Social Darwinism is based on a misunderstanding of Darwin.
Social Darwinists believe that those who are rich and powerful and healthy (and white) are that way b/c of their superior genes and "deserve" to be that way. They regard themselves as the most "fit."
Those who are not rich, or healthy, or successful (or white) etc, are regarded by the Social Darwinists as unfit.
The problem with this school of thought, which turned into the American Eugenics Movement (culminating in the still controversial Supreme Court decision, Buck v. Bell) neglects to take into account what Darwin's concept of "fitness" is about.
Darwin's theories can be boiled down into its simplest terms as follows: Organisms which are succesfully adapted to their environment survive to breed more than organisms which are less fit to their environment.
And that is the fallacy of Social Darwinism. Fitness per Darwin is measured in terms of sucessful breeding. One need not be a social scientist to immediately acknowledge that the very poor, uneducated and (non-white) have many many more kids than their rich, educated, white counterparts.
An evolutionist would therefore conclude that the rich and successful are less fit than the poor and unsuccessful.
This raises the question of whether it is appropriate and proper to do something about this. I'm very ambivelant about the matter, some days feeling strongly one way, the next the other.
Eugenics is not a dirty word. However, (and this is a big however), eugenics can only be a consideration if criteria are applyed for improvement of the species that are not discriminatory or favoring the privelleged. I don't see how this is possible to accomplish.
Ultimately, I think that genetic manipulation is the answer as opposed to eugenics, b/c (if universally applied) it would give everyone an equal chance of maximizing their potential, without eliminating racial or ethnic variance - variance which is crucial for further evolution of the species.
We're unique in that we have the ability to affect our evolution, much as we've affected the evolution of bacteria, finches, moths, and the myriad of species we've exterminated.
Our large cranial capacity is as much an evolutionary curse as a blessing.
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