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Social Darwinism

4/29/2022

"It’s not likely that Charles Darwin had any idea that his novel understanding of the range of life forms on this planet (1859) would work such a profound change in popular epistemology, much less mutate and spawn a new framework for looking at human societies which would be called “social Darwinism.” Indeed, he died in 1882 and the phrase didn’t gain much currency until well into the 20C, even if its essential concepts were developed by Herbert Spencer and other European thinkers late in the 19C.

The gist of the idea starts with Darwin’s theory that species compete for resources and those that best adapt to their environment (via mutation, procreation, and expansion) will fare better than those who don’t fit. “Social Darwinism” then applies this model to human societies (tribes/races/nations) rather than biological species. Spencer’s phrase: “the survival of the fittest” captures both the original and the adapted theories.

There are a bunch of problems with this conceptual sleight-of-hand, but two stand out. First, groups of people are not different species. Even “races” are more of a social construct than the difference e.g., between a two-toed and a three-toed sloth. In other words, differences and divergences within our species have remained just that: within our species. In the (more-or-less) 10,000 years since humans started settlements, societies, and agriculture, we haven’t had enough genetic time to change very much. And between migration and interbreeding (sexual and cultural) the differences between “nations” are both recent and transient: they just don’t have much meaning. Second, and most significantly, actual (natural) Darwinism acts without consciousness and the adverse effects of evolution on the ‘losing’ species carry no moral weight. In contrast, “social Darwinism” invokes a conscious decision by a society to act in its own interests, knowing that other humans will suffer. In other words, if the essence of humanity is consciousness and moral judgment, then “social Darwinism” is a negation of that humanness.

Still, during its heyday, this approach to life and international relations gained a lot of support and still makes its appearance via a nationalistic perspective that seeks to control/condemn other groups/nations/races/species. What is significant about “”Social Darwinism” is not that countries all of a sudden started to see themselves in competition with each other, but that the spread of “scientific” thinking in Europe in the 19C led some elites to invoke Darwin’s ideas as justification for long-standing aggressiveness and animosity.

Another aspect of his ideas that Darwin (likely) didn’t foresee was the establishment (1993) of the “Darwin Awards" (https://darwinawards.com) as a forum to commemorate “those who improve our gene pool--by removing themselves from it in the most spectacular way possible.” The site contains some remarkable and often amusing stories of individual human stupidity.

I think it’s time to develop a comparable award for countries and leaders who, either through bull-headedness, ego, or a desire to be memorialized for Gotterdammerung-like behavior, put themselves in no-win situations, often leading to the demise of their country, regime, or economy.

Of course, Mr. Putin’s foray into Ukraine is the leading candidate from current affairs. There are many scenarios in which this retro-imperial revival could lead to a fundamental change in the structure of Russia (although there are also plenty of scenarios in which not much happens). We’ll have to check back in a year or two and see what eventuates.

World War II, from the perspective of both Germany and Japan, were long-shot attempts to revise the international order. In each case, the economic power of the aggressor was measurably less than that of the countries they attacked. In each case, questions were raised internally (albeit not too loudly) about the ability of the country to succeed. In each case, ideology and ego (including a good dose of “Social Darwinism”) trumped (so to speak) common sense and economic analysis. In each case, the aggressor was crushed and their government and society were reconstructed following the model of the victors. They both seem like good candidates for the ”Social Darwin” Awards.

Similar cases can be made for the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and (in its own way) the Russian Empire in the context of 1914. Each volunteered; each went down in flames. Napoleon, too, killed his Empire and many thousands of his men by marching all the way to Moscow and coming up empty-handed. Three years later, he was stuck on a tiny speck in the middle of the South Atlantic and the Bourbons had retaken the throne. Of course, the French monarchy itself had virtually bankrupted themselves by supporting the upstart Americans revolting against the British. They were so fixated on their perennial foe that they forgot to check their bank account. Six years after American independence was finally won, the French monarchy went down in flames.

There are undoubtedly many more examples we could draw upon. (I personally would go with Kaiser Wilhelm and the Germans of 1914).

One of the interesting things about the whole “Social Darwinism” thing is the intellectual dexterity of its adherents. Should we, based on the examples given, declare the ineradicable inferiority of the German “race” (or the others “losers”)? All sorts of excuses can be (and were) made (blaming the Jews was always popular). The leader who led his country over the cliff is often blamed, but not the country that followed him. There are few patriots ready to stand up and acknowledge their country’s stupidity and suggest that it should be fully dissolved or taken over by another country/culture.

All of which just illustrates that those who advocated for “Social Darwinism” not only don’t know much about evolutionary theory or basic sociology, but they also don’t actually believe it either.

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In the Shadow of History

4/22/2022

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As any magician or advertising producer can tell you, we humans are easily distracted by bright, shiny objects (rather like our late cat, Samantha, chasing after a laser pointer). Putting us in front of adrenalin or other brain chemistry-stimulating activities is pretty likely to suck up our attention. Fighting, chasing, and melodrama all fulfill this role in our popular culture and entertainment media.

The same is true for the far more sober-seeming practice of history. We pay attention to the big, bright, shiny events and personalities far out of proportion to their effect on the world and pay little attention to the dull stuff, however significant it might actually be. This is not to say that, e.g., the French Revolution or World War I (from a European history perspective) or the US Civil War were not important, but each gets thousands of books devoted to them, not to mention any number of movies, operas, etc.

However, they do tend to crowd out other developments, particularly those in close proximity. As a result, we tend to lose these fainter stars in our historical firmament.

This is part of the reason I wrote a set of world history lessons called “1905.” It connects seemingly disparate events and developments of that year: the Russo-Japanese War, the (first) Russian Revolution, the British partition of Bengal province in India, the British Parliament refusal to vote on women’s suffrage, and Einstein’s incredible writing of four papers that revolutionized modern physics. No, they’re not as dramatic as 1914 and the start of WWI, but they get lost in what I call the shadow of history.

Indeed, 1914 itself provides a fine example. Not knowing that their world would plunge into war in August, Europeans early that year were going about their business.

This is why I like to spend time in my relevant European history courses talking about the summer of 1914. The assassination of the Austrian Archduke, the diplomatic ‘to-ings-and-fro-ings,’ the downward spiral into a war of surprising length and destructiveness tend to push a bunch of other significant developments to the sidelines. Part of a historian’s joy in explicating the complexity of the past comes from the fact that these “secondary” developments don’t get the attention they deserve (and they give us some really good stories, too).

Just as in 2022 (when the Ukraine war pushed COVID off the headlines), so, too, did the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, pull attention away from the “top stories” of the Spring of 1914.

In Paris, everyone was enraptured by (their version of) the “trial of the century.” In March, Henriette Caillaux, the wife of a former Prime Minister, had shot the editor of a leading Paris newspaper who was blackmailing her husband. The murder trial started in July and raised a host of political and legal issues, exposure of the blackmail material, as well as providing a focal point for French society’s dealing with the “new” woman. At the end of July, Caillaux was acquitted on the grounds of women’s excitability.

Meanwhile, in London, the political leadership was dealing with the perennial problem of Ireland. While a “home rule” proposal was being debated in Parliament, Ulster Protestants took up arms against the British government plan. In March, 1914, rather than actively suppress their countrymen, portions of the British Army threatened to resign (the “Curragh Mutiny”). The resulting turmoil brought the resignation of the Minister for War and several senior generals, a high-profile political debate, and undermined the chain of command within the British Army and its morale generally—a great politico-military crisis only a few months before Britain was to start it’s bloodiest campaign ever.

It's hard to say what is “normal” when a major dramatic event comes crashing through everyone’s everyday lives. Things that appeared ordinary at the time, look strange in retrospect. Four days before the Archduke was shot, the Royal Navy made its annual friendly visit to the German Imperial Navy base in Kiel, with the Kaiser in attendance, while “German and British bluejackets made merry ashore.” Even after the assassination, on July 18, the German Fleet announced that they would make their traditional return visit to the Royal Navy base in Portsmouth. The visit, planned for August 8, never happened.

In July, the Kaiser went on his normal summer cruise off of the Norwegian coast. Radomir Putnik, the Commander of the Serbian Army still went to Hungary to “take the waters” and was there when the Austro-Hungarians declared war on Serbia (in a demonstration of bygone chivalry, the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph allowed him to return to his command!).

Every historical event has comparable stories. The larger the event, the larger the shadow cast by our focus on the grand developments of the day. This phenomenon is one way in which we always look at the (relatively) distant past through the lens of more recent events. Curragh and Caillaux would have been the featured facets of a history of 1914 which stopped on June 27. If the Nazi’s hadn’t invaded Poland in September, 1939, we might have remembered that summer for the premier of The Wizard of Oz and the inaugural telecast of a baseball game the previous week.

When historians of the next century look back on the last two years, which issue will get top billing: the defeat of Trump, the pandemic, or Putin’s invasion of Ukraine? We can easily spin all sorts of scenarios in which each one frames a decisive moment in world history. Of course, we don’t know which it will be, but the other two risk falling into the shadows.

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History of the Future

4/15/2022

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What is the history of the future? By this, I don’t mean trying to predict (in 2022) what will happen in 2222 or even 2023; rather how was the concept of the future was seen in the past and how have prior thinkers and writers attempted to describe the future?

As with many studies in the history of ideas, the main thing is to bear in mind that concepts are a reflection of the culture/epistemology from which they arise and they change as that culture changes. As a result, it’s important to remember that the meaning of words change, even if the words themselves don’t. This is true whether you look at the ideas of intellectuals or the beliefs and understandings of ordinary folks (usually harder to find since most folks didn’t leave published works behind).

Much of how we think about the future these days is a product of the modern mentality, by which I mean a sense that the future is, if not definitively knowable, then is at least is plausibly conceivable by use of causal analysis and (often) probabilistic thinking (usually implicit). Perhaps the most common demonstration of this is weather forecasting. We all get to complain about erroneous forecasts even as we enjoy the confidence of knowing what is (likely) to come. It’s no coincidence that this developed in the late 19C shortly after statistical analysis emerged and just as some literary authors started to apply rational extrapolation to the technological developments of their age, producing the first recognizable science fiction. Jules Verne takes pride of place here; followed by H.G. Wells.

Another example of how this period was crucial to our modern sense of taken hold of and controlling the future can be seen in the rise of conscious urban planning in the mid-19C, although even then, it seems that “planning” was more focused on remedying existing problems than planning for how cities appeared to be evolving. For example, in designing the first comprehensive London sewer system in the 1850s (the largest public works project of its era), the engineers didn’t even project that the population to be served would grow much.

The 20C saw not only a burgeoning of future-oriented science fiction, but the rise of planning, scenario construction, and contingency planning on an organized and rational basis. This has taken place primarily within the context of larger organizations, usually businesses or governments, of which the current work around projecting and preventing the impacts of climate change are the most prevalent exemplar. We are now used to all sorts of projections about how the world will be in the future. Indeed, we could say that the future is now part of the present to a degree not known before the 20C. Much of this is built around technology and the extrapolation of recent trends.

In earlier times (although with some continuation even in the 21C), the future was spoken of in terms of either revelation or some mode of prophesizing. These notions are embedded in our culture and are difficult to shake off, whether from the Bible or Nostradamus. Simply stated, the future was unknown, and faith in deities sufficed to explain the workings of the world. The hints from divine sources, whether in Revelations, Kabbalah, the visions of seers or sorcerers, or various mythological systems, would be studied as the basis for seeing what lay ahead.

By the same token, all manner of omens and signs were considered as guides. Astrology, inferring a terrestrial pattern from the alignment of the heavens, was the most developed. However, as late as the mid-18C, the great French Encyclopédie discussed about 70 methods of divining the future (even as it was proclaiming the rationality of human thought which was the core of the Enlightenment).

All of these show that we look to what explains the present to also explain the future. Humans are hungry for psychological security; to have a sense of order and the potential for control over their lives. Feeling like we know what’s coming is comforting (and potentially profitable or otherwise beneficial) and we’re often willing to pay commentators and consultants to tell us “what the future holds” (and all too rarely actually check on whether their predictions prove accurate).

Of course, we can never know what’s coming. Nothing is inevitable. But, with the rise of probabilistic thinking and statistics in the 19C, the future began to seem more knowable, or, at least, that we could have a pretty good guess (better than reading chicken entrails) based on extrapolating trends. In this way, we can see how the “Scientific Revolution” of the 17/18C slowly permeated the mentalités of modern men. Science promised stability, replication, and confidence in results through the application of reason. Partially through technological developments, partially through mathematical/statistical thinking, partially through repeated demonstration of its form of “knowledge”, we have come to expect things to happen in ways which we can plausibly and reliability (if not with certainty or utter faith) predict.

As we have come, over the past several centuries to understand how the world works, there is less space for mysticism and religious cosmology. The future (i.e., how we see it) is a place where the world has become more confident, and more secular.

Still, past practices take a long time to change; social habits die hard. Most of us still partake of mysticism (do you ever “knock on wood”? Or pray for a future other than that which seems likely?).

In the 21C, big data and AI promise even more certainty (or at least the appearance of certainty). However, as a historian, I will split my bets. I will read SciFi to stimulate imaginings of possible futures, read sophisticated scenarios for the near-future, I check out the weather reports; but I will always leave a space for contingency and the butterfly effect because, you never know….

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Failed States

4/8/2022

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While all eyes are on Ukraine, let’s not forget the rest of the world.

The news from Afghanistan, for example, is pretty bleak: lawlessness, social collapse, “humanitarian crises,”. If you add civil war as a descriptor, the list of countries with existential problems would include: Burma/Myanmar, Cameroon, Chad, Congo, Ethiopia, Haiti, Sudan/South Sudan, Venezuela, and Yemen (and likely a bunch more). There is a concept being applied to all these countries: the “failed state.”

To be sure, there are any number of locally unique circumstances and events that have led these groups of people to their (respective) current situation. It’s reminiscent of Tolstoy’s famous opening line from Anna Karenina: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Still, it’s worth taking a moment to ponder all this “failure” at a broader level.

The concept describes something different and more dire than the (well-justified) concern about the threats to democracy here in the US and a bunch of places elsewhere in the world. Neither Russia nor China may be described as the “home of the free,” but no one doubts that there is a state in place and in charge. History is strewn with monarchies (of varying degrees of absolutism) which constructed robust and bureaucratic organizations. Indeed, the very nature of historical fascism implies the existence of a strong state as the locus of group identity.

So, in using the concept of the “failed state” means we have to consider what a state is, what it’s supposed to do, and why its “failure” could be a problem.

The “state” can be fundamentally defined as the crystallization of the power structure of a society, institutionalized to preserve order (domestic and internationally) and to keep itself in operation. Historically, the modern “state” emerged (over the last 500 years or so) marked by the separation—conceptually and operationally—of a monarchy from bureaucratic operations necessary to achieve those functions. Traditionally, the state has claimed or at least aspired to a “monopoly of legitimate violence” in society (Max Weber’s classic early 20C definition) which enables it to create and preserve order.

The means by which a state maintains “order” in society has evolved over the centuries, reflecting changes in economic relationships, democratic power structures, technology, etc. Pre-modern states didn’t do much more than make war, host parties, and resolve disputes among its people. Now, we expect the state to provide health, education, roads, information, and a smoothly-functioning economy, in addition to maintaining internal and external security (oh, and collect taxes to pay for the whole thing).

In other words, if a state can’t do at least its core job, then (pretty much by definition) it has failed as a state. The presence of an extended civil war (of which many configurations exist) or being invaded or otherwise taken over by another country (more typical before the 20C) are the principal pieces of evidence that failure has occurred.

In most countries that were created and stabilized before WWII, this all seems pretty straightforward; in large part because the state is embedded in a more-or-less established and coherent political society. There is some social ‘glue’ that holds each society together. For those of us in the “modern” West, this is the norm. When a society and state don’t hang together in this way, the eventual result is a “failed” state.

From this perspective, it’s not surprising that most of the places that have had civil wars, or other violent changes in management since WWII have been in places that were run by Western empires. With boundaries that were often artificially drawn, and relatively little time to accomplish social integration (remember it took France and Britain about 500 years (and no few wars) to get themselves together into the entities (with infrastructure and resilience) we now take for granted as the standard for what a country looks like). As we repeatedly forget (e.g. in Iraq), nation building is not the work of a decade, but a century. In this way, “failure” is another example of the way in which Western power has made it easy for us to look at others, judge them negatively for being “not like us” and represents a culturally-blindered view of how societies “should” be organized. The implicit solution is that they should adopt our models, we’ll write them a check to help tide them over, and it will all work out.

Backing off from judging these other societies or replicating ours is far from saying that we or anyone should aspire to the situation in Afghanistan, Venezuela, or Chad. Indeed, if we take the preservation of order as the essential function of a state, they’re not doing it.

So, what I’m really arguing for is not that the “failed state” characterization is wrong, but that the (usual) judgmentalism isn’t helping. The solution for such places may well be a different configuration or new borders. It may require a model of governance that isn’t hung up on sovereignty and independence or democracy. It’s difficult to contemplate, given the highly problematic history of empires and the many points I have made in previous postings about democracy.

Perhaps it’s time to revive the model of trust territories which the UN applied to a variety of post-imperial countries in the 2d half of the 20C? What if some groups within such a country were to vote to surrender certain aspects of their freedom/independence for a sufficient period (30-40 years?) to let someone build socio-economic stability and foster a national culture? Life is full of trade-offs, making tough choices as between key values. There’s a lot of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” being sacrificed on the altar of state sovereignty. We (which is to say the people in those places) may need something different.

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Middle Kingdom

4/1/2022

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Zhongguó (or Middle Kingdom) is a concept that has been deeply-embedded in Chinese political consciousness for centuries. While originally only regional in scope, it has come to embody the sense that China is the center of the world. The revival of China as a global geopolitical and economic power during the past few decades, following a couple of centuries of decline is one of the remarkable stories of our time. China is acutely aware of its power and its place in the world and has been leveraging that power to secure that place.

The US and others have been slower on the uptake. For decades in the middle of the last century, we were stuck in the Cold War mentality, compounded by “Western” superiority; reflected in the McCarthy era question: “Who lost China?” (as if it were ours to lose). Nixon and Kissinger started the “normalization” process in 1972. But it took the economic revival spurred by Deng Xiaoping in the 1970s/80s to really change things. Still, it took more than twenty years following the fall of (European) Communism for President Obama to announce (2011) that US foreign policy would “pivot to Asia.”

That was a bit of a muddled policy (followed by the rudderless animosity of the Trump years) didn’t bring any coherence to how we think of China (as long as they make good and cheap iPhones).

All of this is prefatory to a couple of observations about China’s place in the world in the 21C:

First, China was an empire for thousands of years and, just like Russia (whose empire was recast under 75 years of Communist/republican governmental structure), China continues as an empire even while spouting Marxist/Leninist/Maoist/Xi-ist theory about republicanism and the power of the “people.” While over 90% of the population remains Han Chinese, that still leaves well over 100 million other ethno-linguistic groups within its borders. As Tibetans and Uighurs (among others) can attest, the People’s Republic has been brutal in its efforts to marginalize and convert these other people, cultures, and religions into compliance. In this regard, China is following a pretty standard program of domestication and cultural assimilation (often forcible) practiced by other great land empires (e.g. Russia, the US, Nazi Germany).

Second, China is still sorting out the nature of its global “informal” empire. Classic European empires (e.g., Spain, Britain) profited by extracting raw materials from dominated areas and selling processed/manufactured goods and services back to the world. The Soviet Empire of the 20C reversed this model by shipping its own raw materials to Central Europe for processing and re-importing the finished products.

More generally, there is no question but that China has been constructing its own global informal empire, most notably through its “Belt-and-Road” initiative. They have been buying and building ports, factories and mines around the world in order to facilitate the flow of raw materials in and finished products out across Asia and extensively in Africa. They even started a project to build a new canal in Nicaragua to compete with the Panama Canal. It’s not clear that they studied and learned the lessons on how to do this from the (pretty successful) British experience, since many of these investments have proved to be dead ends or have engendered resentment from these new quasi-colonies.

However, one of the most interesting juxtapositions of recent geopolitical history has been the rise of China and decline of Russia. Russia has lots of natural resources, a need to protect its Asian flank, and a shared desire with China to constrain US global hegemony. China has capital, booming technology, and a sense of energy; all of which Russia lacks. If “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” then this is relationship worth watching. After the arrogance of the Stalin/Khrushchev/Brezhnev years towards Mao’s China, it would be a delicious irony to see Russia as the “jewel in the crown” of a 21C Chinese empire.

More immediately, Chinese expansionism (Hong Kong, Taiwan, most of the South China Sea) reflects the reality of actual global military/economic power. In terms of its regional aspirations, there is really no one to overcome Chinese desires. But things are more complicated further afield. Even with modern technologies, there are real limits on the ability of China to project its power. Even with a population four times that of the US and three times that of the EU (although likely to be passed by India in five years), and a (so far) dynamic economy, the likelihood of a multi-centric world for as far out as we can reasonably plan remains quite high. China’s Zhongguó vision works at the East Asian level, but not globally, but this limitation will be difficult for the Chinese to comprehend.

A final, historical note: the Chinese plausibly trace their lineage as a coherent political entity back for thousands of years, longer than any other group in human history. That’s not to say that there weren’t many interregna, invasions, take-overs by Mongols and Manchurians, wars, and revolutions along the way. In other words, there were long periods when China wasn’t a coherent entity, much less the center of the world. In addition, the track record of multi-national empires isn’t great from our perspective in the modern/techno/global 21C. As a result, there’s no clear “lessons from history” here with regard to the path or success of the current Chinese Empire, ancient ideologies/myths notwithstanding.

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Condemned to Repeat It --
Musings on history, society, and the world.

I don't actually agree with Santayana's famous quote, but this is my contribution to my version of it: "Anyone who hears Santayana's quote is condemned to repeat it."

Social Darwinism

In the Shadow of History

History of the Future

Failed States

Middle Kingdom

Condemned to Repeat It --Musings on history, society, and the world.

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Condemned to Repeat It --
Musings on history, society, and the world.