Darwin also believed that males are superior to females (! -CB), which can be attached to Social Darwinist theory."
Arash:
So what? Does this imply that marxist economic ideas are forever tainted by the racist view of Marx & Engels? Should we by default assume as such when approaching these sorts of ideas?
There seem to be two senses of the term “social darwinism,” the popular connotation associated with the movement(s) that brought about illegitimate public policy in the name of evolutionary theory where it was clearly unjustified by science, and this broader meaning applied in this wiki entry Charles posted, where it is merely the study of whatever implications evolutionary theory may have for human psychology or social organization, a definition where the anarchist communist Kropotkin, hardly the purveyor of bourgeois ideology, can be described as social darwinist for his thoughts on cooperation and biology. Most of the criticism I’ve seen from the left when sociobiology is discussed in the context of social darwinism comes down to conflating the former definition with the latter, so that the sociobiology project seems tantamount to endorsing eugenics, nazism, slavery, etc. It seems a lot like when someone is written off for being a communist on the basis that because some of the authoritarian communist regimes of the 20th century led to the deaths of millions it is *plainly obvious* any line of thought in that vein is going to inevitably result in countless massacres. It’s a smear tactic, and it’s rather underhanded and depraved, as I think those who have ever been on the receiving ending of this guilt by association from of argument know. But it is quite effective if your goal is to limit inquiry, the term “sociobiology” was so thoroughly denigrated it had to be rebranded as “evolutionary psychology” just for the field to carry on.
I think if the main concern of those on the left is the sort of political applications that could be derived unsoundly from sociobiology then they should focus their activism on protesting the policy advocates who abuse research findings for their own agendas, not on vilifying the field as whole.