Race, Genetics and Evolution

Race, genetics, and human reproductive strategies

THE SCIENTIFIC BACKGROUND OF THE NAZI
"RACE PURIFICATION" PROGRAM, US & German Eugenics, Ethnic Cleansing,Genocide,Population Control ...

Key Figures, Philosophies in the rise of Materialistic Scientism & Church of Scientism - Germany

Development of Neo-Darwinism
and the Genetic Approach to Life

The Suppressed Ideas of Kropotkin on Evolution Kropotkin Basis for a Cooperative Economy in Russia By Ronald Logan

A Few Thoughts on IQ and the Wealth of Nations By Steve Sailer

  Race, genetics, and human reproductive strategies

      by J. Philippe Rushton
          Genetic, Social & General Psychology Monographs,Vol. 122 02-01-1996.
 

Abstract

Maturation, Personality, and Social Organization

Hormones and Reproductive Potency

Cognitive Abilities

Brain Size

Heritability of Racial Differences

Life-History Theory

Out of Africa

Challenges and Rejoinders

Discussion

References

New World Order
Bob Djurdjevic

Reproduced From:  SINERGIE EUROPEE

THE SCIENTIFIC BACKGROUND OF THE NAZI
"RACE PURIFICATION" PROGRAM, US & German Eugenics, Ethnic Cleansing,Genocide,Population Control ...

©1995-1998 Theodore D. Hall, Ph.D, Leading Edge International Research Group

In the conclusion of his remarkable book The Nazi Doctors--Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide, Robert Jay Lifton writes of a visit to Auschwitz: "I went to the camp a few years ago and was shown the many exhibits maintained there, exhibits that leave nothing to be added concerning the evil human beings can do to other human beings. But the one that left the most profound impression on me was the simplest of all: a room full of shoes, mostly baby shoes."

Genocidal campaigns are not new. They occurred before the Holocaust; and they are occurring at this moment. What distinguishes the Nazi "race purification" extermination program from other genocidal campaigns is its "scientific" character. At a mass meeting in 1934, Nazi Deputy Party Leader Rudolf Hess stated, "National Socialism is nothing but applied biology." "The entire Nazi regime was built," Lifton writes, "on a biomedical vision that required the kind of racial purification that would progress from sterilization to extensive killing." As early as the publication of Mein Kampf (1924-26), Lifton indicates, "Hitler had declared the sacred racial mission of the German people to be 'assembling and preserving the most valuable stocks of basic racial elements [and] . . . . slowly and severely raising them to a dominant position.' . . ."

Where did the "biomedical vision" of Hitler and his party originate? The primary sources were: Darwinian biology and evolutionary theory; Social Darwinism, the evangelistic dissemination of Darwinism; and a pseudo-science called "eugenics." In the first several decades of the twentieth century, eugenics was considered by many as humanity's best hope for the future. It played the role now played by "genetic engineering." It was applied Darwinism. The following outlines, briefly, the nature of these related sources:

Today, our orthodox theory of biology and evolution is "neo-Darwinism." Neo-Darwinism combines what is called "classical Darwinism" with modern genetics. Classical Darwinism dates from 1859, the year in which English naturalist Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, subtitled (note carefully) The Preservation of the Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. Despite the fact key premises underlying Darwin's theory were unproven scientifically, the theory was embraced by numerous scientists and intellectuals as if it was gospel -- the Gospel of Science. In a relatively short time, the Origin replaced the Bible as western civilization's preferred authoritative text on the subject of the nature of life on Earth. In 1871, Darwin published the even more controversial The Descent of Man.

The major premises of Darwinism may be summarized as follows:

(1) The first premise, the concept of the evolutionary transformation of one species into others, was derived from the "Transformism" of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, who founded evolutionary science in 1809 with the publication of Philosophie Zoologique. In his History of Creation (1873), evolutionist Ernst Haeckel writes, "To him [Lamarck] will always belong the immortal glory of having for the first time worked out the Theory of Descent, as an independent scientific theory of the first order, and as the philosophical foundation for the whole science of Biology." Indeed, the very term "biology" was coined by Lamarck.

Darwin became acquainted with the work of Lamarck through his friend and mentor, the eminent geologist Charles Lyell. Volume II of Lyell's Principles of Geology, which contains a long exposition of the Lamarck theory, was received by Darwin in South America in 1832, in the first of his five years engagement as ship's naturalist on the H.M.S. Beagle.

(2) The second premise of Darwin's theory is that "natural selection" is the cause of divergence in species, i.e., the origin of species. The first published mention of the idea of Nature-as-selector is in Rousseau's "Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men" (1755). In a discussion of the conditions of life in ancient Sparta, Rousseau writes, "Nature used them precisely as did the law of Sparta the children of her citizens. She rendered strong and robust those with a good constitution and destroyed all the others."

A more immediate source was the evolutionary theory of English naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, who committed to paper a theory of evolution by natural selection prior to the completion of Darwin's work. In June of 1858, Wallace submitted to Darwin an unpublished work titled "On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type." Shortly thereafter, Darwin wrote to Lyell, "Your words have come true with a vengeance -- that I should be [could be] forestalled. You said this when I explained to you here very briefly my view on Natural Selection depending on the struggle for existence. I never saw a more striking coincidence; if Wallace had my M.S. written out in 1842, he could not have made a better short abstract! Even his terms now stand as heads of my chapters . . . . "

Had Wallace simply published his manuscript, he would have had priority with regard to the concept of evolution by natural selection. Instead, priority went to Darwin. The questionable means by which priority was conferred on Darwin are discussed in a fascinating book by Arnold Brackman titled A Delicate Arrangement. Darwin's understanding of natural selection derived from his work with breeding. The breeding of plants and animals Darwin called "artificial selection;" the breeding that occurs in "the wild" he called "natural selection." Early in the Origin, Darwin defines natural selection in these (anthropomorphic) terms: "Natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing . . . . every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working . . . . at the improvement of each organic being . . . ." In effect, Darwinism replaces the traditional belief that order in nature is the result of a divine presence (God) with the idea it is the result of a natural presence (Natural Selection).

(3) The third premise in Darwinism is that the drive behind evolution is the sexual-reproductive instinct. Given the tremendous influence of this drive, life is an incessant struggle for existence:

"A struggle for existence inevitably follows from the high rate at which all organic beings tend to increase. Every being . . . must suffer destruction . . . otherwise, on the principle of geometrical increase, its numbers would quickly become so inordinately great that no country could support the product. Hence, as more individuals are produced than can possibly survive, there must in every case be a struggle for existence, either one individual with another of the same species, or with the individuals of distinct species, or with the physical conditions of life. . . ." The basic premise ("the high rate at which all organic beings tend to increase") and the "principle of geometrical increase" are, as Darwin indicates, "the doctrine of Malthus applied with manifold force to the whole animal and vegetable kingdom. . . . "

The Malthus in question is the Rev. Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834), famous "pessimist" and author of one of the most influential essays in modern times -- the "Principle of Population" (1798). In this essay, Malthus argues that because "all animated life [tends] to increase beyond the nourishment prepared for it," there can never be real progress or happiness for mankind. Give man a little more bread than usual, he'll breed more than usual, wiping out his little gains. Populations increase by geometrical progression, Malthus asserted, while the means of subsistence increase by only mathematic progression. Thus man is doomed to procreate himself into destitution. Malthus, one of the founders of the "dismal science" of economics, painted visions of a future filled, inescapably, with starving and diseased multitudes.

Before Malthus and his nightmarish visions, the rulers of Europe looked upon large populations as assets; after the "Principle of Population," they began to view the same populations as liabilities, potentially disastrous liabilities. The revolution in America and the abortive revolution in France had made it very clear that masses can be lethal to the ruling classes, and Malthus provided just the perspective the rulers of Europe were looking for. The masses are totally unprincipled. Populations must be strictly controlled. In 1789, the first year of the French Revolution, the European country with the largest population was France. The statistics were on the wall, and the rulers of Europe were not slow in reading them.

In the opening half of the nineteenth century, throughout Europe, members of the ruling classes gathered to discuss the newly discovered "Population problem" and to devise ways of implementing the Malthusian mandate, to increase the mortality rate of the poor: "Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague. In the country we should build our villages near stagnant pools, and particularly encourage settlements in all marshy and unwholesome situations," and so forth and so on.

The Reverend Malthus, who took the understandable precaution of publishing his "Population" essay anonymously (in 1798), is the prototype of the Nazi-style social theorist. "Malthusianism," as it was called, found adherents throughout Europe, but few of these dared to express their opinions outside the private chambers of fellow believers. By the end of the century, however, the Malthusians were out of the closet.

In Germany, "racial scientists" openly advocated the killing of unwanted members and segments of the population. One of these scientists, Adolf Jost, "issued an early call for direct medical killing in a book published in 1895 . . . The Right To Death (Das Recht auf den Tod)." Jost argued that for the sake of the health of the social organism, the state must take responsibility for the death of individuals. Adolf Jost was a mentor to Adolf Hitler, who agreed 100 percent. "The state must see to it that only the healthy beget children," Hitler said. "The state must act as the guardian of a millennial future. . . . It must put the most modern medical means in the service of this knowledge. It must declare unfit for propagation all who are in any way visibly sick or who have inherited a disease and can therefore pass it on."

Between the first decade of the nineteenth century and the last, what was it that occurred that made Malthusianism "respectable?" Darwinism. Specifically: Darwin's adoption of the "Malthus doctrine" as his third premise. In the third premise is a foundation of the Third Reich. In effect, if not intent, Darwinism is Malthusianism, re-presented in the guise of true science. Under the banner of Darwinism, "The Only True & Sacred Biology & Evolution," the Malthusians and their masters were able to wreak havoc in our civilization. Among their legacies are the ravages of the imperialists in the late nineteenth century, the lethal socialisms that have plagued our century, the world wars, holocaust after holocaust, and very possibly one or more of the serious diseases which now afflict humanity.

****************

In Palo Alto, early 1994, I attended a lecture on evolution by a distinguished Stanford professor. The professor began his lecture with the bald statement, "Today, the science of evolution is synonymous with Darwinism." The professor paused, smiled. There were no challenges from the audience, and so he continued, repeating the "truisms" of Darwinism, truisms that are not true but only seem so because they've been repeated so often. Unlike any other scientific theory I know of, Darwinism has survived refutation after refutation. In 1971, Norman Macbeth, a Harvard-trained lawyer who made the study of Darwinian theory his avocation for many years, published quite a good critique of Darwinism -- Darwin Retried. One of Macbeth's major concluding points, which is well documented, is that most Darwinists have little confidence in their own theory. The eminent Karl Popper calls the book "an excellent and fair, though unsympathetic retrial of Darwin." (What "sympathy" has to do with science I do not know.) It is 1995, almost twenty-five years later. Darwinism is still our orthodox biology.

In 1986, Australian scientist Michael Denton published Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, a thoroughgoing critique of Darwinism which concludes that the much-celebrated theory is "the great cosmogenic myth of the twentieth century." "One might have expected," Denton writes, "that a theory of such cardinal importance, a theory that literally changed the world, would have been something more than metaphysics, something more than a myth." Practically in the same breath, Denton remarks that "Darwinism remains . . the only truly scientific theory of evolution."

Denton's confusion is understandable. It is difficult to believe that a theory with so little merit could have become so profoundly entrenched in our science -- and in the conventional wisdom. Isn't science supposed to free us from myth? Darwinism may remain the teflon orthodoxy for another twenty-five years. That should not dissuade us from the vital work of critique. So far, we've analyzed Darwinism into its three basic premises. How valid (strong) are those premises?

(1) The strength of Darwinism is in the first premise, the Lamarckian premise of the evolutionary transformation of one species into others. Lacking sufficient data, Lamarck viewed the evolutionary line as strictly linear. Species A produces B, B produces C, C produces D, and so on. In 1855, Alfred Wallace re-articulated the premise,

arguing that the evolutionary line may be branched, i.e., Species A may produce C as well as B, B may produce D, E and F, etc. Further, Wallace argued, evolutionary steps are not necessarily "progressive" (more and more perfect), as Lamarck had maintained.

The Wallace articulation came to be known as "the Sarawak Law." Every species has come into existence coincident both in time and space with a pre-existing closely allied species. The long and short of it is: When the Lamarck-Wallace premise fell into Darwin's hands, it was in good shape scientifically. It was, and is, a valid premise, supported by much evidence.

(2) Darwin's second premise, that natural selection is the cause of divergence in species, is what is called an "empty generalization." It sounds good, but it tells us nothing. If I were to tell you that the cause of divergence in species was the "environment," would you find that an adequate explanation? No, of course not. "You must be more specific," you would say. "What is it, specifically, in the environment that causes divergence?" "Natural selection" is no more specific than "environment."

It is not difficult to understand why so many scientists have accepted the premise of natural selection uncritically. It does seem to be an explanation more in the scientific direction than "Zeus," for instance, of "Jehova." Nevertheless, natural selection is simply a "false scent" that takes us nowhere, except deeper and deeper into the woods. Darwin himself was uneasy with the term. In the sixth and last edition of the Origin, he says that survival of the fittest is a "more accurate" expression of what he had previously called natural selection. Interestingly, the phrase "survival of the fittest" was coined not by Darwin, but by philosopher-evolutionist Herbert Spencer some seven or eight years before the publication of the Origin. By 1872, the phrase had become the common catchword (slogan) for Darwinism. Darwin laid claim to it ("selected" it, we should say), preferring it over the meaningless natural selection.

Further, the concept of natural selection was tied too closely to Alfred Wallace, the talented young evolutionist who had been totally eclipsed by Darwin. (When the famous theory of evolution was first presented, it was called the "Darwin-Wallace" theory. A correct title would have been the "Wallace-Darwin" theory.) The phrase "survival of the fittest" was the product of one of Darwin's most ardent apostles. Mr. Spencer was quite delighted Darwin adopted the phrase.

(3) Darwin's third premise -- the so-called "Malthus doctrine" -- has no scientific validity, and it never did. In the modern jargon of critique, we would call the Malthus doctrine an example of "reductive, or simplistic, sexual determinism." (Sigmund Freud is whipped routinely by contemporary commentators for having fallen into the trap of sexual determinism.) The idea that "all animated life" is governed exclusively by the sexual-reproductive drive was suggested to Malthus by early eighteenth century reports regarding goats that had been released by buccaneers on certain of the Galapagos islands circa the 1670s. The reports indicated that the goats had multiplied to the point that scarcely a bit of vegetation was left.

Malthus read the reports and concluded that human beings, if left to their own devices, would do the same thing. They would reproduce themselves right out of house and home, to the point the entire population would be left without a can of beans. This conclusion is the pseudo-scientific basis of the "Malthus doctrine" that Darwin so enthusiastically embraced, and amplified -- by his declaration that it "applied . . . to the whole animal and vegetable kingdom."

Any form of reductive determinism is the intellectual equivalent of a tar pit. Malthus was trapped in his own tar. In later life, he endeavored to correct the erroneous doctrine, but by then, it was too late. The doctrine had become a part of our common stock of "true ideas about the way things are." Thus it is that Darwin writes with such certainty, that "There is no exception to the rule, that every organic being naturally increases at so high a rate, that if not destroyed [Italics mine], the earth would soon be covered by the progeny of a single pair . . . ."

"Even slow-breeding man has doubled in twenty-five years," Darwin continues, "and at this rate, in a few thousand years, there would literally not be standing room for his progeny." This "Malthus-Darwin doctrine," let us call it, was the basis for much hysteria in the ruling classes of the last century. The Malthus-Darwin doctrine clearly suggested that the human population of the planet had become a problem. "If not destroyed," to use Darwin's phrase, this population would soon leave the planet as barren as the goat-infested Galapagos islands. The Malthus-Darwin doctrine had no scientific basis whatsoever; it was based on the erroneous reasoning of Malthus. Darwin should have known better. Perhaps he did. Whatever the case, the doctrine was a big hit with the rulers of the last century, a strong incitement -- sanctioned by science -- to over-run the planet before others did so.

Suddenly, the nations of Europe found themselves with "surplus populations." The Age of Imperialism was born, as nation after nation entered the race to acquire foreign lands and foreign countries, not because of greed, but because of national survival. The nations that would survive into the future would be those in possession of vast tracts of land for the dumping of surplus population. In a very short time, all of Africa was carved up by the European nations. Aboriginal peoples of that continent who objected to slavery were slaughtered. Many great tribes -- tribes that for thousands of years had existed in balance with their environment -- were eradicated in the "African Holocaust."

Imperialistic competition for "empire" (i.e., colonies throughout the world) was probably the principal reason for World War I. In 1901, Arthur Dix, the editor of two Berlin journals, writes, "A timorous people, which knows not how to use its elbows, may of course put a stop to the increase in its population -- it might find things too narrow at home. The superfluity of population might find no economic existence. A people happy in its future, however, knows nothing of an artificial limitation; its only care can be to find room on the globe for a livelihood for other members of its own race."

In Britain as Germany's Vassal (1912), German Social Darwinist (and retired general) F. Von Bernhardi writes, "In the interest of the world's civilization it is our duty to enlarge Germany's colonial empire. Thus alone can we politically, or at least nationally, unite the Germans throughout the world, for only then will they recognize that German civilization is the most necessary factor in human progress. We must endeavor to acquire new territories throughout the world by all means in our power, because we must preserve to Germany the millions of Germans who will be born in the future, and we must provide for them food and employment. They ought to be enabled to live under a German sky, and to lead a German life." Given such attitudes -- not only in Germany, but throughout Europe -- war became inevitable. It was inevitable for another reason as well:

War was viewed by Bernhardi and his many Social Darwinist colleagues in Europe as "an indispensable regulator" of populations. "If it were not for war," Bernhardi writes, "we should probably find that inferior and degenerate races would overcome healthy and youthful ones by their wealth and their numbers. The generative importance of war lies in this, that it causes selection, and thus war becomes a biological necessity."

The German word for "colonies around the world in which to dump surplus populations" was "Lebensraum" -- living space. For the Germans, the loss of the First World War meant, among other dire things, the loss of their lebensraum. The punitive reparations demanded by the victors was a serious matter; far more serious was the fact that Germany was physically contracted and stripped of her colonies. This contraction of Germany was, from the point of view of the Darwinists in that country, a death sentence. With the empire-building option blocked (momentarily at least), German social planners began to focus more exclusively on internal options for guaranteeing the survival of the German race.

In 1923, Fritz Lenz, a Germany physician-geneticist who became a leading ideologue in the Nazi racial purification program, complained bitterly that Germany under the Weimar Constitution was falling far behind America in the all-important field of eugenics, the science of improving the race by means of "selection" of degenerate individuals and groups for sterilization: "Lenz complained that provisions in the Weimar Constitution (prohibiting the infliction of bodily alterations on human beings) prevented widespread use of vasectomy techniques; that Germany had nothing to match the eugenics research institutions in England and the United States (for instance, that at Cold Spring Harbor, New York, led by Charles B. Davenport and funded by the Carnegie Institution in Washington and by Mary Harriman)." Mary Harriman was the widow of the railroad tycoon E. H. Harriman. Both E. H. Harriman and Andrew Carnegie had been great admirers of Herbert Spencer, who was the chief conduit in America for Darwinian dogma.

In historical context, "eugenics" may be defined as applied Darwinism. The founder of eugenics is Francis Galton, a cousin of Darwin's and the author of several highly influential books on heredity, including Hereditary Genius (1869), Inquiries into Human Faculties (1883), and National Inheritance (1889). Not long after Galton published the last-named book, a group of so-called "racial scientists" became quite active in Germany. (Also influential in the formation of the group was German Social Darwinist Ernst Haeckel, who declared that the various races may be defined as separate species.) One of these scientists was Adolf Jost, previously cited as the author of The Right to Death (1895). The main thesis of this book is that the final solution to the population problem is state control over human reproduction. The book is couched in the rhetoric of (Darwinian) natural rights. The state has a natural right and a sacred responsibility to kill individuals in order to keep the nation, the social organism, alive and healthy.

Later advocates of state-medical killing, such as law professor Karl Binding of the University of Leipzig and Alfred Hoche, professor of psychiatry at the University of Freiburg, would stress the therapeutic value of destroying "life unworthy of life." The destruction of such life is "purely a healing treatment." Between the world wars, sterilization became the most preferred tool for the control of population. The fact the Weimar Constitution did not allow sterilization was no small matter; Social Darwinistic scientists and their followers saw it as a dire threat to the nation. "If the power to fight for one's own health is no longer present," Hitler wrote, "the right to live in this world of struggle ends."

To understand why sterilization was such an important issue for the Social Darwinists, we need not look far. "In civilized man," Ernst Mayr (America's dean of Darwinism) writes, "the two components of selective value, adaptive superiority and reproductive success, no longer coincide. The individuals with above-average genetic endowments do not necessarily make an above-average contribution to the gene pool of the next generation." Indeed, Mayr continues, "shiftless, improvident individuals who have a child every year are certain to add more genes to the gene pool of the next generation than those who carefully plan the size of their families. Natural selection has no answer to this predicament. [Italics mine} The separation [in] the modern society of mere reproductive success from genuine adaptedness poses a serious problem for man's future."

In other words: When humans are in the state of nature, their numbers (and their quality as biological organisms) are effectively controlled by natural selection. In the struggle for existence, the fittest usually win, and the weakest usually lose. The winners get to pass on their winning genes; the losers get to skulk away and die. When man becomes "civilized," however, the game changes. The weak are no longer destroyed. Indeed, the weak are protected by unnatural do-gooder religions and philosophies. They are given advantages they have not earned. They have nothing to do in life but reproduce, and reproduce they do -- "a child every year," according to Mayr. While those who are unworthy of life proliferate right and left, the genuinely superior find themselves more and more restricted, more and more disadvantaged in the evolutionary struggle.

Thus it is Mayr issues his dark prognosis . . . this situation "poses a serious problem for man's future." Mayr's view is essentially a contemporary re-statement of the old eugenics propaganda. When Hitler and his Nazis commenced their programs of sterilization and extermination, they were operating on the firm conviction that for the sake of the German people and the future of man, National Socialism must take over where Natural Selection left off. In Darwinism -- both classical and neo-Darwinism -- natural selection is the only ordering principle in nature. If the principle of natural selection is thwarted by misguided man, what is the inevitable result? Disorder, degeneracy, and destruction.

In a great many ways, the Nazi movement was a crusade against what they perceived as degeneracy, a crusade in the name of the new god . . . Science. The legacy of the Malthus-Darwin doctrine is sad indeed. The mandate it gave our rulers was, "Control population and progress . . . or perish." From this mandate arose two political strategies that were to make the twentieth century the most cruel and barbaric on record. One of these strategies was strictly Malthusian: "Do nothing for the masses except that which accelerates their destruction." This was called "laissez-faire" . . . don't interfere. The other strategy saw in totalitarianism, the complete control of society by the state, the only satisfactory answer to the population problem. Most of the "socialisms" of our century fall in this category.

Reproduced gratefully from: http://www.trufax.org/

Racial Science: (1880’s-1945) “Racial science” in later 19th century Germany was based on the declaration of Ernst Haeckel that the races are “separate species.” Once the concept of races as “separate species” was defined, the next step was to distinguish between “progressive races” and “regressive races” (species), and then making “scientific” recommendations regarding “eugenic improvement.” One highly influential race scientist was Alfred Jost, author of The Right to Death (1865). The main thesis of the Jost book was that the “final solution” to the “population problem” is state control over human reproduction. The book is couched in the rhetoric of (Darwinian) “natural rights.” The state, according to Jost, has a “natural right” and “sacred responsibility” to kill undesirable individuals in order to “keep the nation, the social organism, alive and healthy.” This so-called “right” was the basis for the “race purification” programs of the Third Reich. Another key individual was Alfred Ploetz, Social Darwinist and founder (1904) of the German Society for Racial Hygiene. Ploetz looked to Galton as his scientific mentor.

“Blood and Iron” Militarism: Not until 1860’s were the German states unified into Germany, by Karl Otto Eduard Leopold Bismark-Schonhausen, usually referred to simply as “Bismark,” (1815-1898). Bismark set the tone of the new German empire in 1862, when he said, “Not by speeches and resolutions of majorities are the mighty problems of the age to be solved, but by blood and iron.” The “Iron Chancellor” originated these measures for the working classes; it was the foundation for state socialism. His methodology is sometimes referred to as “paternalism.” The Germany military at the turn of the century, educated in the “school of Blood and Iron,” took to Social Darwinism like tanks to battle (an appropriate parallel to “ducks to water.”) One key military opinion leader in early 20th century Germany was retired General Bernhardi, who is quoted in chapter three: “If it were not for war, we should probably find that inferior and degenerate races would overcome healthy and youthful ones of their wealth and their numbers.” The generative importance of war lies in this, that it causes selection, and thus war becomes a biological necessity. Combine race science with Bismarkian militaristic paternalism, and we have the formula for the Third Reich, personified in Adolph Hitler.

German-American Eugenics Liaison (1919-1939): Under the highly punitive terms of the Versailles Treaty, Germany was physically contracted and stripped of her colonies. In Social Darwinistic terms, this contraction was not simply a punishment, it was a death sentence. Any country [that subscribed to Malthusian beliefs] that did not “have room to dump its surplus population,” would perish. Blocked in terms of discharging its “surplus population” into colonies, Germany was compelled to find an internal solution to the “population problem.” It was no alleviation that vast numbers had perished in the First World War. The blood of the noblest had been shed, it was believed, and “the blood of the degenerates” now threatened to inundate Germany. Race scientists found in America the model they were looking for--the precedent of sterilization and other means of control of “undesirable population” on a significant scale.

In 1923, Fritz Lenz, a German physician-geneticist who became a leading ideologue in the Nazi race purification programs, complained bitterly that Germany, under the Weimar Constitution (which prohibited the infliction of bodily alterations on humans), prevented widespread use of vasectomy techniques, and that Germany had nothing to match the eugenics research institutions in England and the United States. During the 1920’s and 1930’s, there was a significant flow of eugenics information from the United States to Germany, which was later used by Hitler to provide his genocidal programs with the appearance of scientific legitimacy. Eugenics was not simply a German interest, so the propaganda machine declared, it is a “science” practiced throughout the world. Best references are the oft-cited Lifton book, The Nazi Doctors, and Stefen Kuhl’s The Nazi Connection--Eugenics, American Racism and German National Socialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).

The Third Reich (1933-1945): As early as the publication of Mein Kampf (1924), Hitler declared that the sacred survival mission of the German people was the “assembling and preserving of the most valuable stocks of basic racial elements [and]...slowly and severely raising them to a dominant position.” The Third Reich was a powerful machine designed to do just that, to assure the worldwide dominance of the Germanic genes, the “basic racial elements.” Hitler was no madman--he was the ultimate Social Darwinist demagog.

During the period of Hitler, the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (KWG), Germany’s most prestigious scientific institution, focused a great deal of its attention on eugenics. The KWG operated between 1911 and 1945. If Hitler had won, it would now be the “Vatican” of Scientism. See Science, Technology and National Socialism, by Monika Renneburg and Mark Walker (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Note especially an essay by Herbert Mehrten (“Irresponsible Purity,” etc.), which makes the very important point that “pure science” is no valid justification for participation in scientific work involved in destructive or questionable political programs. “Pure science” is then defined as irresponsible.

The Nuremberg Trials: As showcase for the display of righteous indignation, the Nuremberg trials were very effective. As a means for determining the causes behind the horror perpetrated by the Third Reich, the trials were an abject failure. A few notorious leaders of the Third Reich were condemned and disposed of. Most of the scientists associated with the Reich were quickly assimilated into the scientific and intelligence establishments of the Allies. The scientific vision underlying the Third Reich--Social Darwinism--was of course never brought to trial. A few fanatical puppets of the paradigm were slain. The paradigm itself remained, and remains to this day.

Reproduced gratefully from: http://www.trufax.org/

"[August] Weismann [German biologist, 1834-1914] was not a botanist. Like [T.H.] Huxley, his status is that of a believer; for when we ask him whether the small random variations in nature are important enough to decide between the life and death of the creature, he replies with great candor: 'Even one who, like myself, has been for many years a convinced adherent of the theory of selection, can only reply: We assume so, but cannot prove it in any case. It is not upon demonstrative evidence that we champion the doctrine of selection as scientific truth; we base our arguments on quite other grounds.'" --Jacques Barzun

In our century, Darwinism has triumphed as an orthodoxy, as a "rallying point of innumerable scientific, philosophical, and social movements." Mr. Darwin became the oracle, as Barzun suggests, and the Origin of Species the "fixed point with which Evolution moved the world."

As the quotation which heads this chapter suggests, the central doctrine in Darwinism--Natural Selection--was understood, even by adherents, to be lacking in scientific merit. "No one," said William Bateson, "can survey the work of recent years without perceiving that evolutionary orthodoxy developed too fast and that a great deal has got to come down."

Why did Weismann and other scientists become to-the-death defenders of a theory that they should have attacked?--as unscientific. Ignorance is ruled out. By his own confession, Weismann was fully aware of the inadequacy of Natural Selection as a scientific doctrine. The famous Bateson and many others hurled a few epithets at Darwinism, but they did not succeed in generating a "reformation" in evolutionary theory, even though a reformation was clearly needed.

Barzun addressed this question over fifty years ago and came up with the following possible explanation: "By substituting Natural Selection for Providence, the new science could solve a host of riddles arising in practical life, though by the same exchange the new science had to become a religion." In contemporary language, what occurred in the last century was a major "paradigm shift." The Biblical paradigm was no longer fully convincing. Ever since the Enlightenment took hold in the mind of Western humanity, the power of the Church had waned steadily. Religion in the nineteenth century was not the authority (and tyrant) it had been. It had entered into a pacific old age. Western civilization was ready for a basal paradigm shift, and the apparent best candidate around for new paradigm was Darwinism. In actuality, the best candidate for a new paradigm was Transformism, but this theory was in effect destroyed by the ridicule of Cuvier and cohorts.

Darwinism wasn't, as Barzun suggests, the great liberator or anything like that. The liberation of the Western mind from the dogma of the Church had already been accomplished. What the West was looking for was a new, trustworthy vision of existence.

In other words, it was simply time for a new "Truth." "We do less than justice to the men of the nineteenth century who first did battle for evolution," Barzun writes, "if we think that it was altogether for secret or unconscious economic motives that they clung to Darwinism. A man like Huxley may have been tempted by his pugnacity and evangelical passion to over-state his conclusions, but he was neither stupid nor dishonest. He had the highest kind of courage, and Calvinistic desire to be chosen for the right reason, which for him was the possession of truth. 'Science and her methods,' he declared, 'gave me a resting place independent of authority and tradition'. Darwinism, for better or worse, happened to have become the chief representative of the scientific alternative to religious dogma.

We can understand and appreciate the psychological and practical necessities motivating Huxley and peers, but at the same time, we cannot condone the "Weismann compromise"--the promulgation of a theory as scientific which, in fact, is unsupported by evidence. Weismann not only promulgated a doctrine (Natural Selection) he knew to be unsupported, he attacked the Transformism of Lamarck by spurious means.

Weismann's "final refutation" of Lamarck amounted to nothing more than this: He cut off the tails of several generations of mice, and then concluded that if Lamarck had been correct, the progeny would be without tails. This ridiculous experiment was based upon the presumption that Weismann was a fully qualified representative of the environment. Lamarckism holds that evolution is a product of interactivity between organism and environment. Darwinism, as developed by Weismann and other "Neo-Darwinists," came to the conclusion that the source of evolutionary change is within the organism (random genetic mutation), not in the environment.

More needs to be said about the Weismann compromise. As an event, it represents not simply a case of over-zealousness, but the continuation of a fateful betrayal of the integrity of science that began with the Cuvier attack on Lamarck. Giraffes and (other) red herrings aside, the theory of Lamarck is basically correct. Evolution is a matter of interactivity between organism and environment. The membrane of the biological cell, as we know, contains numerous IMPs (integral membrane proteins), each of which operates as a frequency receiver/transducer. The receptor component of the IMP detects and "captures" a particular frequency item, and the effector component accomplishes, in one way or another, the transduction of the item across the membrane barrier. The cell membrane, therefore, may be likened unto a radio receiver. It is designed to "pick up" frequencies from the environment. The equivalent of the "broadcast station" is not within the cell, it is (as we say) in the environment.

The Neo-Darwinian view that the DNA is origin of all biological expression simply ignores that possibility that the cellular membrane has something to do with biological expression. " Direct influence of the environment on the genetic materials is impossible," Mayr writes. In the past few years, a number of research projects have demonstrated specific mechanisms by which environmental signaling affects the genetic structure directly. As it becomes increasingly obvious that primacy is in the environment and that physiological primacy is in the cellular membrane and not the DNA, the orthodoxy is casting about for new ways of defending the DNA primacy doctrine. One of the more inventive members of the orthodoxy (Francis Crick) is promoting the hypothesis that the DNA came from outer space.

If the nucleus and its genetic materials was in fact the origin of all biological expression, then we would expect that the removal of the same would cause the death of the cell. When cells are enucleated (have their nuclei removed), however, they continue to live and operate--until they simply cannot get along without new parts. The genes contain blueprints for all new parts.

In contrast, if the IMPs (frequency receivers) in the cellular membrane are cut, then the cell goes comatose. If the receptors are not replaced by visceral processes, the cell dies.

There are a dozen other proofs of the physiological primacy of the cellular membrane. Why is it that the Neo-Darwininsts have so stubbornly insisted on the primacy of the genes? Why is it that they still insist on the primary of DNA doctrine?--despite mounting evidence that the doctrine is incorrect.

The answer to this question lies not in the arena of science per se, but in the political "environment" of modern biology and evolutionary theory.

Pardon our repetition in the following paragraphs. The issues discussed are so critical, we must re-view the underlying paradigmatic politics from time to time, in the light of our developing thesis. So, again ... the traditional form of government in the West is theocratic monarchy. Western monarchy is an expression of the Biblical monotheistic paradigm. One God above, one monarch below. The monarch rules by "divine right." Who administers the doctrine of divine right? The Church.

Any threat to the authority of Bible and Church was a threat to the traditional order--the monarchical system. The hated Inquisition and other institutions of religious suppression operated in Europe for hundred of years. They could not have done so without the sanction of the kings and queens and without the blessings of the clergy and nobility.

In modern times, two great challenges to the authority of the traditional rulers and their guidebook, the Bible, arose. One was science, which is based on the idea that truth is be found through direct observation and verified through objective experimentation. Who do you prefer to trust where the question of (say) the center of the solar system is concerned? Do you trust the clergy and their Bible?--or do you trust Galileo and his telescope?

"Cartesianism," the philosophy of Rene Descarte, held that the world was a gigantic machine. It was not just a stage on which moral dramas were played out, but a fabulous mechanism, a super-version of the royal gardens at Versailles. The eyes of Western Humanity began to turn away from the Bible and the pulpit and the stained-glass cross ... and toward nature.

Along with modern science "natural theology" arose--the second great challenge to the traditional order. "Deism" and other forms of natural theology are based on the idea that the Word of God is to be found in nature rather than in that compilation of ancient testimonies we call the Holy Bible.

With the American Revolution, Deism became a very active threat to the "Western way of life." When Jefferson argued that the Colonies must seek independence, he justified his position by appealing to "the laws of Nature and of Nature's God." "Nature's God" is not the Biblical God.

The Americans succeeded, and following their revolution, they outlawed the institution of "aristocracy." When the French attempted a revolution of the same sort, however, they were defeated by coalitions of monarchists and by self-sabotage--by handing over sovereignty to Napoleon.

If the old order had had a battle cry, it would have been "Deism must be destroyed!" Under the Biblical paradigm, the flow of power (sovereignty) is from God the Source (the ultimate sovereign) to the king (the temporal sovereign), to the nobility, who are appointed by the king. Overseer of this "transfer-of-power" system is the Church. The Deistic vision of existence cuts out completely royalty, aristocracy and clergy from the power flow. In the Deistic vision, the flow of power is from God to Nature, the "Living Scriptures." Who is next in line? Those who are closest to Nature--common people.

Science and Deism came together in the work of Jean Baptiste Lamarck. The evolutionary theory of Lamarck supports the Deistic vision of existence as an egalitarian affair, rather than the Biblical vision of life as hierarchical order. The first "new world order" is egalitarian rather than elitist.

Are we beginning to get the picture? Science (as represented by Lamarck and those of his ilk) and Deism were simply not acceptable to those who ruled Europe in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It was not possible for the elites of Europe to defeat the new "visions of existence" that were emerging so powerfully in the West. The only practical recourse these rulers had was to "own," to control, the new forces as much as possible.

The Transformism of Lamarck was not just the first theory of evolution, it was the first scientific basis for a new holistic basal paradigm. Another such basis would not emerge until the "New Physics" was born in the first decades of the twentieth century. Transformism was genuinely revolutionary. Had the French Revolution succeeded, Transformism would be heralded today as the first of the New Sciences. Instead, Transformism fell (like the revolutionaries in France) before the onslaught of the reactionaries--the forces of the old paradigm.

What the reactionaries of Europe in the early nineteenth century needed was a "science" that saw nature not as "the living word of God," but as a dark and frightful thing--a menacing reality that would cause the common people to cry out for protection. As we all know, political elites happen to be in the protection business.

Classical Darwinism was the means by which the old paradigm elitists of the middle nineteenth century "took over" science. Darwinism was, and is, a reactionary pseudo-science. Its most basic premise is that there is no moral guidance force called "God," there is nothing in fact to warrant the idea that life has any kind of purpose--divine or otherwise--whatsoever. Life is a dark and brutal struggle, and when we seek scientifically the truth as to the "meaning" of life, we find no evidence at all of "meaning." Life is without meaning. Life forms emerge out of haphazard processes, and whether they live or die is determined by haphazard Natural Selection. For well over a hundred years, this view of existence has been recognized as the "official, scientific truth." It is incorrect.

At the beginning of our century, classical Darwinism had lost its luster in scientific circles. Where was the evidence for Natural Selection? There was none. Weismann knew. Others knew. Natural Selection was an assumption, nothing more than an hypothesis. "We are reasoning in a circle," Weismann writes, "not giving proofs, and no one who does not wish to believe in the selection value of the initial stages can be forced to do so."

At the same time, a challenge to classical Darwinism arose among the pioneers in genetics. De Vries, a Dutch biologist, asserted in 1901 that there were two kinds of variation--"the random variations previously observed by Darwin, and what he himself called 'mutations,' or sizable divergence's from the parent form...." The work of Bateson (from 1894 and on) suggested that small random changes (viewed by Darwinists as the primary means of evolution) "did not accumulate through long ages and were in fact irrelevant to evolution."

In addition to these challenges to the orthodoxy came publication of the work of Gregor Mendel, a Moravian abbot who had completed in the mid-nineteenth century "some beautifully simple and clear experiments on the proportions in which the characters of the common or garden pea are inherited upon crossing." The new biology was ceasing to be interested in unprovable hypotheses and turning its attention to the microscopic world, where "invisible determinants did the work of evolution prenatally."

For the most part, the pioneers of genetics did not view themselves as elaborating upon Darwinism in any sense. If anything, they tended to see themselves as establishing a basis for a more scientific theory of evolution.

The doctrines of Darwinism seemed to crumble, almost visibly. The idea that evolution is a very slow, minute step by step process, for instance. "Do the new lights on heredity and variation," asked Bateson, "make the process of Evolution easier to understand? On the whole they do,.... An Evolution by definite steps is more, rather than less easy to imagine that one proceeding by the accumulation of indefinite and insensible steps." Early critics of Darwin, especially Samuel Butler, received apologies, Barzun indicates, and "biographies of Lamarck took on a eulogistic tone." Once again, as in the previous century, the forces of reaction moved into action.... with the result that classical Darwinism and the new genetics were combined into a new theory of evolution, one titled "Neo-Darwinism." The father of Neo-Darwinism is August Weismann.

Underlying Neo-Darwinism is the ingenious thesis of August Weismann that there is a proof of Darwinism, but the proof is not to be found in the visible world.... it's to be found in the microscopic world.

The classical Darwinian idea that variation is the result of "the struggle of existence" is replaced by the idea that variation comes from a kind of microscopic struggle. In 1976, this idea was taken into the land of total absurdity by Richard Dawkins, in The Selfish Gene. According to Dawkins, writes Niles Eldredge , "there are in life but two kinds of entitities: replicators and vehicles .... Genes are replicators, but they can't exist and operate on their own. Genes need a vehicle--an organism--to house and nourish them and to facilitate their replicative functions. It isn't organisms (the mere vehicles) that are competing for reproductive success, but the genes themselves. Organisms as vehicles are simply the unwitting dupes of their genic components."

What happens to "Natural Selection?" It is reaffirmed by the new orthodoxy, but reaffirmed as a means of evolution that no longer operates "in the clear." Religions and various other misguided institutions have interfered with the natural course of evolution, and thus it is necessary for responsible parties to take up the burden of ensuring the continuance of evolutionary progress--through genetic engineering. Under the new orthodoxy, Natural Selection is regarded simply as a long-ago reality, and "scientific selection" is viewed as humankind's best hope for the future. ~

Reproduced gratefully from: http://www.trufax.org/

In his book, Bully for Brontosaurus, scientific historian Stephen Jay Gould devotes a chapter to presenting Peter Kropotkin's views on biological evolution. Kropotkin is best known as a Russian revolutionary anarchist who believed in cooperative, rather than hierarchical and competitive, human relationships, and in devolving the power of the central state to local communities. It is less well known that his political views were based on a sophisticated view of evolution.

Kropotkin's ideas on evolution contrasted sharply with those of Victorian English intellectuals such as Thomas Huxley, who stated: ". . . the animal world is about on a level of a gladiator's show . . . whereby the strongest, the swiftest, and the cunningest live to fight another day." To the Victorian Darwinists, this view of nature gave substance to Thomas Malthus' belief in survival of the fittest, and bolstered the social Darwinist ethos of competition and unbridled private property rights.

Kropotkin could not accept Huxley's "gladiatorial" Darwinism as a valid account of evolutionary biology, believing instead that the predominant way in which species achieve success is through cooperation, not competition. (Kropotkin acknowledged the prevalence of inter-species conflict; it was intra-species conflict with which he took exception.) He also believed that nature provides guidance for human morality through its emphasis on sociability and cooperation, not unrestrained competitiveness.

Rather than adopt a view of nature which supported his political thesis, as do most social philosophers, Kropotkin's political views evolved from his scientific experience. As a young man, he spent five years as a naturalist studying the geology and zoology of eastern Russia. During this period, he observed that living things coped with the harsh Siberian environment primarily through cooperative behavior. In his book, Mutual Aid, written as a rebuttal to Huxley's essay, "The Struggle for Existence in Human Society," Kropotkin stated: "During the journeys which I made in my youth in Eastern Siberia and Northern Manchuria . . . I failed to find--although I was eagerly looking for it--that bitter struggle for the means of existence among animals belonging to the same species, which was considered by most Darwinists as the dominant characteristic of struggle for life, and the main factor of evolution."

Kropotkin abhorred the social vision of the gladiatorial evolutionists: "They conceive of the animal world as a world of perpetual struggle among half-starved individuals, thirsting for one another's blood . . . They raise the 'pitiless' struggle for personal advantages to the height of a biological principle which man must submit to as well." Countering the social Darwinists, Kropotkin asserted, "If we . . . ask Nature: 'who are the fittest: those who are continually at war with each other, or those who support one another?' we at once see that those animals which acquire habits of mutual aid are undoubtedly the fittest. They have more chances to survive, and they attain, in their respective classes, the highest development of intelligence and bodily organization." From his observation that mutual aid gives evolutionary advantage to living beings, he derived his political philosophy--a philosophy which stressed community and cooperative endeavor.

Kropotkin was not alone among Russian intellectuals in questioning British Darwinism. Rather, as Gould points out, "he represented a standard, well-developed Russian critique of Darwin, based on interesting reasons and coherent national traditions." The Russian school of evolution based its criticism of Darwin not only on their observations of natural history, but also out of political antipathy to social Darwinism. Daniel Todes, in his article "Darwin's Malthusian Metaphor and Russian Evolutionary Thought" (published in Isis, the leading history of science journal), observed that objections to the Western competitive world view were shared by Russian radicals and conservatives: "Radicals, who hoped to build a socialist society, saw Malthusianism as a reactionary current in bourgeois political economy. Conservatives, who hoped to preserve the communal virtues of tsarist Russia, saw it as an expression of the 'British national type.'"

Nineteenth-century Russian evolutionary theory had little impact on the development of biology or political theory in the Western industrial world, but the issues Kropotkin and his colleagues raised remain relevant. Now that Russia is in the process of choosing a new political and economic future, the substance of Kropotkin's vision of nature and society warrant reconsideration.

The Modern View

A century has passed since Kropotkin challenged the British evolutionists. How has a hundred years of accumulated scientific knowledge influenced the debate over fierce competition versus mutual cooperation as the primary mechanism of species survival? Relevant evidence comes mainly from two sources: biology (particularly ecology) and social psychology.

A good analysis of the biological evidence is presented in the book, The New Biology, by Robert Augros and George Stanciu, summarized in their paper, "The Biology of Aggression and Cooperation" (Noetic Sciences Review, Winter 1989). Augros and Stanciu begin their analysis by observing that Darwin relied on eighteenth-century reductionist methodology, which tries to understand the whole through analysis of its parts. "He split nature into all its separate parts, individual plants and animals, and saw that everything was trying to reproduce itself as much as it could . . . Then when he put all those isolated organisms back together, he thought it was clear that such reproduction would lead to a shortage of space, of food, and other necessities of life. There was going to be severe competition, and therefore all of nature was going to be at war." The inevitable conclusion of reductionist methodology is that nature must be ruled by conflict.

The reductionist premise is a core assumption of the Western intellectual paradigm. But this premise has come under sustained attack by a diversity of scientific disciplines, including biology (increasingly influenced by ecology, which focuses on the interactive processes in living systems). Biologists dissatisfied with reductionism are attempting to articulate a new biology, one which looks at wholes, at systems, and at synergisms (as well as at the functioning of parts). From this new biology we find, as Augros and Stanciu report, that "nature uses extraordinarily ingenious techniques to avoid conflict and competition, and that cooperation is extraordinarily widespread throughout all of nature."

Nature avoids competition in various ways: by separating species geographically into differing habitats; by sorting species into unique niches within habits; by spatial division according to gradations of environmental factors, such as oxygen content at different levels of a body of water; by territorial demarcations, as when cats mark out with their scent the space which is theirs; and by establishing dominance hierarchies within social groupings of animals.

Cooperation is fostered through a wide array of symbiotic arrangements. Many plants produce tasty fruits, which animals eat, later depositing the undigested seeds. The intestinal bacteria of grazing animals makes possible the breakdown of cellulose fibers into digestible fatty acids. Egyptian plovers get their food by cleaning parasites off the bodies of rhinoceroses. And clown fish are given protection by anemone, while serving as bait for the fish that the anemone eat. These are only examples of inter- species cooperation--intra-species cooperation is even more commonplace.

At the time Kropotkin challenged British Darwinism, the scientific study of human behavior was in its infancy: Wilhelm Wundt had just begun the first psychology laboratory in Leipzig. In the debate as to whether competition or cooperation is more characteristic of human nature, the young field of psychology was mute. Today, however, there is a vast body of social psychology literature on this question.

Alfie Kohn, author of No Contest: The Case Against Competition, spent seven years reviewing more than 400 research studies dealing with competition and cooperation. Prior to his investigation, he believed that "competition can be natural and appropriate and healthy." After reviewing research findings, he radically revised this opinion, concluding that, "The ideal amount of competition . . . in any environment, the classroom, the workplace, the family, the playing field, is none . . . . [Competition] is always destructive" (Noetic Sciences Review, Spring 1990).

According to Kohn, there are three principle consequences of competition. First, it has a negative effect on productivity and excellence. This is due to increased anxiety, inefficiency (as compared to cooperative sharing of resources and knowledge), and the undermining of inner motivation. Competition shifts the focus to victory over others, and away from intrinsic motivators such as curiosity, interest, excellence, and social interaction. Studies show that cooperative behaviour, by contrast, consistantly predicts good performance--a finding which holds true under a wide range of subject variables. Interestingly, the positive benefits of cooperation become more significant as tasks become more complex, or where greater creativity and problem-solving ability is required.

The second effect of competition is that it lowers self-esteem and hampers the development of sound, self-directed individuals. A strong sense of self is difficult to attain when self-evaluation is dependent on seeing how we measure up to others. On the other hand, those whose identity is formed in relation to how they contribute to group efforts generally possess greater self- confidence and higher self-esteem.

Finally, competition undermines human relationships. Humans are social beings; we best express our humanness in interaction with others. By creating winners and losers, competition is destructive to human unity and prevents close social feeling. In the competitive mode, people work at cross purposes, or for personal gain. Some come out ahead, some behind; some win, some lose. It becomes impossible for people to move together, as is necessary for a harmonious human society.

Biology and social psychology are not the only disciplines which support cooperation as the natural basis for human interaction. Ethnological studies indicate that virtually all indigenous cultures operate on the basis of highly cooperative relationships. Anthropologist Nancy Tanner has presented evidence to show that the predominant force driving early human evolution was cooperative social interaction, leading to the capacity of hominids to develop culture. And industrial psychology now promotes "worker participation" and team functioning because it is decisively more productive than hierarchical management.

Beyond Science

In 1910, while lying in his death bed, Leo Tolstoy dictated his last letter, a letter of advice to his son and daughter. He told them: "The views you have acquired about Darwinism, evolution, and the struggle for existence won't explain to you the meaning of your life and won't give you guidance in your actions, and a life without an explanation of its meaning and importance, and without the unfailing guidance that stems from it is a pitiful existence. Think about it. I say it, probably on the eve of my death, because I love you."

Tolstoy's concerns about the Darwinism of his time were vindicated by history. In America, social Darwinism justified the unbridled economic exploitation of the robber barons. America's first billionaire, John D. Rockefeller, ruthlessly built up his Standard Oil monopoly believing that his efforts were sanctioned by the natural order. He said: "The growth of large business is merely a survival of the fittest."

In Germany, social Darwinism supplied justification for German militarism during World War I. Vernon Kellogg, an American biologist stationed during the war at the headquarters of the German Great General Staff, later described the Darwinian views of the German military officers in his book Headquarters Nights: "The creed of the Allmact ["all might" or omnipotence] of a natural selection based on violent and competitive struggle is the gospel of the German intellectuals; all else is illusion and anathema.... That human group which is in the most advanced evolutionary stage . . . should win in the struggle for existence, and this struggle should occur precisely that the various types may be tested, and the best not only preserved, but put in position to impose its kind of social organization on the others, or, alternatively, to destroy and replace them."

We now know that the dominant evolutionary thinking of Tolstoy's day was flawed, and that the minority view of Peter Kropotkin lies closer to the truth. But does this mean that "the new biology" should now become the basis for our moral truths and our social institutions?

It would certainly be unwise to ignore or dismiss the compelling findings of biology and social psychology. The post-reductionist, holistic science of our time can supply us with deep insights into the general laws of nature--our own included. But can materialistic science, even formulated with an enlightened holistic paradigm, provide what Tolstoy wished for his children: a foundation for meaning and guidance for our lives?

The problems with materialism as a foundation for human values are twofold. First, science studies the phenomena of a dynamically changing world, and its theories and paradigms about the world are also constantly evolving. As Paul Samuelson once expressed: "funeral by funeral, theory advances." The truths of science, while often robust, are not permanent, but subject to change. Human society is also part of the changing world, and must progressively adapt to new ideas and institutions. But finding purpose in human life is a different matter. We have innate need, many believe, to find purpose in that which is eternal and infinite.

The second problem with materialism is that mind is subtler than matter. The use of knowledge about the physical universe to define value structures for directed by the mind is inherently limited, as there are realms of human experience that transcend physicality. To limit our understanding of ourselves to that which can be explained materially is to restrict the comprehensive, integrated development of the human personality.

There is a growing consensus that the post-modernist episteme will not have materialist foundations. But neither is there much sentiment for a retreat to idealism. Idealism has been expressed in Socrates' fascistic vision of society lorded over by philosopher kings, in Shankaracharya's philosophy that the world is illusion, in medieval religion's obsession with heaven and obliviousness to suffering, and in Hegel's glorification of individual sublimation to the state. Its long history of defective and detrimental philosophies has discredited idealism as a basis for human welfare. If both scientific empiricism and idealistic philosophy are inadequate, then what alternative faculty of knowing can provide us with meaning and proper moral guidance?

Tolstoy's answer was that truth can only be achieved by looking within oneself, that a transcendent reason and power flows from within us, and that our highest purpose is to do its will. Tolstoy formulated a philosophy of Christian mysticism, but his core ideas are generally consistent with what Aldous Huxley (grandson of Thomas) termed the "perennial philosophies." Huxley perceived that certain common themes have been expressed by humanity's great seers--those who derived their teachings from personal illumination, revelation or mystical experience. Though living in different times and cultures, their teachings share fundamental beliefs and values.

The American humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow studied "peak experiences"--the kinds of experience out of which the perennial philosophies originated. He termed the cognitive state that arises during peak experiences "B-cognition," or cognition of being. He detailed his research in his book, Religions, Values and Peak Experiences, where he wrote that his "most important finding was the discovery of . . . B-values or the intrinsic values of Being." He went on to observe that "this list of the described characteristics of the world as it is perceived in our most perspicuous moments is about the same as what people through the ages have called eternal verities, or the spiritual values, or the highest values."

What do those whose values are derived from B-cognition have to say about the issue of contention between Huxley (the Darwinist) and Kropotkin? The consensus is definite: love and cooperation, not conflict and competition, are the eternal verities which should guide human relations.

Beyond Capitalism

P.R. Sarkar was a twentieth-century philosopher and spiritual teacher who was as concerned with social justice as he was with spiritual liberation. Sarkar, like others who espouse the perennial philosophy, believed that the B-cognition, or intuitional mode of knowing, is inherently synthetic. In contrast to reductionism and the rationalist approach to knowledge, which is analytical in nature, intuitional faculty of mind tends toward wholeness--its ultimate reach being a state of unitary consciousness in which individuals directly identify with the cosmic whole, rather than with a limited ego state.

Those who acquire synthetic knowledge inevitably develop a growing sense of the unity and interconnectedness of life. Based on this universal spiritual perception, Sarkar believed it possible for humanity to recognize its integrated, interdependent existence, and move collectively to achieve its material, psychic and spiritual aspirations. He termed this ideal "universalism."

Sarkar rejected competition and upheld cooperation: "In every field of collective life there should be cooperation amongst the members of society." In this respect, his thinking is not novel; it has been espoused by many people of wisdom. But he went beyond other spiritual philosophers in his use of perennial philosophy values to formulate socio-economic theory.

Sarkar insisted that collective efforts should take the form of "coordinated cooperation," not subordinated cooperation. Subordinated cooperation occurs "where people do something individually or collectively, but keep themselves under other peoples' supervision." Coordinated cooperation occurs "between free human beings, each with equal rights and mutual respect for each other, and each working for the welfare of the other." In relation to this ideal form of social relationships, he observed that none of the present socio-economic systems are based on coordinated cooperation, but on subordinated cooperation, and that this "results in the degeneration of society's moral fabric."

Sarkar formulated a spiritual perspective on wealth: "This universe is created in the imagination of the Supreme Entity, so the ownership of this universe . . . does not belong to any particular individual; everything is the patrimony of us all. Every living being can utilize their rightful share of this property. . . . [T]his whole animate world is a large joint family in which nature has not assigned any property to any particular individual."

Sarkar termed this conception of wealth "cosmic inheritance," and made clear its implications for economic theory: "According to genuine spiritual ideology, the system of individual ownership cannot be accepted as absolute and final, hence capitalism, too, cannot be supported." Cosmic ownership also undermines "state capitalism"--communism's command economy system in which there is state ownership of wealth.

Based on his premises of universalism, coordinated cooperation, and cosmic inheritence, Sarkar formulated an alternative economics which he called "cooperative economics." Cooperative economics is an aspect of his comprehensive socio-economic philosophy, called PROUT.

While Sarkar rejected the rigidities of rationalism and reductionism, he did not reject rationality and empiricism. Though he relied on spiritually derived truth to provide the premises and basic value structure of PROUT, he emphasized that fleshing out this economic theory requires close observation of human nature, and of social and economic dynamics. By insisting that social theory follow from social experience, Sarkar avoided many utopian errors.

For example, while Sarkar agreed with Kropotkin in rejecting capitalism, his economic theory takes a much different position on production incentives. Kropotkin, like Marx, advocated "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs." In Sarkar's view, this high sounding ideal "will reap no harvest in the hard soil of the world." Without suitable motivation, productivity declines, and society as a whole suffers. In PROUT, therefore, "Meritorious people should certainly receive greater amenities"--though PROUT does not sanction material incentives beyond what is needed to promote the common welfare.

New Foundations for Russia

Cartesian reductionism formed the epistemological basis for Malthusianism and social Darwinism, which in turn provided intellectual rationale for the greed of capitalism. Dialectical materialism attempted to create an antithesis to reductionist thinking, but its materialism brought spiritual poverty. And, by promoting such utopian notions as the classless society and production without material incentive, its materialism capitulated to idealism and floundered on its inner contradictions. Both capitalism and communism have failed to adequately serve human welfare, and have eroded the moral, cultural and ecological fabric of the world. The future of humanity must lie with a new economics, erected on sounder foundations.

Economist Jaroslav Vanek, in his paper "Towards a Strategy of Democracy, Political and Economic, in Russia," points out that communal economic activity had deep roots in Russia's pre- Revolution village economies. This tradition of cooperation apparently came to the fore in 1917. According to Professor George Gurvitich, a participating witness to the October revolution, there was a brief nine month period immediately following the Russian Revolution when an embryonic economic system based on democratic cooperation prevailed. This system was supported in early Bolshevik Party congresses--until party leaders imposed political and economic centralism.

As in 1917, Russia finds itself poised at a momentous juncture, with a choice of futures spread before it. Were Russia to choose a cooperative economy to replace communism, there would be much supporting logic: consistency with the traditional values of village life; revival of the initial economic ideal chosen by the people following the downfall of Tsarist tyranny; the vindicated evolutionary views of Kropotkin; contemporary scientific understandings of human nature; and compatibility with the sentiment for social equity which socialism imbued in the Russian psyche.

But beyond the compelling logic of tradition, science, and economics, there is a more profound reason for Russia to adopt economic cooperation: cooperation is supported by spiritual truth. For those, like Tolstoy, who insist that humans need an enduring source of meaning in their lives and the guidance of proper values, cooperative economics is congruent with the eternal verities. It is the economic system Tolstoy would have wanted for his children, and for all of the children of mother Russia.

This article was originally presented as an opening address at the Symposium on the Humanistic Aspects of Regional Development, held in September 1993 in Birobidzhan, Russia, and co-organized by Proutist Universal and the Institute for the Complex Analysis of Regional Problems.

From Prout Journal, Vol 6, No 3

Reproduced gratefully from: http://www.trufax.org/

A Few Thoughts on IQ and the Wealth of Nations

 http://www.vdare.com/sailer/wealth_of_nations.htm 

A Few Thoughts on IQ and the Wealth of Nations 

By Steve Sailer

I want to contribute some observations about the landmark book [17]IQ and the Wealth of Nations by [18]Richard Lynn of the U. of Ulster and Tatu Vanhanen of the U. of Helsinki. It was the subject of an extremely informative Feb. 27th [19]VDARE.COM review by [20]J. Philippe Rushton, which this is intended to complement.

The book's content is irresistible - at its heart is a table of the average IQ scores of 81 different countries, most drawn from studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. The national average IQs range from 107 for Hong Kong to 59 for Equatorial Guinea.

Lynn and Vanhanen benchmarked their IQ results so that Britain is 100. America scores 98 on this scale, and the world average is 90. IQ's are assumed to form a normal probability distribution ("[21]bell curve") with the standard deviation set at 15. Here are a few examples:

Percentile of GDP Per Cap
National Avg. Person Purchasing
Nation Avg. IQ Relative to UK Power Parity
Eq. Guinea 59 0.3% $ 1,817
Nigeria 67 1% $ 795
Barbados 78 7% $ 12,001
Guatemala 79 8% $ 3,505
India 81 10% $ 2,077
Iraq 87 19% $ 3,197
Mexico 87 19% $ 7,704
Argentina 96 39% $ 12,013
US 98 45% $ 29,605
China 100 50% $ 3,105
UK 100 50% $ 20,336
Italy 102 55% $ 20,585
Japan 105 63% $ 23,257
Hong Kong 107 68% $ 20,763

Admit it, you want to know what the rest of the table says! Beyond satisfying sheer curiosity, though, the strong correlation between IQ and the wealth of nations is of world-historical importance. From now on, no public intellectual can seriously claim to be attempting to understand how the world works unless he takes IQ into account.

How much can we trust these IQ results?

As soon as I received the book, I turned to Appendix 1, where Lynn and Vanhanen describe all 168 national IQ studies they've found - an average of just over two per country.

Are the results internally consistent? In other words, when there are multiple studies for a single country, do they tend to give roughly the same answer?

I expected a sizable amount of internal divergence. I spent 18 years in the marketing research industry, so I know how expensive it is to come up with a nationally representative sample. Further, Lynn and Vanhanen use results from [22]quite different IQ tests. They rely most on the non-verbal Raven's Progressive Matrices, which were designed to be used across cultures, even by illiterates. Yet, they also have a lot of results from the [23]Wechsler exams, which are more culture dependent - the Wechsler include a vocabulary subtest, for example. And they report results from other IQ tests, including a few from the oddball Goodenough-Harris Draw-A-Man test. Also, sample sizes vary dramatically, from a few dozen in some obscure countries to 64,000 for one American study. Finally, some studies were of children, others of adults.

This doesn't sound promising. Nevertheless, the results show a high degree of internal consistency. Here are the first eight countries for which they have multiple scores:

Argentina: 93 and 98 Australia: 97, 98, and 99 Austria: 101, 103 Belgium: 99, 103, 98 Brazil: 88, 84, 90, and 85 Bulgaria: 94, 91 China: 100, 92.5, 103.4 Democratic Republic of Congo: 73, 72

That's not bad at all. In fact, leaving aside China, the results are remarkably consistent. There are, of course, a few countries for which different studies came up with quite divergent results, especially Poland, where the two scores Lynn and Vanhanen found were 92 and 106. Still, the correlation among results when there are two or more studies for a country is a striking 0.94.

You shouldn't take every score on faith. The reported IQ for Israel (only 94????!!!) has elicited much criticism. Lynn has replied that he wanted to publish the data as he found it, even if some of it looked implausible. His hope is to encourage further research to resolve seeming anomalies.

The IQ structures of the two giga-countries, China and India, demand more intense study, in part because the future history of the world will hinge in no small part on their endowments of human capital. The demography of India is especially complex due to its caste system, which resembles Jim Crow on steroids and acid. By discouraging intermarriage, caste has subdivided the Indian people into an incredible number of micro-races. In India, according to the dean of population genetics, [24]L.L. Cavalli-Sforza, "The total number of endogamous communities today is around 43,000..." We know that some of those communities - such as the Zoroastrian [25]Parsees of Bombay - are exceptionally intelligent.

But we can't say with any confidence what is the long run IQ potential of Indians overall. Their current IQ score (81) is low, especially compared to China (100), the other country with hundreds of millions of poor peasants. Yet, keep in mind just how narrow life in rural India was for so long. In 1952, on the fifth anniversary of independence, the Indian government commissioned a survey to find out if the average Indian villager had heard yet that the British had gone. The study was quietly cancelled when early results showed that the average villager had never heard that the British had ever arrived!

It appears likely that some combination of malnutrition, disease, inbreeding, lack of education, lack of mental stimulation, lack of familiarity with abstract reasoning and so forth can keep people from reaching their genetic potential for IQ. Lynn himself did early studies demonstrating that malnutrition drives down IQ. The co-authors conclude their book by recommending that

"The rich countries' economic aid programs for the poor countries should be continued and some of these should be directed at attempting to increase the intelligence levels of the populations of the poorer countries by improvements in nutrition and the like."

A clear example of how a bad environment can hurt IQ can be seen in the IQ scores for sub-Saharan African countries. They average only around 70. In contrast, African-Americans average about 85. It appears unlikely that African-Americans' white admixture can account for most of this 15-point gap because they are only around 17%-18% white on average, according to the latest genetic research. (Thus African-Americans white genes probably couldn't account for more than 3 points of the gap between African-Americans and African-Africans.) This suggests that the harshness of life in Africa might be cutting ten points or more off African IQ scores.

Similarly, West Africans are significantly shorter in height than their distant cousins in America, most likely due to malnutrition and infections. The two African-born NBA superstars, [26]Hakeem Olajuwon and [27]Dikembe Mutombo, are both from the [28]wa-benzi [people of the (Mercedes ) Benz]upper class. Only the elite in Africa gets enough food and health care to grow up to be NBA centers.

This also implies that African-Americans might be able to achieve higher IQs too, although the environmental gap between white Americans and black Americans appears to be much smaller than between black Americans and black Africans. As [29]I pointed out in VDARE in 2000, the most promising avenue for improving African-Americans' IQs is by promoting breastfeeding among blacks mothers, who nurse their babies at much lower rates than whites.

In fact, we know that IQ is not completely fixed over time because raw test scores have been rising for decades, about 2 to 3 points per decade. To counteract this, the IQ test-making firms periodically make it harder - in absolute terms - to achieve a score of 100. Lynn was possibly the first scientist to make this phenomenon widely known, although New Zealand political scientist James Flynn has gotten more [30]credit for this recently. And, indeed, Lynn and Vanhanen scrupulously adjust the test results in their book to account for when each test was taken.

While the causes of the Lynn-Flynn Effect remain rather mysterious, it does resemble several other ongoing phenomena. For example, human beings are getting taller, living longer, and having fewer of their babies die during infancy.

One might expect IQ scores to converge as the richest nations experience diminishing marginal returns on improvements in nutrition, health, and education. By way of analogy, consider how, after 1950, average height has not grown as fast in already well-fed America as it has in rapidly developing East Asia.

It's unlikely the Japanese will ever be as tall on average as, say, Lithuanians or Croatians or African-Americans. But the gap has closed. This partial convergence in height is why you now see 6'-2" East Asian baseball pitchers like [31]Hideo Nomo and [32]Chan Ho Park starring in the American big leagues. Last year [33]Wang Zhizhi, 7'-1" became the first Asian ever to join the NBA.

Perhaps that kind of convergence will happen with IQ scores someday. But the evidence that it is happening now isn't terribly strong. The odd thing about the Lynn-Flynn Effect is that it doesn't seem to have had much impact on comparative rankings of IQ over time. The smart seem to keep on getting smarter.

For instance, one of the best-documented examples of a country with rising raw IQ scores is the Netherlands (current IQ: 102). But even as far back as the[34] 17th Century, the general opinion of mankind was that the Dutch had a lot on the ball.

One potential explanation for why IQ gaps don't seem to be narrowing (for example, the white-black IQ gap in America has been about 15 points for 80 years or so) was [35]offered by Flynn recently. He argued that smart people, because they find cognitive challenges pleasurable, seek out more mentally stimulating environments, which in turn exercise their brains more, making them even smarter. This suggests, for example, that the Dutch will tend to become, [36]say, Internet addicts demanding constant fixes of new information and argument, and thus continue to grow in mental firepower.

While unproven, Flynn's suggestion seems possible. In absolute terms, it's a [37]virtuous circle. But it seems unlikely to lead to the closing of the relative gap.

Ultimately, though, it is hard to avoid concluding that intellectual and income differences between nations stem to some extent from genetic differences. The results simply cluster too much by race. All the countries populated by Northeast Asians score between 100 and 107. The European-populated lands score between 90 and 102. Southeast Asian nations cluster in the low 90s. The Caucasian countries in North Africa and western Asia score mostly in the 80s. And so forth.

The correlation between national IQ and national income is very high. For the 81 countries, the r is .73 for GDP measured in purchasing power parity terms (which makes poor nations with lots of subsistence farmers look better off than they do in standard measures of just the cash economy). In the social sciences, correlations of 0.2 are said to be "low," 0.4 are "moderate," and 0.6 are "high." So 0.73 is most impressive.

This doesn't mean that a high IQ alone is the cause of a high income. Causation probably runs in both directions, in another virtuous circle. Rich countries tend to produce enough food to stave off malnutrition, for instance, which probably leads to higher IQs, which leads to even higher food production due to more sophisticated farming techniques.

Interestingly, per capita income correlates almost as strongly with a nation's level of economic freedom as it does with its level of intelligence. But that's in large part because economic freedom and IQ correlate with each other - at the high level of 0.63.

Freedom and brains probably contribute to each other. Although there are obvious exceptions, countries with smart workers (and smart leaders) tended to find that the capitalist system generated wealth. So there was less impetus to experiment with command economies than in places where free enterprise wasn't getting the job done.

But it could also be that freedom exercises the brain - West Germans averaged 103 while East Germans scored only 95. My pet theory is that having to make [38]all the choices between products available in a successful capitalist economy stimulates mental development. (I believe this because, as I get older and stupider, I increasingly find shopping to be intellectually exhausting.) But evidence for this is not abundant.

Culture can play a role as well - at the extreme, contrast two countries with almost identical per capita GDPs: Barbados and Argentina (at least before Argentina's recent economic collapse). [39]Don't cry for Argentina, because it is blessed with ample IQ (96). But it's dragged down by a notorious lack of economic and political self-discipline. In contrast, [40]Barbados, despite an average IQ of 78, is one of the most pleasant countries in the 3rd World due to its commitment to maintaining a veddy, veddy English culture.

Still, these two countries are close to being the exceptions that prove the rule. The explanatory power of the "cultural realist" models like Thomas Sowell's are necessarily more limited than those of "biocultural realist" like Richard Lynn. In general, cultures that emphasize, say, foresight are generally found in countries where people have enough IQ to be foresighted. Maybe people in northern countries tend to have higher IQs because people too unintelligent to effectively prepare for winter tended to get removed from the gene pool.

The IQ-income correlation is not perfect either. But even where it breaks down - most notably with China - IQ helps explain otherwise puzzling developments like the recent headline in the New York Times announcing "[41]Globalization Proves Disappointing."

Globalization, or the fast-paced growth of trade and cross-border investment, has done far less to raise the incomes of the world's poorest people than the leaders had hoped, many officials here say. The vast majority of people living in Africa, Latin America, Central Asia and the Middle East are no better off today than they were in 1989..."

On the other hand, hundreds of billions in private investment have poured into China, which, despite its parasitical ruling caste, has enjoyed strong economic growth.

So what's the story behind this story? Apparently, capital flows to where wages are low but IQs are high - pre-eminently China, where the average IQ is two points higher than the U.S. already and likely to go higher as economic development continues.

In contrast, these other regions (with the exception of Argentina) average IQs of 90 or less, sometimes considerably less.

This is not to disparage free markets - there's no alternative. The point is simply that humans differ greatly in productive capacity, so not everyone benefits from economic competition to the same extent.

The implications for immigration policy are clear.

First, any conceivable level of immigration to America is insufficient to make any difference in the welfare of the billions of foreigners living in poverty.

Second, in a world where the average IQ is 90, America's nepotism-driven immigration system (legal and illegal) will continue to import primarily foreigners with two-digit IQs. These immigrants' skills are typically insufficient to compete with our native IQ elite, but are ample for driving down the wages of our fellow American citizens who were not blessed in the IQ lottery.

The morality of such a system I leave to the reader to decide.

April 14, 2002

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