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.

Carnegie’s belief was that the rich should invest their money into public services which would benefit the poor and allow them to climb up the social ladder without simply giving the poor money which they would spend on short-term materialistic desires. While Carnegie’s idea could quite possibly be successful and is in some instances, the idea is closer to a fantasy than reality in that the investments of money for public services are not common, comparatively, in a world that has always been so materialistic.
Carnegie’s main point of emphasis is that the rich and most successful people are in charge of how and where the administration of wealth should occur. He says that humans have adapted so much from the past that the members of lower status in society had much more in their time than people of higher status in the past. He believed that the wealthy people should be able to administer the wealth because they were more successful or more developed as human beings. This Darwinian concept was supposed to be (while not necessarily true) analogous to the concept in Darwinism that the most evolved and successful biological creatures will be dominant and will endure longer in the world. Carnegie argued in the Gospel of Wealth that the best way to deal with surplus wealth was to use it on public services to benefit others, but the rich, and only the rich, would be allowed to decide where that surplus money would go. Carnegie believed that only the rich could administer the wealth because the poor people were not mentally capable of doing so. In Carnegie’s writing he often called members of the lower class ignorant, incompetent and lazy and believed that they could only be helped. In one sense, that idea is fair considering that surplus wealth was the money of those rich people, but on the other hand, many times the money was just handed down to them when they didn’t work at all. This hand-me-down wealth system was a societal practice that Carnegie argued against. He believed that the aristocratic inheritance was regressive for society as a whole while only benefiting a few individuals.
The second Darwinian precept that Carnegie used in his writing was circulating money back into society rather than on frivolous expenditures would allow society to adapt as a whole.

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

adapt.
One final Darwinian precept was that competition was necessary for the progress of society. Carnegie argued that competition was inevitable and was not as bad as it was perceived by a large portion of society. He argued that because the lifestyle of all men were improving through competition that something must have been working. Those who fell behind in the competition were left behind. Carnegie also argued that the advantages of competition were minute while comparing the rich to the poor so there was not an abuse of power. The validity of that statement is highly questionable. Carnegie believed that it was important to put money back into society to progress society as a whole, but he also believed that those who would not make good use of that help would simply have to be left behind.
Overall Carnegie’s philosophy of wealth would probably be highly successful if it was actually put into practice. However, along with thousands of more ideologies, it was and is not really put into practical use. In the modern era, while many people donate money to countries and to people who are on the verge of dying in order to help those people survive, the idea of putting money into public works is not very heard of. Additionally, the way consumerism has manifested itself into modernity has massively prevented Carnegie’s ideas of administration of surplus wealth.
This leads to another point that there are a few slight flaws in Carnegie's ideology of wealth. Carnegie himself stated that through his practices the rich would become trustees to the poor. On face value, this idea seems okay, but in a larger sense it is this same idea that allows the rich to have such control over the poor. Due to human nature and even through Carnegie’s ideas of inevitable competition, it is apparent that while rich people allow some room for the poor to move up the ladder, throughout history there has been a suppression of the lower class because if the lower class moves up, then there is less opportunity for the rich to increase their wealth. Carnegie writes about society as if it is a supporting community of people who care to advance society as a whole over themselves. History shows that only a few small communities in the world are actually like that. Greed and an insatiable desire for growth has blinded many to the extent that they cannot allow the growth of anyone under them. Carnegie’s ideas can only be employed if the majority of the upper class contributes the social works, which is nearly impossible. Even if there are some opportunities provided to people over lower standing, the vast, disproportionate power that the upper class has is powerful enough to crush down anyone trying to climb the ladder to socio-economic equality.
Additionally, while Carnegie himself might not have been racist, his ideology has some racist underpinnings.

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

progress.
Overall, Carnegie’s Gospel of Wealth has some very good points, but at the same time has very dangerous ideologies. If Carnegie’s ideologies could be employed in an idealistic fashion, they would probably ensure the greatest progress of society. However much like many other philosophies of issues in the world, they will just never be able to successfully be carried out in this cruel world.