More on Eagleton/Spivak

Marta Russell ap888 at lafn.org
Wed Jun 30 18:50:08 PDT 1999


Jim heartfield wrote:


> In message <377A4115.9BF5943C at lafn.org>, Marta Russell <ap888 at lafn.org>
> writes
> > Darwin was a
> >racist which was fashionable amongst his class and he was an ableist, meaning
> >he concluded that people not of "sound" body and mind should not marry and
> >propogate their kind.
>
> Any proof to all this, or is it just self-evident.

In Origin of the Species, Charles Darwin introduced his theory that man evolved by way of a gradual adaptation of varied life forms to the environment by the process of "natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life" . . "Favoured races" translated meant his race, the Caucasians.

In 1871, with Descent of Man, Darwin clarified his thoughts on artificial selection:

We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost to save the life of everyone to the last moment . . .Thus the weak members of society propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man.

Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (New York: Appleton, 1922) p 136

While Darwin did not outright call for eliminating disabled people as did the eugenicists, Darwin suggested that people ought to refrain from marriage if they "are in any marked degree inferior in body and mind." Darwin, ibid, p 632 His cousin Frances Dalton was the one who coined the word and concept of eugenics.

Lots of social Darwinists (some of whom were socialists by the way) joined in the eugenics movement.

-- Marta Russell



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