ated, the proposition was that, if everyone pursued his own economic interests, these would, in the aggregate, produce the highest level of general prosperity . . . In brief, then, the ideology of capitalism rested on the notion of the sanctity of private property . . . and the more recent Darwinian proposition that those who 'succeeded' were the 'fittest' in the merciless struggle for survival that characterized the animal and human existence" (Smith, 1984, p. 139).
It was obvious to these capitalists that there were high costs to such an unbridled seeking after wealth and power, and that these costs were primarily human. These capitalists saw the damage that such pursuit of wealth did to the working people --- even children --- who were the real producers of that wealth. As a palliative, the capitalist entrepreneurs amassing tremendous amounts of wealth and power claimed that in the long run their wealth would be used to better society as a whole.
Andrew Carnegie, an exponent of the Darwinian theory of natural selection as applied to capitalism, recognized that "society paid a high price" for such competitive ruthlessness, "but the rewards were greater than the costs, for it is to this law that we owe our wonderful material development, which brings improved conditions in its train . . . While the law may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department" (Smith, 1984, p. 135).
Anthropologist Robert Lowie offers an explanation for the use by the capitalists of the Darwinian theory in their attempt to describe the benefits of their pursuit and accumulation of wealth and power. The capitalists saw society as an element of nature, obeying the same natural laws which Darwin saw as prevailing in the lower animal kingdom. Society, then, as a part of the natural world, has a life of its own, a "natural" life. As such, the culture of a society can...