It is simplistic to argue that capitalists used the natural option or "survival from the fittest" theory of Darwin to excuse a thing they did from the pursuit of wealth and power. For the contrary, they argued that their pursuit of wealth and power was very good not just for themselves but for all society. As we read in Smith, "Simply stated, the proposition was that, if everyone pursued his individual economic interests, these would, within the aggregate, create the greatest level of general prosperity . . . In brief, then, the ideology of capitalism rested on the notion of the sanctity of personal household . . . and also the more recent Darwinian proposition that people who 'succeeded' had been the 'fittest' inside the merciless struggle for survival that characterized the animal and human existence" (Smith, 1984, p. 139).
It was obvious to these capitalists that there had been high prices to these kinds of an unbridled trying to find following wealth and power, and that these prices have been primarily human. These capitalists saw the damage that these kinds of pursuit of wealth did towards the working persons --- even young children --- who had been the genuine producers of that wealth. As being a palliative, the capitalist entrepreneurs amassing tremendous amounts of wealth and power claimed that in the long run their wealth would be employed to much better society as being a whole.
We see, then, that the strong entrepreneurs on the United States inside the late 19th century had been calling the shots during the region --- economically, politically and socially --- and that Darwin's theory of natural option served well the rationalization to your power and abuses of power of people wealthy and mighty few.
It was not surprising either how the capitalists easily moved to adjust the rules of the economic and political game even more in their favor.
If the power with the few was the result of natural processes, then there was little or absolutely nothing that government could or should do to reverse or even tamper with that process. To ask the government to interfere with capitalistic small business and its inevitable amassing of wealth between the few was to ask the federal government to tamper with nature itself. If politicians had been not impressed in the theory and philosophy behind this sort of beliefs, they were impressed in the rewards accrued to them as the result of their aid of these kinds of theory and philosophy.
Anthropologist Robert Lowie offers an explanation for the use by the capitalists from the Darwinian theory in their attempt to describe the advantages of their pursuit and accumulation of wealth and power. The capitalists saw society as an element of nature, obeying the same natural laws which Darwin saw as prevailing in the lower animal kingdom. Society, then, being a part in the natural world, includes a life of its own, a "natural" life. As such, the culture of a society can also be observed as being a living entity, or collection of living entities, which operates in methods that will protect itself and make certain its survival. However, human society include a single element not offer within the lower animal kingdom --- reason. It's required for human beings to explain their actions to one another, particularly once the actions of 1 person or group are detrimental in some way to an additional individual or group.
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