Eugenic theories formulated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have rightly been considered one of the darkest chapters in modern intellectual history. For that reason, adherence to these theories influences the way in which past figures are judged today. Yet the judgments passed on those influenced by eugenics are often highly arbitrary and unbalanced. Winston Churchill, for example, has been criticised for his brief interest in eugenics during his tenure as Home Secretary in 1910. As part of his general character assassination of Churchill, Geoffrey Wheatcroft wrote in 2021 that Churchill displayed a ‘frightening enthusiasm for eugenics’. [1] However, although Churchill’s 1910 views are historically notable, Wheatcroft’s assessment was exaggerated, as Andrew Roberts pointed out in History Reclaimed (16/10/2021) noting that Churchill’s ‘”frightening enthusiasm for eugenics” resulted in precisely nothing – even though Churchill was home secretary – and was widely shared by leftist figures such as H.G. Wells and the Webbs.’ https://historyreclaimed.co.uk/podcast/podcast-in-discussion-with-historian-andrew-roberts/ Indeed, the left’s attitude toward eugenics might seem even more ‘frightening’ than Churchill’s brief interest, as we shall see, for it rested on far deeper ideological convictions.
Marx and Engels had assumed that a socialist society would produce a new form of human existence, implying the emergence of ‘men who are able to cope with a new world’. They initially accepted Lamarck’s theory of the heritability of acquired characteristic and saw human nature as malleable. The socialist society of the future would thus be able to breed a new socialist type of human being. However, certain social groups were, so to speak, already damaged to such an extent that they were deemed unfit to contribute to the future socialist society. ‘The classes and the races, too weak to master the new conditions of life, must give way,’ Marx declared in 1853.[2] In industrial societies, this included the ‘lumpenproletariat’: drunkards, habitual criminals, prostitutes, the mentally ill, and morally degraded individuals. From the late nineteenth century, German socialists increasingly defined these groups biologically and targeted them for eugenic measures. The same occurred in Scandinavia, where thousands deemed to have undesirable traits were forcibly sterilised.[3]
Eugenic thought also gained support among British and American socialists and communists. Prominent defenders of (at times so-called ‘Bolshevik’) eugenics included H. J. Muller (1890-1967), J. B. S. Haldane (1892–1964), J. D. Bernal (1901–1971), Herbert Brewer (1897–1968), and Karl Pearson (1857–1936).[4] The more moderate argued that abolishing class society would clarify the importance of heredity and environment in health and abilities. Only then could socially responsible eugenics be implemented.[5] Others were inspired by eugenic measures that were made possible in the Soviet Union after 1917.[6]
One of the earliest British socialist advocates of eugenics was Marx’s son-in-law, Edward Aveling (1849-1898). In Darwinism and Small Families(1881), Aveling declared that a large number of offspring among the lower classes would increase the number of individuals of an ‘injurious or retrograde kind’. He also concluded that ‘our deformed and diseased people do not, or ought not to marry’.[7]
A few years later the notable statistician Karl Pearson explained that creating a strong and competitive society required both socialism and eugenics. Socialist nations with strong community bonds would be superior in the struggle for life. ‘We have every need to strengthen by training the partially dormant socialistic spirit, if we as a nation are to be among the surviving fit’, he emphasised.[8] Pearson demanded absolute obedience to the state, ideally governed by a chosen elite: ‘Socialists have to inculcate that spirit which would give offenders against the State short shrift and the nearest lamp-post’. [9] Besides community cohesion, socialist nations had greater opportunity to organise society’s ‘mental and physical resources’. As Pearson emphasised:
‘Individual societies have the strongest interest in educating, training, and organizing the powers of all their individual members, for these are the sole conditions under which a society can survive in the battle for life. This tendency to social organization, always prominent in progressive communities, may be termed, in the best and widest sense of the word, Socialism.’
Karl Pearson
Darwinian principles and eugenics were applied to develop these resources – and socialism was a prerequisite for implementing correct eugenic policy. Equality allowed society to identify which individuals were worth investing in reproductively. Such a policy was easier under socialism. Physical selection would also be more effective, since everyone had to work for their livelihood. Only individuals with favourable traits would have equal rights, and only socialism could ensure that the most talented, regardless of social background, would reproduce and lead the state. This was necessary for the winning of future wars and the progress of civilisation.[10] Means included free sexual relations, the exemption of mothers from work, and state regulation of children’s ‘quantity and quality’.[11] Other British socialists, however, advocated even more drastic programmes.
In an appendix to the play Man and Superman (1903), G. Bernard Shaw declared: ‘The only fundamental and possible Socialism is the socialization of the selective breeding of Man’.[12] Shaw was a member of the Fabian Society, where Sidney and Beatrice Webb were also strong advocates for eugenics. They supported forced sterilisation and other measures to reduce birth rates among groups deemed undesirable.[13] Sidney Webb asserted these were the only ways to ‘avoid degeneration of type – that is, race deterioration, if not race suicide’.[14]
The philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) also considered various eugenic measures. He approved of forced sterilisation to ‘diminish imbecility’ and state-issued ‘medical certificates’ for parents fit to procreate.[15] H. G. Wells, the novelist and controversialist, and another Fabian socialist, went a step further. He argued that breeding programmes were not feasible owinge to uncertainty about inheritance of desirable traits. Therefore,
‘The way of nature has always been to slay the hindmost, and there is still no other way, unless we can prevent those who would become the hindmost being born. It is in the sterilization of failures, and not in the selection of successes for breeding, that the possibility of an improvement of the human stock lies.’ [16]
In 1908, Wells outlined socialism’s principles:
“The fundamental idea upon which Socialism rests is the same fundamental idea as that upon which all real scientific work is carried on. It is the denial that chance impulse and individual will and happening constitute the only possible methods by which things may be done in the world,”
According to Wells, the Socialist desired
‘a complete organization for all those human affairs that are of collective importance. He says, to take instances almost haphazard, that our ways of manufacturing a great multitude of necessary things, of getting and distributing food, of conducting all sorts of business, of begetting and rearing children, of permitting diseases to engender and spread, are chaotic and undisciplined.’
The Socialist therefore ‘seeks to make a plan as one designs and lays out a garden, so that sweet and seemly things may grow, wide and beautiful vistas open, and weeds and foulness disappear’. What makes the garden’s ‘graciousness and beauty possible, is the scheme and the persistent intention, the watching and the waiting, the digging and burning, the weeder clips and the hoe.’[17]
H. G. Wells
How the removal of ‘weeds and foulness’ could take place had already been explained by Wells in 1901, when he stated that he not only supported forced sterilisation but also had the hope that in the future society, ‘the New Republic’, a higher form of ethics would develop to support the use of euthanasia:
‘These men of the New Republic, the ethical system which will dominate the world state, will be shaped primarily to favour the procreation of what is fine and efficient and beautiful in humanity – beautiful and strong bodies, clear and powerful minds, and a growing body of knowledge – and to check the procreation of base and servile types.’
When it came to ‘a multitude of contemptible and silly creatures […] the men of the New Republic will have little pity and less benevolence. […] The men of the New Republic will not be squeamish, either, in facing or inflicting death. […] They will have an ideal that will make killing worth the while’. These men would ensure that undesirable elements were removed from society. ‘This thing, this euthanasia of the weak and sensual, is possible’, Wells declared, adding that the killings could be carried out humanely by means of ‘an opiate’.[18]
George Bernard Shaw also advocated euthanasia of undesirable individuals – habitual criminals and those he regarded as a general burden on society. In 1898, he wrote:
‘The majority of men at present in Europe have no business to be alive; and no serious progress will be made until we address ourselves earnestly and scientifically to the task of producing trustworthy human material for society’.[19] In a 1910 lecture, he stated:
‘We should find ourselves committed to killing a great many people whom we now leave living, and to leave living a great many people whom we at present kill. […] A part of eugenic politics would finally land us in an extensive use of the lethal chamber. A great many people would have to be put out of existence simply because it wastes other people’s time to look after them.’[20]
George Bernard Shaw
What did Shaw mean by ‘a lethal chamber’? At the time, the public understood perfectly well that Shaw was referring to a well-tested method of killing – not of humans, but of stray dogs. Since the late nineteenth century, these dogs had been put down in gas chambers liked this:
Shaw’s statement thus had a chillingly concrete meaning – and in a way, Shaw was among the pioneers in this area when he suggested applying the method to humans.[21] Some of Shaw’s like-minded contemporaries, such as the socialist Eden Paul (1865–1944), later also advocated the killing of ‘anti-social types’ in ‘lethal chambers.’[22]
Shaw repeatedly considered the state’s right to kill unwanted individuals. He believed incorrigible criminals should be euthanised in a lethal chamber rather than serve long, inhumane prison sentences.[23] ‘If people are fit to live, let them live under decent human conditions. If they are not fit to live, kill them in a decent human way’.[24] In a 1931 filmed interview, he stated: ‘I don’t want to punish anybody, but there are an extraordinary number of people who I want to kill. Not in any unkind or personal spirit. You must know people who are no use and more trouble than they are worth’.
Citizens should justify their existence as beneficial to society, Shaw believed. If one couldn’t do that, then one couldn’t expect society’s large organisations to be used to keep you alive ‘because your life does not benefit us and it can’t be of very much use to yourself’.[25] In a 1934 radio broadcast, he denied that weapons of mass destruction would lead to war; rather, they made wars less likely. Therefore, ‘If you are a humanitarian, like myself, appeal to the chemists to discover a humane gas that will kill instantly and painlessly; in short, a gentlemanly gas, deadly by all means, but humane, not cruel.’ And if and when we stop fighting, Shaw ‘suggested a domestic use for such gas’.[26] What domestic use Shaw had in mind, one hardly dares to think. In 1938, five years after the National Socialist takeover in Germany, Shaw remarked in a letter to Beatrice Webb: ‘I think we ought to tackle the Jewish Question by admitting the right of the State to make eugenic experiments by weeding out any strains they think undesirable, but insisting that they should do it as humanely as they can afford to’.[27]
While other supporters of eugenics later reconsidered, Shaw maintained his position even after the Second World War. Thus in 1948 he still contended that ‘the ungovernables, the ferocious, the conscienceless, the idiots, the self-centered myops and morons’, should be euthanised. [28] Despite this and many other such statements, Shaw has been strangely spared contemporary outrage and condemnation. This is puzzling when one considers that other historical figures have been shamed and dishonoured for statements far milder than those of Shaw and the other socialists highlighted here. History’s judgment – or put another way, the judgment of those who would abuse history to make their case – is truly arbitrary.
Jesper M. Rosenløv holds a doctorate from the University of Copenhagen and worked originally on Greco-Roman culture and the history of religion. In recent years he has focused on intellectual and political history, including the expansion of Islam as the background for the crusading ideology. His forthcoming book examines Marx and Engels’s antisemitism, racism, and glorification of violence – and the continuation of these darker aspects of Marxist doctrine by their ideological heirs. For his first essay for History Reclaimed, see https://historyreclaimed.co.uk/racist-socialists/
Notes:
[1] G. Wheatcroft: Churchill’s Shadow: An Astonishing Life and a Dangerous Legacy (2021) p. 129, cf. pp. 61f., 206. Wheatcroft refers to P. Addison: Churchill on the Home Front 1900-1955, London (1992) p. 125. But Addison’s assessment of Churchill’s position on eugenics (pp. 123–126) must be said to be far more balanced than Wheatcroft’s.
[2] Collected Works vol. 10, p. 117; vol. 11, p. 531
[3] Cf. J. Rosenløv: Other Sides of Marx and Engels. Antisemitism, Racism and Violence (forthcoming)
[4] Cf. G. Watson: ‘Race & the Socialists’, Encounter, November (1976) p. 22; D. B. Paul: ‘Eugenics and the Left’, Journal of the History of Ideas (1984) 45:4 pp. 567-575, 577.
[5] Paul, ‘Eugenics and the Left’, p. 574
[6] ibid, pp. 575-585
[7] Darwinism and Small Families, London (1881) pp. 6, 8
[8] The Grammar of Science, London (1892) p. 435
[9] ‘The Moral Basis of Socialism’ (1887), The Ethic of Freethought, London (1901) pp. 307f., The Function of Science in the Modern States, Cambridge (1919) 14f.
[10] Op. cit. (1892) pp. 430-437, cf. Paul pp. 573ff. and “Socialism and Natural Selection”, The Chances of Death, and Other Studies in Evolution, vol. 1, London (1897) pp. 130, 138
[11] ‘Socialism and Sex'(1886), The Ethic of Freethought, London (1901) pp. 418, 421, 424, 427
[12] Man and Superman, London (1903) p. 219
[13] Cf. A. Wooldridge: Measuring the Mind, Cambridge (1994) pp. 21f., 183-185, 209-211, Paul pp. 568f.
[14] ‘The Decline in Birth-Rate’, Fabian Tract No. 131, London (1907) p. 19.
[15] Icarus or the Future of Science, New York (1924), pp. 48ff., and letter to Alys Pearsall Smith, October 2, 1894, Selected Letters (N. Griffin, ed.), vol. 1, p. 128.
[16] American Journal of Sociology, vol. 10, July 1904 p.11. Cf. Mankind in the Making, London (1903) pp. 37ff.
[17] New Worlds for Old, New York (1908) pp. 21, 25f.
[18] Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought, New York / London [1901] (1902), pp. 321-325, 332. Cf. Paul pp. 568f.
[19] The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung’s Ring, London (1898) p. 67
[20] Reported in The Daily Express, March 4, 1910 (“Amazing speech by G.B.S. Barefaced advocacy of free love. Socialist hopes”)
[21] See Shaws letter to J. S. Stuart-Glennie in January 1900, D. H. Laurence (ed.): Bernard Shaw. Collected Letters 1898-1910, London (1972) pp. 128f. Executions by gas were not used in the United States until 1924, cf. E. Black: War against the weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race, New York (2003) pp. 247ff., S. Christianson: The Last Gasp: The Rise and Fall of the American Gas Chamber, Berkeley (2010) pp. 23-33
[22] ‘Eugenics, Birth-Control, and Socialism’, in: Eden & Cedar Paul (eds.): Population and Birth-Control: A Symposium, New York (1917) pp. 145f.
[23] F. O’Toole: Judging Shaw: The Radicalism of GBS, Dublin (2017) pp. 272-275.
[24] ‘Imprisonment’ (1922) in: Prefaces (1934) p. 298, cf. pp. 136f., 296-301, 317-320.
[25] Paramount British Pictures, 5 March 1931. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-Ljkoh_vmE See also Shaw’s defense of executions of habitual criminals and unwanted individuals in the Soviet Union in the preface to the play On the Rocks (1933) (Too True to Be Good, Village Wooing & On the Rocks, Three Plays by Bernard Shaw, London (1934) pp. 143, 146, 156-158′[26] Published in The Listener, a magazine published by the BBC, London, February 7, 1934, L.W. Conolly: Bernard Shaw and the BBC, Toronto (2009) pp. 187-195
[27] Shaw to Webb, February 6, 1938, Collected Letters (D. H. Laurence, ed.) vol. 4, p. 493. [28] ‘Capital Punishment’, The Atlantic Monthly, June 1948. For the the loss of support for eugenics on the left from the 1940s onward, cf. Paul pp. 587–590.
