The Gospel Of Wealth Vs Social Darwinism

Social Darwinism is the application of Charles Darwin’s laws of natural selection to humans that became popular in the late 1800s. It painted the wealthy as one group, and the lower class as another, and did not look at individual decisions. The wealthy used this Pseudo-scientific evidence to justify their wealth. The two main ideas employed were natural selection and survival of the fittest, the ideas were manipulated to allow the wealthy to be the fittest and naturally live better lives. Around the time of this, the Gospel of Wealth was created, which was an essay by Andrew Carnegie. It supported Social Darwinism, and added that the wealthy had an obligation to help the inferior people. After the Civil War, these two ideas were justifications …show more content…
An example of an opposing view of The Gospel of Wealth is Charles Sumner. In 1883, Sumner published a pamphlet entitled "What Social Classes Owe to Each Other.” The content of it was his argument that the social classes do not need to work together, and owe each other nothing. He believed anyone who felt indebted to help the lower class would help “the weak and inferior” to breed more like them, eventually dragging the country down. This argument is made today with public assistance programs (SNAP, Welfare, etc.) It is unknown if he strongly believed in social darwinism, along with darwinism, as there is no direct mention of it in the pamphlet. Carnegie argued that the wealthy had a moral duty to help the poor in constructive ways, while Sumner felt natural selection should should be followed fully. Sumner was most likely interested in the continuation of the wealthy class only, and felt the lower class was an anchor to their success, along with taxes to help them. These ideas were weakened as time went on as well. Workers went against social darwinism and the wealth distribution system of the Gospel of Wealth by creating labor unions. The workers wanted to decide their financial fate, and earn back their rights and working conditions. This led to a modest influx of money for the working class. The integrity of the Gospel of Wealth was compromised because the lower class made some economic decisions, and benefitted themselves directly, rather than the community as a whole. The individual worker’s desires were weighted more heavily now. However, similar developments of the two ideas did occur after the 1900s as well, and attempted to restore all the power to the one percent, and many proved to be successful. An example of this were the political machines that helped keep the corrupt officials in

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