cultural identity.
The term ethnocentrism, deriving from the Greek word ethnos meaning "nation, people, or cultural grouping" and the Latin word centric meaning "center," was first applied in the social sciences by American sociologist William G. Sumner. In his 1906 book, Folkways,
Sumner describes ethnocentrism as; "the technical name for the view of
things in which one's own group is the center of everything, and all
others are scaled and rated with reference to it." He further
characterized ethnocentrism as often leading to pride, vanity, the belief in one's own group's superiority, and contempt for outsiders.
Over time, ethnocentrism developed alongside the progression of social understandings by people such as social theorist, Theodore W. Adorno. In Adorno's The Authoritarian Personality, he and his colleagues of the Frankfurt School
established a broader definition of the term as a result of "in
group-out group differentiation", stating that ethnocentrism "combines a
positive attitude toward one's own ethnic/cultural group (the in-group)
with a negative attitude toward the other ethnic/cultural group (the
out-group)". Both of these juxtaposing attitudes are also a result of a
process known as social identification and social counter-identification.
Origins and development
The term ethnocentrism is believed by scholars to have been created by Austrian sociologist Ludwig Gumplowicz in the 19th century, although alternate theories suggest that he only popularized the concept as opposed to inventing it. He saw ethnocentrism as a phenomenon similar to the delusions of geocentrism and anthropocentrism,
defining Ethnocentrism as "the reasons by virtue of which each group of
people believed it had always occupied the highest point, not only
among contemporaneous peoples and nations, but also in relation to all
peoples of the historical past."
Subsequently in the 20th century, American social scientist William G. Sumner proposed two different definitions in his 1906 book Folkways.
Sumner stated that "Ethnocentrism is the technical name for this view
of things in which one's own group is the center of everything, and all
others are scaled and rated with reference to it." In the War and Other Essays (1911),
he wrote that "the sentiment of cohesion, internal comradeship, and
devotion to the in-group, which carries with it a sense of superiority
to any out-group and readiness to defend the interests of the in-group
against the out-group, is technically known as ethnocentrism."
According to Boris Bizumic it is a popular misunderstanding that Sumner
originated the term ethnocentrism, stating that in actuality he brought
ethnocentrism into the mainstreams of anthropology, social science, and psychology through his English publications.
The classifications of ethnocentrism originate from the studies of anthropology.
With its omnipresence throughout history, ethnocentrism has always been
a factor in how different cultures and groups related to one another.
Examples including how historically, foreigners would be characterized
as 'Barbarians', or China would believe their nation to be the 'Empire
of the Center' and viewing foreigners as privileged subordinates.
However, the anthropocentric interpretations initially took place most
notably in the 19th century when anthropologists began to describe and
rank various cultures according to the degree to which they had
developed significant milestones such as; monotheistic religions,
technological advancements, and other historical progressions.
Most rankings were strongly influenced by colonization and the
belief to improve societies they colonized, ranking the cultures based
on the progression of their western societies and what they classified
as milestones. Comparisons were mostly based on what the colonists
believed as superior and what their western societies have accomplished.
Thomas Macaulay, an English politician in the 19th
Century, attempted to validate the opinion that "one shelf of a Western
library" had more knowledge then the years of text and literature
developed by the Eastern societies. Ideas developed by Charles Darwin has ethnocentric ideals where societies who believed they were superior were most likely to survive and prosper.
Edward Said’s orientalist concept represented how Western reactions to
non-Western societies were based on an "unequal power relationship" that
Western peoples developed due to colonization and the influence it held
over non-Western societies.
The ethnocentric classification of "primitive" were also used by 19th and 20th
century anthropologists and represented how unawareness in cultural and
religious understanding changed overall reactions to non-Western
societies. Modern anthropologist Sir Edward Burnett Tylor wrote about "primitive" societies in Primitive Culture (1871) creating a "civilization" scale where it was implied that ethnic cultures preceded civilized societies.
The use of "savage" as a classification is modernly known as "tribal"
or "pre-literate" where it was usually referred as a derogatory term as
the "civilization" scale became more common.
Examples that demonstrate a lack of understanding include when European
travelers judged different languages based on that fact that they could
not understand it and displayed a negative reaction, or the intolerance
displayed by Westerners when exposed to unknown religions and
symbolisms. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,
a German philosopher, justified Western colonization by reasoning that
since the non-Western societies were "primitive" and "uncivilized,"
their culture and history was not worth conserving and should allow
Westernization.
Anthropologist Franz Boas
saw the flaws in this formulaic approach to ranking and interpreting
cultural development and committed himself to overthrowing this
inaccurate reasoning due to many factors involving their individual
characteristics. With his methodological innovations, Boas sought to
show the error of the proposition that race determined cultural
capacity. In his 1911 book The Mind of Primitive Man, Boas wrote that:
It
is somewhat difficult for us to recognize that the value which we
attribute to our own civilization is due to the fact that we participate
in this civilization, and that it has been controlling all our actions
from the time of our birth; but it is certainly conceivable that there
may be other civilizations, based perhaps on different traditions and on
a different equilibrium of emotion and reason, which are of no less
value than ours, although it may be impossible for us to appreciate
their values without having grown up under their influence.
Together,
Boas and his colleagues propagated the certainty that there are no
inferior races or cultures. This egalitarian approach introduced the
concept of cultural relativism
to anthropology, a methodological principle for investigating and
comparing societies in as unprejudiced as possible and without using a
developmental scale as anthropologists at the time were implementing. Boas and anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski argued that any human science had to transcend the ethnocentric views that could blind any scientist's ultimate conclusions.
Both had also urged anthropologists to conduct ethnographic fieldwork in order to overcome their ethnocentrism. To help, Malinowski would develop the theory of functionalism
as guides for producing non-ethnocentric studies of different cultures.
Classic examples of anti-ethnocentric anthropology include Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), which in time has met with severe criticism for its incorrect data and generalisations, Malinowski's The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia (1929), and Ruth Benedict's Patterns of Culture (1934). Mead and Benedict were two of Boas's students.
Scholars generally agree that Boas developed his ideas under the influence of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Legend has it that, on a field trip to the Baffin Islands in 1883, Boas would pass the frigid nights reading Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.
In that work, Kant argued that human understanding could not be
described according to the laws that applied to the operations of
nature, and that its operations were therefore free, not determined, and
that ideas regulated human action, sometimes independent of material
interests. Following Kant, Boas pointed out the starving Eskimos who,
because of their religious beliefs, would not hunt seals to feed
themselves, thus showing that no pragmatic or material calculus
determined their values.
Causes
Ethnocentrism is believed to be a learned behavior embedded into a variety of beliefs and values of an individual or group.
Due to enculturation,
individuals in in-groups have a deeper sense of loyalty and are more
likely to following the norms and develop relationships with associated
members.
Within relation to enculturation, ethnocentrism is said to be a
transgenerational problem since stereotypes and similar perspectives can
be enforced and encouraged as time progresses.
Although loyalty can increase better in-grouper approval, limited
interactions with other cultures can prevent individuals to have an
understanding and appreciation towards cultural differences resulting in
greater ethnocentrism.
The social identity approach
suggests that ethnocentric beliefs are caused by a strong
identification with one's own culture that directly creates a positive
view of that culture. It is theorized by Henri Tajfel and John C. Turner that in order to maintain that positive view, people make social comparisons that cast competing cultural groups in an unfavorable light.
Alternative or opposite perspectives could cause individuals to develop naïve realism and be subject to limitations in understandings. These characteristics can also lead to individuals to become subject to ethnocentrism, when referencing out-groups, and black sheep effect, where personal perspectives contradict those from fellow in-groupers.
Realistic conflict theory
assumes that ethnocentrism happens due to "real or perceived conflict"
between groups. This also happens when a dominant group may perceive the
new members as a threat.Scholars
have recently demonstrated that individuals are more likely to develop
in-group identification and out-group negatively in response to
intergroup competition, conflict, or threat.
Although the causes of ethnocentric beliefs and actions can have
varying roots of context and reason, the effects of ethnocentrism has
had both negative and positive effects throughout history. The most
detrimental effects of ethnocentrism resulting into genocide, apartheid, slavery, and many violent conflicts. Historical examples of these negative effects of ethnocentrism are The Holocaust, the Crusades, the Trail of Tears, and the internment of Japanese Americans.
These events were a result of cultural differences reinforced
inhumanely by a superior, majority group. In his 1976 book on evolution,
The Selfish Gene, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins writes that "blood-feuds and inter-clan warfare are easily interpretative in terms of Hamilton's genetic theory." Simulation-based experiments in evolutionary game theory have attempted to provide an explanation for the selection of ethnocentric-strategy phenotypes.
The positive examples of ethnocentrism throughout history have
aimed to prohibit the callousness of ethnocentrism and reverse the
perspectives of living in a single culture. These organizations can
include the formation of the United Nations; aimed to maintain international relations, and the Olympic Games; a celebration of sports and friendly competition between cultures.
Effects
A study in New Zealand was used to compare how individuals associate with in-groups and out-groupers and has a connotation to discrimination. Strong in-group favoritism benefits the dominant groups and is different from out-group hostility and/or punishment.
A suggested solution is to limit the perceived threat from the
out-group that also decreases the likeliness for those supporting the
in-groups to negatively react.
Ethnocentrism also influences consumer preference over which
goods they purchase. A study that used several in-group and out-group
orientations have shown a correlation between national identity, consumer cosmopolitanism, consumer ethnocentrism, and the methods consumer choose their products, whether imported or domestic.
Social Darwinism is any of various theories of society which emerged in the United Kingdom, North America, and Western Europe in the 1870s, claiming to apply biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology and politics. Social Darwinists argue that the strong should see their wealth and power
increase while the weak should see their wealth and power decrease.
Different social-Darwinist groups have differing views about which
groups of people are considered to be the strong and which groups of people are considered to be the weak,
and they also hold different opinions about the precise mechanisms that
should be used to reward strength and punish weakness. Many such views
stress competition between individuals in laissez-fairecapitalism, while others were used in support of authoritarianism, eugenics, racism, imperialism, fascism, Nazism, and struggle between national or racial groups.
As a scientific concept, Social Darwinism broadly declined in popularity following World War I and was largely discredited by the end of World War II,
partially due to its association with Nazism and partially due to a
growing scientific consensus that it was scientifically groundless.
Later theories that were categorised as social Darwinism were generally
described as such as a critique by their opponents; their proponents
did not identify themselves by such a label. Creationists have often maintained that social Darwinism—leading to policies designed to reward the most competitive—is a logical consequence of "Darwinism" (the theory of natural selection in biology). Biologists and historians have stated that this is a fallacy of appeal to nature,
since the theory of natural selection is merely intended as a
description of a biological phenomenon and should not be taken to imply
that this phenomenon is good or that it ought to be used as a moral guide in human society.
While most scholars recognize some historical links between the
popularisation of Darwin's theory and forms of social Darwinism, they
also maintain that social Darwinism is not a necessary consequence of
the principles of biological evolution.
Scholars debate the extent to which the various social Darwinist ideologies reflect Charles Darwin's
own views on human social and economic issues. His writings have
passages that can be interpreted as opposing aggressive individualism,
while other passages appear to promote it.
Darwin's early evolutionary views and his opposition to slavery ran
counter to many of the claims that social Darwinists would eventually
make about the mental capabilities of the poor and colonial indigenes. After the publication of On the Origin of Species
in 1859, one strand of Darwins' followers, led by Sir John Lubbock,
argued that natural selection ceased to have any noticeable effect on
humans once organised societies had been formed. However, some scholars argue that Darwin's view gradually changed and came to incorporate views from other theorists such as Herbert Spencer. Spencer published his Lamarckian
evolutionary ideas about society before Darwin first published his
hypothesis in 1859, and both Spencer and Darwin promoted their own
conceptions of moral values. Spencer supported laissez-faire capitalism on the basis of his Lamarckian belief that struggle for survival spurred self-improvement which could be inherited. An important proponent in Germany was Ernst Haeckel, who popularized Darwin's thought and his personal interpretation of it, and used it as well to contribute to a new creed, the monist movement.
Origin of the term
The term Darwinism was coined by Thomas Henry Huxley in his March 1861 review of On the Origin of Species,
and by the 1870s it was used to describe a range of concepts of
evolution or development, without any specific commitment to Charles
Darwin's theory of natural selection.
The first use of the phrase "social Darwinism" was in Joseph Fisher's 1877 article on The History of Landholding in Ireland which was published in the Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. Fisher was commenting on how a system for borrowing livestock which had been called "tenure" had led to the false impression that the early Irish had already evolved or developed land tenure;
These arrangements did not in any
way affect that which we understand by the word " tenure", that is, a
man's farm, but they related solely to cattle, which we consider a chattel.
It has appeared necessary to devote some space to this subject,
inasmuch as that usually acute writer Sir Henry Maine has accepted the
word " tenure " in its modern interpretation, and has built up a theory
under which the Irish chief " developed " into a feudal baron. I can find nothing in the Brehon laws to warrant this theory of social Darwinism, and believe further study will show that the Cáin Saerrath and the Cáin Aigillne relate solely to what we now call chattels, and did not in any way affect what we now call the freehold, the possession of the land.
Despite the fact that Social Darwinism bears Charles Darwin's name, it is also linked today with others, notably Herbert Spencer, Thomas Malthus, and Francis Galton, the founder of eugenics. In fact, Spencer was not described as a social Darwinist until the 1930s, long after his death. The social Darwinism term first appeared in Europe in 1880, and journalist Emilie Gautier had coined the term with reference to a health conference in Berlin 1877. Around 1900 it was used by sociologists, some being opposed to the concept. The term was popularized in the United States in 1944 by the American historian Richard Hofstadter
who used it in the ideological war effort against fascism to denote a
reactionary creed which promoted competitive strife, racism and
chauvinism. Hofstadter later also recognized (what he saw as) the
influence of Darwinist and other evolutionary ideas upon those with collectivist views, enough to devise a term for the phenomenon, "Darwinist collectivism". Before Hofstadter's work the use of the term "social Darwinism" in English academic journals was quite rare. In fact,
... there is considerable evidence
that the entire concept of "social Darwinism" as we know it today was
virtually invented by Richard Hofstadter. Eric Foner,
in an introduction to a then-new edition of Hofstadter's book published
in the early 1990s, declines to go quite that far. "Hofstadter did not
invent the term Social Darwinism", Foner writes, "which originated in
Europe in the 1860s and crossed the Atlantic in the early twentieth
century. But before he wrote, it was used only on rare occasions; he
made it a standard shorthand for a complex of late-nineteenth-century
ideas, a familiar part of the lexicon of social thought."
— Jeff Riggenbach
Usage
Social Darwinism has many definitions, and some of them are incompatible
with each other. As such, social Darwinism has been criticized for
being an inconsistent philosophy, which does not lead to any clear
political conclusions. For example, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics states:
Part
of the difficulty in establishing sensible and consistent usage is that
commitment to the biology of natural selection and to 'survival of the
fittest' entailed nothing uniform either for sociological method or for
political doctrine. A 'social Darwinist' could just as well be a
defender of laissez-faire as a defender of state socialism, just as much
an imperialist as a domestic eugenist.
The term "Social Darwinism" has rarely been used by advocates of the
supposed ideologies or ideas; instead it has almost always been used
pejoratively by its opponents. The term draws upon the common meaning of Darwinism, which includes a range of evolutionary views, but in the late 19th century was applied more specifically to natural selection as first advanced by Charles Darwin to explain speciation in populations of organisms.
The process includes competition between individuals for limited
resources, popularly but inaccurately described by the phrase "survival of the fittest", a term coined by sociologistHerbert Spencer.
Creationists have often maintained that Social Darwinism—leading to policies designed to reward the most competitive—is a logical consequence of "Darwinism" (the theory of natural selection in biology).
Biologists and historians have stated that this is a fallacy of appeal to nature and should not be taken to imply that this phenomenon ought to be used as a moral guide in human society.[10]
While there are historical links between the popularization of Darwin's
theory and forms of social Darwinism, social Darwinism is not a
necessary consequence of the principles of biological evolution.
While the term has been applied to the claim that Darwin's theory of evolution
by natural selection can be used to understand the social endurance of a
nation or country, Social Darwinism commonly refers to ideas that
predate Darwin's publication of On the Origin of Species. Others whose ideas are given the label include the 18th century clergyman Thomas Malthus, and Darwin's cousin Francis Galton who founded eugenics towards the end of the 19th century.
The expansion of the British Empire
fitted in with the broader notion of social Darwinism used from the
1870s onwards to account for the remarkable and universal phenomenon of
"the Anglo-Saxon overflowing his boundaries", as phrased by the
late-Victorian sociologist Benjamin Kidd in Social Evolution, published in 1894.
The concept also proved useful to justify what was seen by some as the
inevitable extermination of "the weaker races who disappear before the
stronger" not so much "through the effects of … our vices upon them" as
"what may be called the virtues of our civilisation." Winston Churchill,
a political proponent of eugenics, maintained that if fewer
‘feebleminded’ individuals were born, less crime would take place.
Herbert Spencer's ideas, like those of evolutionary progressivism,
stemmed from his reading of Thomas Malthus, and his later theories were
influenced by those of Darwin. However, Spencer's major work, Progress: Its Law and Cause (1857), was released two years before the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species, and First Principles was printed in 1860.
In The Social Organism (1860), Spencer compares society to
a living organism and argues that, just as biological organisms evolve
through natural selection, society evolves and increases in complexity
through analogous processes.
In many ways, Spencer's theory of cosmic evolution has much more in common with the works of Lamarck and Auguste Comte's positivism than with Darwin's.
Jeff Riggenbach argues that Spencer's view was that culture and education made a sort of Lamarckism possible and notes that Herbert Spencer was a proponent of private charity. However, the legacy of his social Darwinism was less than charitable.
Spencer's work also served to renew interest in the work of Malthus.
While Malthus's work does not itself qualify as social Darwinism, his
1798 work An Essay on the Principle of Population, was incredibly
popular and widely read by social Darwinists. In that book, for
example, the author argued that as an increasing population would
normally outgrow its food supply, this would result in the starvation of
the weakest and a Malthusian catastrophe.
According to Michael Ruse, Darwin read Malthus' famous Essay on a Principle of Population
in 1838, four years after Malthus' death. Malthus himself anticipated
the social Darwinists in suggesting that charity could exacerbate social
problems.
Another of these social interpretations of Darwin's biological
views, later known as eugenics, was put forth by Darwin's cousin,
Francis Galton, in 1865 and 1869. Galton argued that just as physical
traits were clearly inherited among generations of people, the same
could be said for mental qualities (genius and talent). Galton argued
that social morals needed to change so that heredity was a conscious
decision in order to avoid both the over-breeding by less fit members of
society and the under-breeding of the more fit ones.
In Galton's view, social institutions such as welfare and insane asylums
were allowing inferior humans to survive and reproduce at levels faster
than the more "superior" humans in respectable society, and if
corrections were not soon taken, society would be awash with
"inferiors". Darwin read his cousin's work with interest, and devoted
sections of Descent of Man to discussion of Galton's theories.
Neither Galton nor Darwin, though, advocated any eugenic policies
restricting reproduction, due to their Whiggish distrust of government.
Friedrich Nietzsche's
philosophy addressed the question of artificial selection, yet
Nietzsche's principles did not concur with Darwinian theories of natural
selection. Nietzsche's point of view on sickness and health, in
particular, opposed him to the concept of biological adaptation as
forged by Spencer's "fitness". Nietzsche criticized Haeckel, Spencer,
and Darwin, sometimes under the same banner by maintaining that in
specific cases, sickness was necessary and even helpful. Thus, he wrote:
Wherever progress is to ensue, deviating natures are of
greatest importance. Every progress of the whole must be preceded by a
partial weakening. The strongest natures retain the type, the weaker
ones help to advance it.
Something similar also happens in the individual. There is rarely a
degeneration, a truncation, or even a vice or any physical or moral loss
without an advantage somewhere else. In a warlike and restless clan,
for example, the sicklier man may have occasion to be alone, and may
therefore become quieter and wiser; the one-eyed man will have one eye
the stronger; the blind man will see deeper inwardly, and certainly hear
better. To this extent, the famous theory of the survival of the
fittest does not seem to me to be the only viewpoint from which to
explain the progress of strengthening of a man or of a race.
Ernst Haeckel's recapitulation theory was not Darwinism, but rather attempted to combine the ideas of Goethe,
Lamarck and Darwin. It was adopted by emerging social sciences to
support the concept that non-European societies were "primitive", in an
early stage of development towards the European ideal, but since then it
has been heavily refuted on many fronts.
Haeckel's works led to the formation of the Monist League in 1904 with
many prominent citizens among its members, including the Nobel Prize winner Wilhelm Ostwald.
The simpler aspects of social Darwinism followed the earlier
Malthusian ideas that humans, especially males, require competition in
their lives in order to survive in the future. Further, the poor should
have to provide for themselves and not be given any aid. However, amidst
this climate, most social Darwinists of the early twentieth century
actually supported better working conditions and salaries. Such measures
would grant the poor a better chance to provide for themselves yet
still distinguish those who are capable of succeeding from those who are
poor out of laziness, weakness, or inferiority.
Hypotheses relating social change and evolution
"Social Darwinism" was first described by Eduard Oscar Schmidt of the University of Strasbourg, reporting at a scientific and medical conference held in Munich in 1877. He noted
how socialists, although opponents of Darwin's theory, used it to add
force to their political arguments. Schmidt's essay first appeared in
English in Popular Science in March 1879. There followed an anarchist tract published in Paris in 1880 entitled "Le darwinisme social" by Émile Gautier. However, the use of the term was very rare—at least in the English-speaking world (Hodgson, 2004)—until the American historian Richard Hofstadter published his influential Social Darwinism in American Thought (1944) during World War II.
Hypotheses of social evolution and cultural evolution were common in Europe. The Enlightenment thinkers who preceded Darwin, such as Hegel,
often argued that societies progressed through stages of increasing
development. Earlier thinkers also emphasized conflict as an inherent
feature of social life. Thomas Hobbes's 17th century portrayal of the state of nature
seems analogous to the competition for natural resources described by
Darwin. Social Darwinism is distinct from other theories of social
change because of the way it draws Darwin's distinctive ideas from the
field of biology into social studies.
Darwin, unlike Hobbes, believed that this struggle for natural
resources allowed individuals with certain physical and mental traits to
succeed more frequently than others, and that these traits accumulated
in the population over time, which under certain conditions could lead
to the descendants being so different that they would be defined as a
new species.
However, Darwin felt that "social instincts" such as "sympathy" and "moral sentiments"
also evolved through natural selection, and that these resulted in the
strengthening of societies in which they occurred, so much so that he
wrote about it in Descent of Man:
The following proposition seems to me in a high degree
probable—namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked
social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here
included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon
as its intellectual powers had become as well, or nearly as well
developed, as in man. For, firstly, the social instincts lead an animal
to take pleasure in the society of its fellows, to feel a certain amount
of sympathy with them, and to perform various services for them.
Nazi Germany's justification for its aggression was regularly promoted in Nazi propaganda
films depicting scenes such as beetles fighting in a lab setting to
demonstrate the principles of "survival of the fittest" as depicted in Alles Leben ist Kampf (English translation: All Life is Struggle). Hitler
often refused to intervene in the promotion of officers and staff
members, preferring instead to have them fight amongst themselves to
force the "stronger" person to prevail—"strength" referring to those
social forces void of virtue or principle. Key proponents were Alfred Rosenberg, who was hanged later at Nuremberg. Such ideas also helped to advance euthanasia in Germany, especially Action T4, which led to the murder of mentally ill and disabled people in Germany.
The argument that Nazi ideology was strongly influenced by social
Darwinist ideas is often found in historical and social science
literature. For example, the philosopher and historian Hannah Arendt
analysed the historical development from a politically indifferent
scientific Darwinism via social Darwinist ethics to racist ideology.
By 1985, creationists were taking up the argument that Nazi ideology was directly influenced by Darwinian evolutionary theory.
Such claims have been presented by creationists such as Jonathan Sarfati. Intelligent design creationism supporters have promoted this position as well. For example, it is a theme in the work of Richard Weikart, who is a historian at California State University, Stanislaus, and a senior fellow for the Center for Science and Culture of the Discovery Institute.
It is also a main argument in the 2008 intelligent-design/creationist movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. These claims are widely criticized. The Anti-Defamation League
has rejected such attempts to link Darwin's ideas with Nazi atrocities,
and has stated that "Using the Holocaust in order to tarnish those who
promote the theory of evolution is outrageous and trivializes the
complex factors that led to the mass extermination of European Jewry." Robert J. Richards
describes the link as a myth that ignores far more obvious causes of
Nazism - including the "pervasive anti-Semitic miasma created by
Christian apologists" - and dismisses efforts to tie Darwin to Nazism as
"crude lever" used by religious fundamentalists to try and reduce
public support for Darwin's theories.
Similar criticisms are sometimes applied (or misapplied) to other
political or scientific theories that resemble social Darwinism, for
example criticisms leveled at evolutionary psychology.
For example, a critical reviewer of Weikart's book writes that "(h)is
historicization of the moral framework of evolutionary theory poses key
issues for those in sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, not to
mention bioethicists, who have recycled many of the suppositions that
Weikart has traced."
Another example is recent scholarship that portrays Ernst Haeckel's Monist League as a mystical progenitor of the Völkisch movement and, ultimately, of the Nazi Party of Adolf Hitler. Scholars opposed to this interpretation, however, have pointed out that the Monists were freethinkers who opposed all forms of mysticism,
and that their organizations were immediately banned following the Nazi
takeover in 1933 because of their association with a wide variety of
causes including feminism, pacifism, human rights, and early gay rights movements.
Other regional distributions
United States
Spencer
proved to be a popular figure in the 1880s primarily because his
application of evolution to areas of human endeavor promoted an
optimistic view of the future as inevitably becoming better. In the
United States, writers and thinkers of the gilded age such as Edward L. Youmans, William Graham Sumner, John Fiske, John W. Burgess, and others developed theories of social evolution as a result of their exposure to the works of Darwin and Spencer.
In 1883, Sumner published a highly influential pamphlet entitled
"What Social Classes Owe to Each Other", in which he insisted that the
social classes owe each other nothing, synthesizing Darwin's findings
with free enterprise Capitalism for his justification.
According to Sumner, those who feel an obligation to provide assistance
to those unequipped or under-equipped to compete for resources, will
lead to a country in which the weak and inferior are encouraged to breed
more like them, eventually dragging the country down. Sumner also
believed that the best equipped to win the struggle for existence was
the American businessman, and concluded that taxes and regulations serve
as dangers to his survival. This pamphlet makes no mention of
Darwinism, and only refers to Darwin in a statement on the meaning of
liberty, that "There never has been any man, from the primitive
barbarian up to a Humboldt or a Darwin, who could do as he had a mind
to."
Sumner never fully embraced Darwinian ideas, and some
contemporary historians do not believe that Sumner ever actually
believed in social Darwinism.
The great majority of American businessmen rejected the
anti-philanthropic implications of the theory. Instead they gave
millions to build schools, colleges, hospitals, art institutes, parks
and many other institutions. Andrew Carnegie,
who admired Spencer, was the leading philanthropist in the world
(1890–1920), and a major leader against imperialism and warfare.
H. G. Wells was heavily influenced by Darwinist thoughts, and novelist Jack London wrote stories of survival that incorporated his views on social Darwinism. Film directorStanley Kubrick has been described as having held social Darwinist opinions.
Japan
Social Darwinism has influenced political, public health and social
movements in Japan since the late 19th and early 20th century. Social
Darwinism was originally brought to Japan through the works of Francis
Galton and Ernst Haeckel as well as United States, British and French
Lamarckian eugenic written studies of the late 19th and early 20th
centuries. Eugenism as a science was hotly debated at the beginning of the 20th century, in Jinsei-Der Mensch,
the first eugenics journal in the empire. As Japan sought to close
ranks with the west, this practice was adopted wholesale along with
colonialism and its justifications.
China
Social Darwinism was formally introduced to China through the translation by Yan Fu of Huxley's Evolution and Ethics, in the course of an extensive series of translations of influential Western thought.
Yan's translation strongly impacted Chinese scholars because he added
national elements not found in the original. Yan Fu criticized Huxley
from the perspective of Spencerian social Darwinism in his own
annotations to the translation.
He understood Spencer's sociology as "not merely analytical and
descriptive, but prescriptive as well", and saw Spencer building on
Darwin, whom Yan summarized thus:
Peoples and living things struggle for survival. At
first, species struggle with species; they as [people] gradually
progress, there is a struggle between one social group and another. The
weak invariably become the prey of the strong, the stupid invariably
become subservient to the clever."
By the 1920s, social Darwinism found expression in the promotion of eugenics by the Chinese sociologist Pan Guangdan.
When Chiang Kai-shek started the New Life movement in 1934, he
. . . harked back to theories of Social Darwinism,
writing that "only those who readapt themselves to new conditions, day
by day, can live properly. When the life of a people is going through
this process of readaptation, it has to remedy its own defects, and get
rid of those elements which become useless. Then we call it new life."
Germany
Social
evolution theories in Germany gained large popularity in the 1860s and
had a strong antiestablishment connotation first. Social Darwinism
allowed people to counter the connection of Thron und Altar,
the intertwined establishment of clergy and nobility, and provided as
well the idea of progressive change and evolution of society as a whole.
Ernst Haeckel propagated both Darwinism as a part of natural history and as a suitable base for a modern Weltanschauung, a world view based on scientific reasoning in his Monist League. Friedrich von Hellwald had a strong role in popularizing it in Austria. Darwin's work served as a catalyst to popularize evolutionary thinking.
A sort of aristocratic turn, the use of the struggle for life as a base of Social Darwinism sensu stricto came up after 1900 with Alexander Tilles 1895 work Entwicklungsethik (Ethics of Evolution) which asked to move from Darwin till Nietzsche.
Further interpretations moved to ideologies propagating a racist and
hierarchical society and provided ground for the later radical versions
of Social Darwinism.
Social Darwinism came to play a major role in the ideology of Nazism, where it was combined with a similarly pseudo-scientific theory of racial hierarchy in order to identify the Germans as a part of what the Nazis regarded as an Aryan or Nordicmaster race. Nazi social Darwinist beliefs led them to retain business competition and private property as economic engines. Nazism likewise opposed social welfare based on a social Darwinist belief that the weak and feeble should perish.
This association with Nazism, coupled with increasing recognition that
it was scientifically unfounded, contributed to the broader rejection
Social Darwinism after the end of World War II.
Criticism and controversy
Multiple incompatible definitions
Social
Darwinism has many definitions, and some of them are incompatible with
each other. As such, social Darwinism has been criticized for being an
inconsistent philosophy, which does not lead to any clear political
conclusions. For example, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics states:
Part of the difficulty in establishing sensible and
consistent usage is that commitment to the biology of natural selection
and to 'survival of the fittest' entailed nothing uniform either for
sociological method or for political doctrine. A 'social Darwinist'
could just as well be a defender of laissez-faire as a defender of state
socialism, just as much an imperialist as a domestic eugenist.
Nazism, eugenics, fascism, imperialism
Social
Darwinism was predominantly found in laissez-faire societies where the
prevailing view was that of an individualist order to society. As such,
social Darwinism supposed that human progress would generally favor the
most individualistic races, which were those perceived as stronger. A
different form of social Darwinism was part of the ideological
foundations of Nazism and other fascist movements. This form did not envision survival of the fittest within an individualist order of society, but rather advocated a type of racial and national struggle where the state directed human breeding through eugenics.
Names such as "Darwinian collectivism" or "Reform Darwinism" have been
suggested to describe these views, in order to differentiate them from
the individualist type of social Darwinism.
As mentioned above, social Darwinism has often been linked to nationalism and imperialism.
During the age of New Imperialism, the concepts of evolution justified
the exploitation of "lesser breeds without the law" by "superior races".
To elitists, strong nations were composed of white people who were
successful at expanding their empires, and as such, these strong nations
would survive in the struggle for dominance.
With this attitude, Europeans, except for Christian missionaries,
seldom adopted the customs and languages of local people under their
empires.
Peter Kropotkin and mutual aid
Peter Kropotkin argued in his 1902 book Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution
that Darwin did not define the fittest as the strongest, or most
clever, but recognized that the fittest could be those who cooperated
with each other. In many animal societies, "struggle is replaced by
co-operation".
It may be that at the outset Darwin himself was not fully
aware of the generality of the factor which he first invoked for
explaining one series only of facts relative to the accumulation of
individual variations in incipient species. But he foresaw that the term
[evolution] which he was introducing into science would lose its
philosophical and its only true meaning if it were to be used in its
narrow sense only—that of a struggle between separate individuals for
the sheer means of existence. And at the very beginning of his memorable
work he insisted upon the term being taken in its "large and
metaphorical sense including dependence of one being on another, and
including (which is more important) not only the life of the individual,
but success in leaving progeny." [Quoting Origin of Species, chap. iii, p. 62 of first edition.]
While he himself was chiefly using the term in its narrow
sense for his own special purpose, he warned his followers against
committing the error (which he seems once to have committed himself) of
overrating its narrow meaning. In The Descent of Man
he gave some powerful pages to illustrate its proper, wide sense. He
pointed out how, in numberless animal societies, the struggle between
separate individuals for the means of existence disappears, how struggle
is replaced by co-operation, and how that substitution results in the
development of intellectual and moral faculties which secure to the
species the best conditions for survival. He intimated that in such
cases the fittest are not the physically strongest, nor the cunningest,
but those who learn to combine so as mutually to support each other,
strong and weak alike, for the welfare of the community. "Those
communities", he wrote, "which included the greatest number of the most
sympathetic members would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of
offspring" (2nd edit., p. 163). The term, which originated from the
narrow Malthusian conception of competition between each and all, thus
lost its narrowness in the mind of one who knew Nature.
Noam Chomsky discussed briefly Kropotkin's views in an 8 July 2011 YouTube video from Renegade Economist, in which he said Kropotkin argued
... the exact opposite [of Social Darwinism]. He argued
that on Darwinian grounds, you would expect cooperation and mutual aid
to develop leading towards community, workers' control and so on. Well, you know, he didn't prove his point. It's at least as well argued as Herbert Spencer is ...
J. L. Talmon's 1952 book The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy discusses the transformation of a state in which traditional values and articles of faith
shape the role of government into one in which social utility takes
absolute precedence. His work is a criticism of the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose political philosophy greatly influenced the French Revolution,
the growth of the Enlightenment across Europe, as well the overall
development of modern political and educational thought. In The Social Contract,
Rousseau contends that the interests of the individual and the state
are one and the same, and it is the state's responsibility to implement
the "general will".
The political neologismmessianic democracy (also political Messianism) also derives from Talmon's introduction to this work:
Indeed, from the vantage point of the mid twentieth century the
history of the last hundred and fifty years looks like a systematic
preparation for the headlong collision between empirical and liberal
democracy on the one hand, and totalitarian Messianic democracy on the
other, in which the world crisis of to-day consists. — rousseaustudies.free.fr
Differences in democratic philosophy
The philosophy of totalitariandemocracy,
according to Talmon, is based on a top-down view of society, which sees
an absolute and perfect political truth to which all reasonable humans
are driven. It is contended that not only is it beyond the individual to
arrive at this truth independently, it is his duty and responsibility
to aid his compatriots in realizing it. Moreover, any public or private
activities that do not forward this goal have no useful purpose, sap
time and energy from those that do, and must be eliminated. Thus
economic and social endeavors, which tend to strengthen the collective,
are seen as valuable, whereas education and religion,
which tend to strengthen the individual, are seen as counterproductive.
"You cannot be a citizen and a Christian at the same time," says
Talmon, referring to Rousseau's arguments, "for the loyalties clash."
In his paper Advances in Chinese Social Sciences (2001), Mao Shoulong, a professor of Public Policy at Renmin University of China,
takes a different position. He posits that totalitarian democracy, or
what he terms "equality-oriented democracy," is founded on the idea that
it is possible, and necessary, that the complete rights
and freedoms of people ought not be held hostage to traditions and
social arrangements. Mao recognizes that the term "totalitarian" has a
connotation attached to it, used as it was by Giovanni Gentile to apply to the Italianfascist government led by Benito Mussolini. He sees the proponents of liberal democracy
(or "Western" democracy) as holding a negative attitude to the word and
believing that force is not an appropriate way to achieve a goal no
matter the value of that goal. He prefers the term "freedom-oriented
democracy" to describe such a political entity.
Fundamental requirements
A totalitarian democracy, says Talmon, accepts "exclusive territorial sovereignty" as its right. It retains full power of expropriation
and full power of imposition, i.e., the right of control over
everything and everyone. Maintenance of such power, in the absence of
full support of the citizenry, requires the forceful suppression of any dissenting element except what the government purposely permits or organizes. Liberal democrats, who see political strength as growing from the bottom up (cf: "grass roots"), reject in principle the idea of coercion in shaping political will, but the totalitarian democratic state holds it as an ongoing imperative.
A totalitarian democratic state is said to maximize its control
over the lives of its citizens by using the dual rationale of general
will (i.e., "public good") and majority rule. An argument can be made that in some circumstances it is actually the political, economic, and militaryélite
who interpret the general will to suit their own interests. Again,
however, it is the imperative of achieving the overarching goal of a
political nirvana
that shapes the vision of the process, and the citizen is expected to
contribute to the best of his abilities; the general is not asked to
guide the plow, nor is the farmer asked to lead the troops.
It can approach the condition of totalitarianism; totalitarian states can also approach the condition of democracy, or at least majoritarianism. Citizens of a totalitarian democratic state, even when aware of their true powerlessness, may support their government. When Germany started World War II, the Nazi
government had the support of the majority of Germans and it was not
until much later, after Germany's losses began to mount, that support
for Hitler began to fade. Joseph Stalin
was practically worshipped by hundreds of millions of Soviet citizens,
many of whom have not changed their opinion even today, and his status
ensured his economic and political reforms would be carried out.
Cold War and socio-economic illustrations
The period of the Cold War following WWII saw great ideologicalpolarization between the so-called "Free World" and the Communist states. In the East, religious and intellectual repression was met with increasing resistance, and the Hungarian revolt of 1956 and Alexander Dubček's Prague Spring in 1968 are two well-known acts of defiance where thousands were murdered in cold blood by their governments. The Tienanmen Square Massacre
was a similar example of repressive violence leading to hundreds of
deaths. In the United States, alleged Communists and Communist
sympathizers were investigated by Senator Joseph McCarthy in what later generations would recall as a "witch hunt";
many accused Communists were forced out of their jobs or their
reputations were scandalized. Shortly after the time of Talmon's book,
the Vietnam War
brought active hostility between elements in the U.S. government and
political factions within the American people. One faction insisted that
the U.S. government did not represent them in levying war in Southeast
Asia, protesting the war, as well as undemocratic or oligarchical
power-structures within U.S. society[citation needed]; this faction occasionally saw repression from the government, such as through "dirty tricks" aimed at "subversives" by the FBI in COINTELPRO. This conflict within U.S. society rose to violence during the protests and riots at the Democratic National Convention of 1968 in Chicago, Illinois, and in the Kent State Massacre, where 4 anti-war protesters were shot dead by U.S. National Guard forces.
One concept fundamental to both "liberal" and "totalitarian" democracy is that of liberty.
According to Talmon, totalitarian democracy sees freedom as something
achieved only in the long term, and only through collective effort; the
political goal of ultimate order and ultimate harmony brings ultimate
freedom. In addressing every aspect of the lives of its citizens, the
totalitarian democratic state has the power to ensure that all material
needs are met from cradle to grave, and all that is required of the
citizen is to carry out his role, whatever it may be, to the best of his
ability. Liberal democracy, on the other hand, posits freedom as
something that can and should be achieved by the individual in the short
term, even at the expense of things such as material well-being, and
sees as an element of this freedom a "freedom from government" wherein
the individual is able to exercise "freedom" in his own terms to the
extent that they do not contravene the law. Proponents of both kinds of
democracy argue that their particular approach is the best one for the
citizens of their respective countries.
It is Mao Shoulong's contention that "equality-oriented democracy
recognises the value of freedom but holds that [it] can't be attained
by individual efforts," but rather, by collective efforts. He argues
that while equality-oriented democracy stresses the value of equality
over individual freedoms,
the reverse is true for freedom-oriented democracy, and in each case,
the state will move either to ensure equality by limiting individual
freedom, or to ensure individual freedom by giving up equality. Some
critics of this view may argue that equality and individual freedoms are
inseparable, and that one cannot exist (or be sustained) without the
other.[[1]]
Other critics argue that equality can only be ensured by continuous
coercion, while ensuring individual freedom only requires force against
coercive individuals and external states.
Shoulong also holds that a law is not valid if it does not have
the approval of the public. Laws passed by the state do not require
approval by the citizen on a case-by-case basis, and it can be easily
argued that some laws currently in place in some countries purporting to
be liberal democracies do not have the approval of the majority of
citizens. For one, Rousseau argued in "The Social Contract", that in the
stereotypical liberal democracy, individuals are politically "free"
once every Parliamentary term, or every two to four years, when they
vote for their representatives, in their General Election or on Election
Day. Yet, Rousseau fails to consider that the state is not a total institution
within the liberal democracies, and that the freedom of the citizen in
between the elections is the freedom of the citizen to live their life
in pursuit of their own happiness, subject to the law made by their
elected representatives, who are, in turn, subject to popular pressure, public protest, petition, recall, referendum, initiative,
and ultimately, electoral defeat if they fail to heed the views of
those they represent. This is in contrast to a totalitarian democracy,
with the state as a total institution, where the individual is truly not
free without constant participation in their "democratic" government;
and thus, the individual in the totalitarian democracy must be "forced
to be free" if the totalitarian democracy is not to become a
totalitarian oligarchy.
F. William Engdahl and Sheldon S. Wolin
Engdahl and Wolin add some new dimensions to the analysis of totalitarianism. In Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy and the New World Order, Engdahl focuses on the American drive to achieve global hegemony
through military and economic means. According to him, U.S state
objectives have led to internal conditions that resemble
totalitarianism: "[it is] a power establishment that over the course of
the Cold War
has spun out of control and now threatens not only the fundamental
institutions of democracy, but even of life on the planet through the
growing risk of nuclear war by miscalculation"
Wolin, too, analyzes the symbiosis of business and public interests that emerged in the Cold War to form the tendency of what he calls "inverted totalitarianism":
While exploiting the authority and resources of the
state, [inverted totalitarianism] gains its dynamic by combining with
other forms of power, such as evangelical religions, and most notably by
encouraging a symbiotic relationship between traditional government and
the system of "private" governance represented by the modern business corporation.
The result is not a system of codetermination by equal partners who
retain their respective identities but rather a system that represents
the political coming-of-age of corporate power.
Elsewhere, in an article entitled "Inverted Totalitarianism"
Wolin cites phenomena such as the lack of involvement of citizens in a
narrow political framework (due to the influence of money), the
privatization of social security, and massive increases in military
spending and spending on surveillance as examples of the push away from
public and towards private-controlled government. Corporate influence is
explicit through the media, and implicit through the privatization of
the university. Furthermore, many political think-tanks have abetted
this process by spreading conservative ideology. Wolin states: "[With]
the elements all in place...what is at stake, then, is nothing less than
the attempted transformation of a tolerably free society into a variant
of the extreme regimes of the past century"
Slavoj Žižek comes to similar conclusions in his book Welcome to the Desert of the Real. Here he argues that the war on terror
served as a justification for the suspension of civil liberties in the
US, while the promise of democracy and freedom was spread abroad as the
justification for invading Iraq and Afghanistan. Since Western democracies are always justifying states of exception, they are failing as sites of political agency.
