Liberal, Progressive and Socialist Support for Eugenics
In the early years of the twentieth century, the political left was a strong supporter of eugenics, birth control, and forced sterilization. In this topic, they explain in their own words the close connection between their beliefs and the need for government to control who has children.
Malthus and Darwin Create Problems
For those who regard themselves as uniquely gifted to guide humanity into a more enlightened age, Thomas Malthus had defined the first of two problems they must overcome. A much improved society, he warned, would also be a society with a much lowered death rate. Since the human race was unlikely to give up its interest in sex and (at that time) birth control techniques were ineffective, that meant that eventually the population would grow to the point where no form of government, however well managed, could produce enough food for its people. Those who thought they held the key to an ideal society had no answer to the logic of his arguments.
A little over half a century later, however, Charles Darwin managed to put a progressive spin on Malthus' high death rates. Probably with the Irish famine of a decade earlier in mind, at the very end of The Origin of Species he excused nature's cruelty by describing a system of natural selection where "from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows."
At a time when the birthrates of the more privileged classes in Britain and the United States were high, those were reassuring words. A steady political evolution into a more progressive civilization was being accompanied by a parallel biological evolution in the nature of man. This meant that the "New Civilization" that H. G. Wells discussed in his introduction to Margaret Sanger's The Pivot of Civilization (covered in Topic 11) would be populated by a New Man, so enlightened that he would not longer be troubled by Malthusian difficulties.
Unfortunately for such people, the last decades of the nineteenth century brought a second problem, one born from two social changes. The first was a dramatic decline in death rates in all classes due, in part, to easy-to-implement public health measures such as clean water supplies. The second was a rapid decline in the birthrates of the well-established, wealthier and better educated classes. The fact that the poor no longer died like flies was alarming for those who believed that, in the evolutionary scheme, such people were closer to the flies than they were. Evolution, it seemed, had gone into reverse.
The problem is easier to understand if the various options for birth and death rates is simplified into four scenarios.
1. High Birthrate--High Death Rate
2. High Birthrate--Low Death Rate
3. Low Birthrate--High Death Rate
4. Low Birthrate--Low Death Rate
For most of human history, Scenario 1 dominated, and the human population had grown only slowly. Malthus had warned that, by lowering death rates without changing birthrates, an ideal society would enter Scenario 2 and eventually face over overpopulation and famine.
Darwin looked at the matter differently. Implicitly, he recognized that while (in his day) birthrates were high among all classes, the Irish and English poor remained in Scenario 1, while his social class (the country gentry) was in Scenario 2. In evolutionary terms that meant that the 'fit,' were reproducing faster than the 'unfit.' For Darwin and his followers that meant progress.
But in the late nineteenth century, even the poor in crowded cities entered Scenario 2 at the very time when the 'better' classes in Britain and America entered Scenario 4. In Darwinian terms, the collective abilities of the human race (in warding off disease and famine) had reached the point were the death rates of everyone in modern societies, 'fit' and 'unfit' alike, was relatively low. Which group would populate the future would be determined almost solely by differences in birthrates.
Since the entire political left, from liberal to socialist and communist, thought in Darwinian terms, that was disturbing. While a few cranky Social Darwinians wanted to take measures to see that the high death rates of the poor returned, advocating that was not usually acceptable to those who regarded themselves as progressive. For them, the only answer was to lower the birthrates of those they regarded as 'unfit' (Scenario 4). That is why those on the left never debated whether they should force down the birthrates of those they did not like, only the timing and techniques to be used. They assume without question that they have the right to decide who can have children with the same confidence that they assume they have the right to control the government and run the economy. And they assume that they have to right to conceal this agenda behind lies.
The problem of differing birthrates was compounded by other changes taking place at the same time. Increasingly complex means of production required more intelligent and better educated workers. Traditional societies had been rather callous toward those who did not measure up. There were, after all, lots of back-breaking jobs that required little intelligence. But with machines replacing manual labor, more was required to be a productive worker. What would happen to those who could not meet the increased demands.
Liberalism, socialism and communism promised to take care of everyone, irrespective of their ability to work, along with their children. (Marxism had the slogan, "From each according to his abilities to each according to his needs.") That raised a distinct possibility that, once it gained power, their government would be overwhelmed not merely by too great a quantity of people (Malthus), but all by too many people of too low a quality to be useful to society (the eugenic application of Darwin). Their ideal society would be swamped by millions who would live off others and do little more than breed yet more people as incompetent as themselves. The result would be a eugenic disaster as terrible as any in the warnings of Malthus. In their advocacy of eugenics, birth control and sterilization, that disaster was what those on the left were trying to prevent.
A Cross Section of Opinion
In the reading for this topic, we include a cross section of opinions from those on the political left about how best to deal with the problems described above. The number of writers who could be quoted on this topic is enormous, so the chapters below concentrate on those with close ties to Margaret Sanger. H. G. Wells, for instance wrote the Introduction to her The Pivot of Civilization and her initial interest in birth control was stimulated by the British Fabians. The others were people who knew and supported Sanger, including Lothrop Stoddard, a writer who was on the Board of Directors of her American Birth Control League.
Notice that, while these writers do not agree in every detail, their underlying beliefs are quite similar. If you take into account Sanger's greater use of coded language and contrived concern for poor and immigrant women, Lothrop Stoddard's 1922 The Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Underman is quite similar in theme to her The Pivot of Civilization, which was published that same year.