The term “Social Darwinism” is discredited today as a self-serving rationalization used by amoral nineteenth-century laissez-faire capitalists to justify their exploitation of workers. “With the model of ruthless competition in which only the ‘fittest survived,’ it thus followed logically that the richest entrepreneurs were the fittest.”130 Rich capitalists could both congratulate themselves on their outstanding success and shed no tears for the losers they devoured—no more than a lion would grieve for its prey. Yet Carnegie never thought of himself as a robber baron. He believed himself to be
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