Evolution and Liberty; R. Cooney

But could he have known the ef fect his theories were to have on fields as distant from biologic sci ence as .political philosophy and economics? Could he have known Mr. Cooney is a freelance writer recently graduated from the University of Nevada. 290 the uses - or misuses - to which his theories would be put in those fields? In truth, Darwin's discoveries were very influential in both of these areas. For proof of that, one need look no further than the school of social and political think ers known to us as the Social Dar winists. To these men, the Dar winian hypothesis was a galvaniz ing axiom. Darwin had found in the struggle for existence a bio logical foundation for competition among and between men, and in the survival of the fittest a justi fication for laissez-faire. Here, felt the libertarian spirits of the Social Darwinists, was the definitive an swer to all socialistic and reform ist agitators. Lockean liberalism was thereby wedded - as we shall see, not entirely compatibly - to the findings of modern science.

Nowhere were the peculiar 1973 EVOLUTION AND LIBERTY 291 strengths and weaknesses of this union more apparent than in the writings of the chief American Social Darwinist, in many ways the Social Darwinist, William Graham Sumner. So thoroughly did Sumner dominate Social Dar winist thinking from the middle 1880's to 1900, so completely did he represent the movement as theoretician, expositor, and publi cist, that his work, a few books and numberless essays and news paper articles, offers a kind of proving ground for the truth or falsity of Social Darwinist doc trine. Sociology and the Scientific Study of Society Sumner began his adult life as an ordained minister. He had, however, a great interest in soci ology, then a fledgling science. After reading Herbert Spencer's Stu,dy of Sociology and Principles of Sociology, he became convinced of the need for studying society as the biologist studied plants, ani mals, or any other organisms, within the framework of fixed and immutable laws.

The first of these is evolution. The slow and steady process which brings a new species of animal into being is at work all the time in society, working toward a new social organization. Man has no control over the designs of Nature, nor should he. "Reforms" aimed at "improving" the plan of Nature are doomed to well-deserved failure. Then comes competition. Ani mals compete for food or territory, and man competes with man for the necessities of life. Next comes the survival of the fittest. Certain animals survive be cause of their superior strength, cunning, or adaptability. They are Nature's favored. So it is too in human society. The fittest are those best qualified by natural aptitude, intelligence, or economic strength to survive the struggle for existence with Nature and with other men. Liberty and laissez faire are demanded, not because of natural rights, which Sumner scorns as specious, but because they alone allow the free play of evolution and competition, and in sure the survival of the fittest.

At times it is difficult to disen tangle one thread of Sumner's ar gument from the other, so inter woven are the two, evolutionary and libertarian. Here he is, for instance, in his book What Social Classes Owe To Each Other, speak ing on the reasons why state charitY,that popular socialist nos trum, should be disallowed: Certain ills belong to the hardships of human life. They are natural. They are part of the struggle with 292 THE FREEMAN May Nature for existence. We cannot blame our fellowmen for our share of these. As we can see, the evolutionary naturalistic argument is the dom inant one in this passage. Else where though, the libertarian holds sway, as in this excerpt from the same book: ... if his fellowmen, either indi vidually . . . or in a mass, impinge upon him otherwise than to surround him with neutral conditions of secur ity, they must do so under the strict est responsibility to justify them selves. Jealousy and prejudice against all such interferences are high political virtues in a free man.

It is not at all the function of the State to make man happy. Taking these two passages to gether they seem to say this: Each man must wring from Nature what his capacities and his liberty will permit. To interfere with this struggle and with the dictates of Nature isanti-Nature, anti-lib erty, and finally, anti-civilization. For Sumner sees the end-product of such meddling as nothing less than the destruction of society. The following extract from his essay, "The Challenge of~acts," draws freely on the vocabulary of the evolutionist: Nature is entirely neutral; she submits to him who most energ-etically and resolutely assails her. She grflnts her rewards to the fitte!t, therefore, without any regard to other considerations of any kind. If then, there be liberty, men get from her just in proportion to their works ... If we do not like it, and if we try to amend it, 'there is only one way in which we can do it. We can take from the better and give to the worse. We can deflect the penalties of those who have done ill and throw them on those who have done better ... We shall favor the survival of the unfittest, and we shall accom plish this by destroying liberty . . .

we cannot go outside of this alterna tive: liberty, inequality, survival of the fittest; not-liberty, equality, sur vival of the unfittest. Few passages in the whole Social Darwinist canon show the unique junction of evolutionary and liber tarian concepts as sharply as this one does. If the struggle for existence pro ceeds without interference from the State or any other agency, then men will receive from Nature what is their due. Private proper ty, therefore, is simply the reward of the struggle. No impediments may be placed in the way of get ting and keeping property. Liberty and property are complimentary. Sumner says: The condition for the complete and regular action of the force of com petition is liberty. Liberty means the security given to each man that, 1973 EVOLUTION AND LIBERTY 293 if he employs his energies to sustain the struggle on behalf of himself and those he cares for, he shall dis pose of the product exclusively as he chooses . . . it is the definition of justice that each shall enjoy the fruit of his own labor and self-denial, and of injustice that the idle and in dustrious, the self-indulgent and the self-denying, shall share equally in the product.

To sum up the main points of Sumnerian Social Darwinism: Ev olution determines the social struc ture. Interference with evolution is presumptuous folly, especially inimical if it includes interference with the law of competition and the struggle for existence. Such interference will favor the worst members of the community at the expense of the better. Eventually, pri vate property will be destroyed, and with it justice, liberty, and civilization. The Laws of Nature Sumner obviously believed that liberty and evolution are synon ymous. But are they? Sumner per ceived society as being ruled by the laws of Nature. Man remains an animal, subject to the whims of Nature. He may try to avoid his fate, to postpone or deflect it, but in the end he must accept it. Na ture is the master, man the ser vant. No conceivable amount of man-made laws can alter the fact. No amount of interference will stay the great tide of evolution from rolling on to the goal it has set for itself.

Certainly such a deterministic view comprises a forceful case against hasty legislative meddling, but it also has serious implications for human liberty. If we agree on the inevitability of evolution, we must further agree that all human effort - which is man using his liberty - is useless, unless it is in accord with Nature's plan. But being mere men, we cannot know what that plan is. Nature conceals her intentions. Suppose, as Marx believed, the arrival-point of history is the so cialized state, the so-called "inev itability" of communism. Does this mean we should bow our heads for the yoke of statism because evolu tion has ordered us to do it? Is it not futile to oppose socialism if evolution wills socialism? Con versely, is it not superfluous to op pose socialistic laws if evolution will. destroy them anyway? More, what assurances have we that evo lution will not bring socialism in spite of our labors? Truthfully, we have none. Yet we can still oppose socialism as destructive of free dom without resorting to the posi tion that it is counter-evolution ary . We can hope evolution moves toward freedom,and we can work to the attainment of that end 294 THE FREEMAN May through the medium of our free will - something such evolution ary predestination refuses to recognize.

A thoroughgoing determinism has the secondary consequence of rendering moral judgments prac tically meaningless. Men who are the victims of blind natural forces beyond their control cannot be held answerable for their actions, eith er good or bad. In fact, words like "good," "bad," "guilty," and "in..: nocent" are drained of all signifi cance. No system of justice or morality is possible unless one supposes a man is accountable for what he may do. The assumption of this is the essence of libertari anism, just as absolving a man of responsibility is the essence of statism. Determinism makes for incon sistency in one who sees life in the stark moral terms Sumner did. The theological training he re ceived earlier in life colored his thinking long after he had aban doned preaching and taken up the gospel of evolution. He divided society into two halves, each il lustrating a moral absolute, both mutually exclusive. The virtuous he identified with the qualities of thrift, honesty, industry, and eco nomic success. The virtueless he identified with the qualities of profligacy, dishonesty, sloth, and economic failure. The virtuous were the "fittest," the "better" in the struggle for existence. The virtueless were the "unfittest," the "worse" in the struggle for exist ence. Socialism would interfere with the natural law of competi tion and maintain the unfit at the expense of the fit. Often, when discussing this question, Sumner would cite the intrusion on indi vidual liberty almost as an after thought.

An Oversimplification One can understand and sympa thize with Sumner's strict dichot omy of society· while admitting it is rather too simple. Comparisons between the human and animal world can go so far and no farther. By equating "fitness~' and virtue with economic success, Sumner has surely gone too far. There is no evidence that the economically successful are the "fittest," and the poor the "unfittest," or that evolution recognizes either as such. We may believe that thrift, industry, and honesty are virtues worthy of praise, but we can never be sure evolution will not favor profligacy, sloth, and dishonesty. Sumner was curiously pessimis tic about man's ability to influence evolution, and curiously optimistic about the result evolution would produce. And optimistic too that the fittest are necessarily the sen 'tinels of liberty. One can only 1973 EVOLUTION AND LIBERTY 295 guess at the number of people who wore with ease the mantle of the "fittest" while simultaneously sup porting - against Sumner - high tariffs and protectionism.

With competition, Sumner is on firmer ground, although here once again he falls into traps of his own making. Men do compete, and so do animals. Except as a meta phor, however, the analogy is of little worth. It ignores the vital part contract plays in the rela tions between men, the combining of interests for common benefit which is a distinctly human inven tion and which exists nowhere else in Nature. Sumner is doubtless correct that competition permits a full realization of man's potenti alities. Contract, however, keeps competition from being the brutal process, "red in tooth and claw," that it is in Nature. Socialist attacks on Social Dar winism were common throughout the 1890's and early 1900's. Some of these attacks, it must be admitted, were convincing insofar as they refuted - or tried to refllte - the applicability of evolutionary theo ries to society. Admitting this by no means confirms the validity of socialism, however. Indeed, the ref utation of glaring evolutionary presumptions disposes not at all, as some commentators sympathetic to socialism have suggested, of the core of libertarian truth in Social Darwinism. One need not believe, for example, that competi tion is "natural" to believe that it provides an essential impetus for the improvement of man and so ciety. One need not defend an ar bitrary "fittest" to oppose State interferences with the rights of the individual. One need not think it is wrong to meddle with the forces of Nature to support laissez-faire on the conviction that it maximizes freedom.

The mistake the Social Darwin ists made was thinking liberty re quired an external justification, a scientific apologia. In this, they conceded the libertarian defense of capitalism, individual rights, and laissez-faire no longer held cur rency. They built a new foundation upon the irrelevant and highly dubious base of natural science. By so doing, they weakened the very thing they sought to sustain. They ceased being libertarians and began being evolutionists. If we can successfully distinguish evolu tion from liberty, we can save the Social Darwinists from them selves. Then, perhaps, they will cease being evolutionists and be gin again to be libertarians. Lib erty will emerge the stronger for it. ~ IN 1944, as the world was recover ing from the effects of World War II, the heads of state from over 100 countries met in Bretton Woods to create an international monetary system that would unite the western world, insure mone tary stability, and farcilitate inter national trade. Over the years since then the system· has been plagued by dollar shortages and dollar "gluts"; chronic deficits and chronic surpluses; perpetual parity disequilibria, "hot money" capital flows, and currency depreciation.