It is only natural that Professor Haeckel and his adherents, Professor O. Schmidt, v. Hellwald and others, remonstrate energetically against the terrible accusation that Darwinism leads to Socialism. They claim that the opposite is true, that Darwinism is aristocratic, since it teaches that everywhere in nature the more highly organized and stronger living beings suppress the inferior ones; and since, according to their conception, the propertied and educated classes constitute these more highly organized and stronger living beings in human society, they consider the rule of these classes a matter of course, since it is justified by the laws of nature.
These, among our evolutionists, are ignorant of the economic laws which dominate bourgeois society. Otherwise they would know that the blind rule of these laws does not raise to social pre-eminence either the best or the ablest or the most competent, but frequently the worst and the most cunning, who thereby are placed in a position of making the conditions of life and development most favorable to their progeny, without the least effort on their part. Under no economic system did persons, possessing good and noble human qualities, have so little opportunity of attaining and maintaining an elevated position, as under the capitalistic system. Without fear of exaggeration it may be said, that this state of affairs increases with the development of this system. Lack of consideration for others and unscrupulousness in the choice and application of means to attain one’s end, prove far more effective than all human virtues combined. Only one who is ignorant of the nature of this society or who is so dominated by bourgeois prejudices that he cannot reason properly or draw correct conclusions, could regard a social system based upon such conditions as a society of the “fittest and best.” The struggle for existence is always present with all organisms. It goes on without any knowledge on their part of the laws and conditions that shape it. This struggle for existence prevails among men also and among the members of each social group from which solidarity has disappeared, or where it has not yet been developed. This struggle for existence changes its form according to the various relations of men to one another in the course of human development. It assumes the character of class struggles on an ever higher scale. But these struggles--and thereby man is distinguished from all other human beings--lead to a growing understanding of the nature of society, and finally to a recognition of the laws which determine its development. ~Eventually man will but need to apply these laws to his social and political institutions and to transform them accordingly.~ The difference is that man may be called a reasoning animal, but the animal is not a reasoning human being. This many Darwinists fail to see, owing to their biased conceptions, and therefore arrive at false conclusions.[166]