ABSTRACT
When Darwin's Origin of Species appeared in 1859, the basic ideas of Social Darwinism had been in place for some time. There were key differences between Darwin's theory of evolution and the nineteenth century Social Darwinism which appropriated his name. Like many early sociologists, Spencer and Sumner saw their role not just in explaining social inequality but in showing governments that social life was "fixed by laws of nature precisely analogous to those of the physical order". Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels readily acknowledged the intellectual debts they owed to the economic theories of Smith and Ricardo, to the philosophy of Hegel and to Darwin's theory of evolution. Theories which saw individuals as pawns in predetermined social processes had little interest in the psychological state of the participants. Scattered observations of subjective motives and reactions related to inequality are spread through the work of Marx, Engels, Sumner and Durkheim, but they were usually harnessed to their authors' convictions.
