social Darwinism, though it was advocated not by Darwin but by Herbert Spencer, who laid it out in 1851, eight years before the publication of The Origin of Species. Spencer did not believe in random mutation and natural selection; he believed in a Lamarckian process in which the struggle for existence impelled organisms to strive toward feats of greater complexity and adaptation, which they passed on to later generations. Spencer thought that this progressive force was best left unimpeded, and so he argued against social welfare and government regulation that would only prolong the doomed
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