Social Darwinism
15
MENTIONS
12
EPISODES
12
PODCASTS
Search complete. 15 mentions across 12 episodes found for "Social Darwinism".
Sep 23, 2026
Noam ScheiberGUEST
But I can imagine seeing versions of that proposal on the city or state level and then a kind of broader kind of template that comes out of the federal government.
Noam ScheiberGUEST
One thing I will say is that we think of, obviously, the critique of the Trump administration on the left is that it has this sort of hyper-capitalist, almost Darwinian approach to workers and regulating companies.
Noam ScheiberGUEST
But we've actually seen the Trump administration be somewhat responsive to a lot of this frustration, too.
Noam ScheiberGUEST
And some of their regulations around colleges have kind of tacked in the direction of being more clear about the return on certain degrees.
Noam ScheiberGUEST
But, you know, I can imagine seeing versions of that proposal on the, on the city or state level, and then a kinda broader kinda template, uh, that comes out of the federal government.
Noam ScheiberGUEST
One thing I will say is that, um, you know, we think of, you know, uh, obviously the critique of the Trump administration on the left that it, is that it's kind of, uh, has this sort of hypercapitalist, almost Darwinian, uh, approach to, you know, to workers and regulating companies.
Noam ScheiberGUEST
But we've actually seen the Trump administration be somewhat responsive to a lot of this frustration too, and some of their regulations around colleges have kind of tacked in the direction of being more clear about the return on certain degrees.
Noam ScheiberGUEST
Uh, now some of that comes from a more of a right-wing critique of colleges, that they're, you know, that they're factories of wokeism and that kind of thing.
John GreenHOST
Founded in 1886, the same year as the Haymarket Riot, the AFL had about 250,000 members by 1892, almost 10% of whom were iron and steel workers.
John GreenHOST
And now we have to pause to briefly mention one of the most pernicious innovations of the era, social Darwinism, a perversion of Darwin's theory that would have made him throw up, although to be fair, almost everything made him throw up.
John GreenHOST
Social Darwinists argued that the theory of survival of the fittest should be applied to people, and also that corporations were people.
John GreenHOST
Ergo, big companies were big because they were fitter, and we had nothing to fear from monopolies.
Amelia ChesleyNARRATOR
that his immortal spirit and his moral soul are as much a product of evolution as the mind and the moral habits of the ant or the chimpanzee.
Amelia ChesleyNARRATOR
We know what storms then broke out upon Darwin, and especially upon his bold and gifted disciple Huxley, who sharply emphasized just those conclusions from Darwin's work which were most dreaded by the clergy.
Amelia ChesleyNARRATOR
It was a fierce battle, but owing to the support of the masses of the public, the victory was won nevertheless by the Darwinians, and the result was that an entirely new and extremely important science, biology, the science of life in all its manifestations, has grown up under our very eyes during the last 40 years.
Amelia ChesleyNARRATOR
At the same time, Darwin's work furnished a new key to the understanding of all sorts of phenomena, physical, vital, and social.
Amelia ChesleyNARRATOR
it opened up a new road for their investigation.
Ryan MullallyHOST
But we do have a super chatter here.
Ryan MullallyHOST
that is going to get us back into the ethics so we are going to entertain this for a little bit x park five four six and the mountaineer wv they both uh put in a super chat for combined seventy dollars they say ryan let them keep going on driving ethics from evolution jim bob is cooking says x park and the mountain ear for twenty dollars says back to social darwinism now mod All right, well, we're going to do that right now, and we're going to let our speakers just openly discuss social Darwinism.
Ryan MullallyHOST
All right, so for you guys, let's do it, and I'll let Jim Bob start us out, okay?
Jim BobGUEST
Cool.
Amelia ChesleyNARRATOR
that his immortal spirit and his moral soul are as much a product of evolution as the mind and the moral habits of the ant or the chimpanzee.
Amelia ChesleyNARRATOR
We know what storms then broke out upon Darwin, and especially upon his bold and gifted disciple Huxley, who sharply emphasized just those conclusions from Darwin's work which were most dreaded by the clergy.
Amelia ChesleyNARRATOR
It was a fierce battle, but owing to the support of the masses of the public, the victory was won nevertheless by the Darwinians, and the result was that an entirely new and extremely important science, biology, the science of life in all its manifestations, has grown up under our very eyes during the last 40 years.
Amelia ChesleyNARRATOR
At the same time, Darwin's work furnished a new key to the understanding of all sorts of phenomena, physical, vital, and social.
Amelia ChesleyNARRATOR
it opened up a new road for their investigation.
Mikko KetovuoriGUEST
Oh, okay.
Andrew KeenHOST
Um, you, you, you spent some time at the grave of, of Marx, which as you say is a big tourist attraction, and then of course of Herbert Spencer, the social Darwinist of the 19th century, but also another fellow perhaps less well-known, Alexander, uh, Litvinenko, is buried in, uh, Highgate Cemetery.
Andrew KeenHOST
So we have a triangle of, of, of Marx, Spencer, and Litviden- Li- uh, Litvinenko.
Mikko KetovuoriGUEST
Mm.
Ian MastersHOST
She's the author of Fierce City, New York's Fistful Crisis, and The Rise of Austerity Politics, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and Invisible Hands.
Ian MastersHOST
Her latest book is Country of Lords, Neo-Aristocrats, Social Darwinists, Tech Utopians, and the Long Fight Against Equality in America.
Ian MastersHOST
and we will discuss her article at the New York Times, Is This a New Era of Class Warfare? Then we'll examine the political struggle underway between the crypto and AI tech billionaires buying the current election and the bipartisan grassroots rejection of data centers and calls in Congress for the No Robot Bosses Act and the Equal Tax Act.
Ian MastersHOST
Joining us is John Nichols, who is The Nation magazine's Washington correspondent.
Ian MastersHOST
And thank you.
Ian MastersHOST
And on this Labor Day, we're speaking with Kim Phillips-Fine, professor of history at Columbia University and historian of the 20th century American politics.
Ian MastersHOST
Her latest book is Country of Lords, Neo-aristocrats, Social Darwinists, Tech Utopians, and the Long Fight Against Equality in America.
Ian MastersHOST
Welcome to Background Briefing, Kim Phillips-Fine.
Tom HeapHOST
It wasn't just using the competition sort of within politics or between countries.
Tom HeapHOST
You know, this phrase social Darwinism arose, wasn't it?
Rowan HooperGUEST
Mm.
Tom HeapHOST
Which was used to justify sort of sometimes some horrific things inhumanity.
Chuck MertzHOST
Earlier this week, we continued our ongoing conversation on a topic that was one of the many inspirations for why we called our show This Is Hell when we began way back in 1996.
Chuck MertzHOST
That topic, which further proves this is not the media, this is hell, is what we discussed with historian Kim Phillips Fine, author of the new book Country of Lords, Neo-Aristocrats, Social Darwinists, Tech Utopians, and the Long Fight Against Equality.
Chuck MertzHOST
america and that is the conflict between capitalism and democracy how the two can be incompatible with each other being a threat to one another in the case of kim's new book it's about the fight between those who desire equality and others who have demanded inequality throughout america's history kim notes the promise of equality in the declaration of independence which declares that all men are created equal, and she writes that no one group of people should be so rich that they are able to exert political influence in their own interest or pass down to their children a superior place in the political and social order.
Chuck MertzHOST
Kim also made the point that economic inequality can spread, exacerbating and provoking other inequalities like racism and sexism.
2 more episodes mention Social Darwinism.
Create an account to see the whole feed, search across every transcript, and follow the entities you care about.