: The theories of Darwin were challenged by the darwinist Kropotkin. Kropotkin was a well renound russian scientist and a highly influential thinker. Survival of the fittest is used to explain oppression in our society, what a joke to read the text go hereErrm, yes and no...
Darwin didn't stress the "nature red in tooth and claw" bit as much as some of his Malthusian followers like Thomas Huxley. Huxley and his contemporaries really got "Social Darwinism" off the ground, and it's them we have to thank for it.
Darwin's major fault was to look at it in a reductionist and empirical manner, treating each species in isolation and thus coming up with competition as the answer, even within a single species. Kropotkin was right in pointing out that inter- and intra-species cooperation was just as frequent in nature as fighting, and that there was evidence to suggest that, rather than compete directly, it was more usual for a species to evolve into a slightly different niche to avoid competition (e.g. Polar and sub-Polar species of bird). This is pointed out by Augros and Stanciou in "The Biology of Aggression and Cooperation".
It has also been pointed out that competition is bad on a socio-psychological level (Alfie Kohn, "No Contest: the case against competition") for three reasons:
1. Competition reduces productivity and excellence
Maximal good becomes subordinate to "coming out on top". This can be observed at work in universities all over the country...
2. Personal self-esteem is lowered
If you are measured with respect to others for the purposes of competition, there are some counts you will lose on. There is always someone bigger or faster or stronger than you.
3. Human relationships are undermined.
This is obvious - there are limits to which you can trust any human if there is a benefit for them in backstabbing you. Humanity is basically a social animal, and the breakdown of interpersonal links leads to the breakdown of humanity.
If you need examples of "Social Darwinism" in action, look at the self-justifying engaged in by every tycoon since Rockefeller, look at the Imperial German aggression in the early 1900's and look at the justifications given by the Nazis for exterminating the Jews in WWII (untermenschen, anyone?).
Kropotkin (an anarchist) may well have been right in saying that cooperation was one of the major survival factors in nature, but there is more than one type of cooperation, as was pointed out by Bakunin (another anarchist!). There is co-operation in this society as is - it is called "subordinate cooperation", and reads "I don't have the money/time/strength to fight your claims for dominance and so I will cooperate with your plans/rules. This is not an "ideal" cooperation, as people are still liable to be exploited and downtrodden at the bottom of the heirarchy. A preferable type of cooperation is "coordinate cooperation", which reads "We are equals, and I could cause trouble for you if you tried to oppress me, but as we have a common goal, let us pool our efforts for that goal". Needless to say, these are more common in the absence of formal heirarchies.
But Darwin himself was merely a product of his education - let us not criticise all of his theory, merely the wrong bits!
Just my 0.02$ú
Gideon.
