Social Darwinism In Andrew Carnegie's The Gospel Of Wealth

On face value, the Gospel of Wealth seems like a simple suggestion to the problem of improper administration of wealth from the massively successful Andrew Carnegie to fellow rich and successful men. However, on a deeper level, the thesis and underlying structures of the revolutionary Gospel of Wealth are almost all conceived from Darwinian ideologies. Throughout the writing, there are suggestions of certain humans being favored over others in varying situations, adapting to society and its conditions, and the inevitability of competition. In many aspects, Social Darwinism has logical arguments, but in many aspects it doesn’t make sense because of the distinct difference between biological adaptation and societal socio-economic adaptation.

The idea was that the rich should only help those who help themselves, so that those poor ones who decided to help themselves could grow stronger and climb up the social ladder. This Darwinian idea was that people could adapt to their societies and the changing world around them and grow into favorable positions. Carnegie suggested that rather than spending surplus wealth on lavish lifestyles, the rich should fund public services such as libraries or educational facilities that allowed poor people to

Was Carnegie really advocating for the progress of society or was he simply afraid of a revolution of the lower class due to an vast gap between the rich and the poor? Carnegie argued for selective pressure of the fit. While in biology, selective pressure allowed the creatures with the most favorable traits survive, Carnegie’s selective pressure only allowed the certain people he wanted to progress. By putting money into only English speaking institutions it only allowed a certain type of people to actually progress in society. Through Carnegie’s view, inequality became natural because only a group of the poor would be able to