ABSTRACT

Society is subject to the laws of natural development, and therefore any idea of progress or of reform is vain. Incidentally, the bluntness with which organismic sociology draws this political conclusion is outdone only by Social Darwinism. In its most abstruse form, Social Darwinism provides quasi-scientific trimmings for racial ideologies; the sort of thing which was refuted even before the days of the Enlightenment, but which reappeared like a ghost in the writings of Joseph Arthur Gobineau. Gobineau was eagerly read in Germany, where racial ideology, particularly in its anti-semitic form, can clearly be traced back to the early nineteenth century in political romanticism, whose organistic ideas facilitated the biological translation of sociopolitical categories. Ernst Haeckel now takes his place beside Darwin as an authority. Racial ideology harnesses anthropometry into its service and adopts the mask of eugenic concern. One of the typical products of this kind of social Darwinism was Die Gesellschaftsordnung und ihre naturlichen Grundlagen by Otto Amonn.