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Perspective On Spencer's Social Darwinism
How do you guys see Spencer’s Social Darwinism (which supported the claim that capitalism was “natural order”) and its reply in “Mutual Aid a Factor in Evolution” by Peter Kropotkin ?
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Perspective On Spencer's Social Darwinism
updated 2 years, 3 months ago
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Both theories have their merits and roots in the truth. They do not contradict each other. An individual no matter how fit he or she is has less chances of survival vs a diverse and inclusive team who have the mutual aid factor (to help each other) despite having some below average members. However such team can’t survive long until the reward system within the team is based on “equity” rather than “equality”. Equity causes no injustice to the fitter members of the team and therefore it survives longer.
Problem arises when a system does not reward fitter members of the society proportionate to their incremental contribution. As a result they lose motivation and lower their efforts to add value. As a result the overall GDP goes down and the country economy stops growing. This is what led to the failure of communism which was based on “mutual aid” theory but failed to reward the fitter members of the society.
A corporate organisation is a good example of survival of the fittest as teams rather than individuals . Companies use “mutual aid factor” in their day to day operations but also rewards those who outperform others and they are still a part of the capitalism system.
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I agree partly, in all species if we examine there is mutual aid. Ants make colonies, when lion hunts he shares because he knows if his herd starves to death then hunting alone would not be good for his survival. All animals can be examined doing mutual aid in their own community as factor of evolution. I agree complete equality is unnatural and Marx in his works “Critique on Gotha Programme” and “The German Ideology” harshly criticised such utopian socialist notions that fantasised about complete equality. Leninism-Stalinism as Lenin writes in his work “Impending Catastrophe and How to Combate it” the soviet revolution was based on State Capitalism Monopoly. According to main stream Marxists, it was anti socialist. He abolished worker unions, Killed people in putilov factory and always claimed to have instilled State Capitalism Monopoly in his own words. Because Socialism from very start has always been worker control over means of production. And according to lenin since Russia was agricultural economy and socialism being next step after industrial economy then to reach industrial economy he said “State Capitalism Monopoly is best material preparation for socialism.” (Impending Catastrophe and How to combat it). Beside Mutual Aid is a libertarian philosophy and to my knowledge had nothing to do in soviet union.
For reference: Class Theory and History by Richard Wolf
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