Describe Social Darwinism and how it manifested itself in the late 19th and 20th centuries. Give at least three examples of behaviors and beliefs...

Social Darwinism was the idea that the Darwinian laws of survival of the fittest applied not only to the natural world but to human society as well.  This idea held that people, like animals, are in competition to survive.  It held that the people who thrived in a society did so because they were the fittest and best adapted to the society in which they lived.  Rich people were rich because they were fit, poor people were poor because they were not fit.

Because so many people accepted the ideas of Social Darwinism during the late 1800s and early 1900s, they were able to justify many beliefs and behaviors that were prevalent at the time.  One such belief was the belief in laissez faire economics.  Laissez faire held that the government should stay out of economics and let the economy run on its own.  It should not intervene to help those who were being harmed by the system.  Social Darwinism helped justify this because it said that the fittest would come to dominate the economy, making it the best possible economy, if only they were left alone to do so.  A behavior that this justified was ruthless competition between businesses and the creation of monopolies.  Ruthless competition would ensure that the weaker businesses would die, leaving only the strongest businesses and thus improving society.  Finally, Social Darwinism justified the practice of not helping poor people.  The poor, in this view, were poor because they were unfit.  Helping them would actually harm society by allowing people who were unfit to prosper.  It would be better for society to avoid propping up the poor so that society as a whole would benefit as the fittest survived and improved society.