3.
Adaptations of Social Darwinism
Many of those who accepted the idea of "survival of the fittest" used it as justification for acts which would in other cases be considered morally wrong. However, many of those acceptors were the people with the most wealth and power among their societies.
1. Social Darwinism in the Business World
Social Darwinism was used by many among the wealthy to justify their powerful position. They argued that their wealth was a product of their great ability, and that the lack of ability of others is what kept them poor failures. Many were against government support of the poor, as aiding in their survival and propagation would lead to generations of more poor, socially unfit people.
Some used Social Darwinism to define colonialism and imperialism as natural occurrences due to the unfitness of the original inhabitants. Others saw it as a way to validate labor union dismantlement, as the workers were of an unfit lower class, and the extremely low wages of the time.
2. Extreme Evolution
The ideas of Social Darwinism were thought by some to justify speeding up evolutionary progress with eugenics (improving human population by controlled breeding). In its early stages, around the late 19th and early 20th centuries, eugenics was widely accepted. Alexander Graham Bell supported eugenics, particularly regarding disabilities such as deafness. He figured that deafness was an inheritable trait, and by sterilizing and prohibiting marriage among the deaf, they and other "defective varieties of the human race" could be weeded out of society. By the 1930s, about half of the states had eugenics laws in place, which limited immigration and/or allowed involuntary sterilization of sex offenders, habitual criminals, epileptics, the "feebleminded," and "hereditary defectives" (American Eugenics Movement).
American interest in eugenics declined rapidly during the 1940s, when Adolf Hitler used concepts of eugenics as moral justification for his genocides. By 1950, no states had any eugenics laws, as they were declared unconstitutional.