Most people believe that in the nature rules the iron law of the survival of the fittest and this law is also the driving force of evolution and therefore good, but at the same time they condemn the application of this principle to human populations. So, they are half-way correct. The second part of this idea they have correct, it is the first part that is false.
The principle of the survival of the fittest in the nature is not the driving force of evolution, though the beginning of the claim is correct: the old, weak and ill usually die in the nature, and it keeps the population healthy and strong. But it is nothing especially positive. In the same way if all stupid people were killed, the average intelligence of the population would increase, but it would not be anything especially positive. Even the stupid people made some positive contribution and do not deserve to be removed in order to improve the average. In the same way old, weak and ill can still make a positive contribution. In the nature they usually die, but it is nothing to be admired.
In order to find the driving force of evolution, let us divide changes to the genome of a population to three categories. In the first category the frequencies of different alleles of genes are changed by natural (or other) selection. In this category no mutations are needed, it works by shuffling existing genes.
The second category includes small (like a single or a few) mutational changes to a gene. Small mutations happen often. If they happen to protein coding parts of a gene, they usually are small neutral changes, like the eye color, or deleterious changes, like in many genetic diseases, and rarely, they can be deleterious genes where the heterozygote has an advantage, like in sickle cell anemia where the hemoglobin protein is modified. If these small mutations happen to the control part of a gene, they can be advantageous if one is lucky. Many such single mutations have been found and connected with e.g. higher intelligence. Such control genes may for instance let you grow a thicker cortex in the brain. These small mutations still only modify existing genes: they slightly extend existing genes. Life could not be born out of non-life with such small changes as there was nothing to start with. In the same way, a new class of animals could not be born out of previous life forms with such small changes because for that was needed some totally new functionality, usually new proteins, but it can also have been totally new control parts of genes.
The third category includes the large changes to a gene: the creation of new and essentially different proteins or control parts. I calculated in a previous post that creating by random mutations the lactalbumin gene (the gene for the protein in milk in mammals) from the gene of c-lysozime (the gene of the type of proteins there are e.g. in egg white) takes about 100 million years with a population of about 10 billion. (I find a contradiction in this creation time since there are new proteins that were created much faster and with a smaller population. If, for instance, we want to create a new protein with about 50 mutations in 10 million years, the population should be 1050 times larger. You cannot get such populations even with bacteria, so it seems that the mutations were not random. Natural selection does not help here because these mutations happen in a duplicate gene that is not active, thus it does not create phenotype changes. I will ignore this problem in this post as I have explained it many times.) Let us assume these are random mutations and in some way evolution works as claimed.
What can be said of the survival of the fittest in each of these three categories? The last category is the easiest to figure out. The survival of the fittest has no role in it. The population must be large in order that such a large mutation has some chance of happening. Then the new mutated gene must be in some way preserved. The new way is most probably not better than the old way, at least in the beginning. That is, e.g. with lactalbumin, why should the new way of a female feeding sucklings with milk be better than the old way, that birds still use, of laying eggs and parents feeding the offspring with food they catch? In technics a new invention is as a rule worse than the existing state-of-art solutions when it is first created and it has to be improved before it can compete in the market. We can conclude that the new gene must have time and peace from competition before it reaches the state-of-the art level. With lactalbumin early mammals developed this new protein 200 million years ago, but mammals rose to world power only 65 million years ago when a global catastrophe destroyed the dinosauri. This is probably typical: the new gene has to evolve with other supporting functionalities for a long time in peace and very possibly a catastrophe is needed to wipe out the state-of-the-art solutions before it can spread further. A catastrophe creates a low competition environment: the main competitors have died. Therefore, for a short time, all flowers can blossom. The lineage with the new gene can multiply as the competition level is small, and only in this way it can get a sufficient population size that supporting mutations can emerge and the new gene can become as good as the old state-of-the art solution. Here people are intuitively completely correct in saying that the strongest should not exterminate the weaker ones. Large scale evolution will come from the weaker ones. They have to be left alive and protected against the stronger.
The second category seems initially to fit to the rule of the survival of the fittest, but if you carefully consider it, it does not. Here we talk about small mutations. A small number of them are advantageous and we would like to see evolution select them. However, first we need a population where the frequency of the new gene is increased. It requires that the population grows from a small number of individuals and there is lots of endogamous breeding. When a small population grows larger and stays largely endogamous, the frequency of recessive deleterious mutations increases significantly: these populations will have a high number of homozygotes with deleterious recessive genes. Thus, the populations are not genetically superior to the original population. Almost certainly they are genetically worse and would lose in natural selection. This is why such populations can develop only if they have a niche.
In Northern Finland (Kuusamo) there is one such population: it has grown from a small number of people and it has its own set of genetic diseases. Ashkenazi Jews are another example: also they have grown from a small population and have lots of genetic diseases. The mechanism is that random mutations create deleterious genes with about the same rate in all populations. Thus a small population has about the same total frequency of deleterious mutations as a large population, but in a large population there are more variants of deleterious genes. If the small population grows fast, it will have the same total frequency of deleterious mutations, but they will be from a small set and the probability of having two deleterious alleles is much higher than in a large population that has more variants of deleterious genes. In Kuusamo the people had a new niche: they could inhabit a sparsely inhabited region. Ashkenazi Jews also had a niche: they were the city people and cities were growing. In such a niche the populations can grow under small competition pressure. Thus, it is nonsense to think that such populations developed under high competition and in this way acquired some positive traits. Without such a niche, the advantageous gene would disappear. We see that also small mutations need a protective environment. Competition from natural selection would kill them.
The first category is still to be considered. These are all old genes and as old genes they have already been tried and found useful for something. Natural selection favors some alleles over other alleles in some environment, but as these alleles have stayed in the population, they must have some advantages, either in another environment, or in the same. They may, for instance, increase fertility though decreasing something we currently appreciate more, like intelligence. There is no good reason to exterminate these old tried genes.
The two last categories have new mutations and in the beginning the population must be endogamous in order to enrich the new gene. The result is a high number of deleterious recessive genes. Thus, the population should mix with another population in order to increase the number of deleterious mutations and in this way decrease the risk of homozygotes in deleterious genes. Another possibility is that they population grows large and waits for a long time: new deleterious recessive mutations will be created, old ones will be purged out, and finally the result is the same as if the population had always been large. But doing this faster, it is better to mix with some other population. If so desired, females of another population suffice, as the Y chromosome does not have so much interesting stuff: it mainly has the genes for sperm production and similar male related very ancient things. Most of the male specific advantages are in the X chromosome. Indeed, the X chromosome is the main male chromosome: males have only one copy of it and therefore genes in the X chromosome are stronger expressed in males. Mixing with females of a population retains almost all genetic diversity of the population. Males are dispensable.
As protecting the weak and mixing populations seems to be the way of evolution, where does the rule of the survival of the fittest come from? It is a rule inside a population and it protects also against deleterious dominant genes, though not against recessive deleterious ones. But it is not a rule between populations. Animals do not make wars for gaining area and especially not wars between different species, though sometimes a population of one species tries to come to the territory of another population of the species. In such cases the original owner of the territory is usually successful. Indeed, we see animal mostly living in their areas and in a relative harmony of predators and their game.
The idea that the fittest, meaning the strongest, should destroy the weaker ones seems to come from the Old Testament. There we find a story of a people exterminating the original inhabitants of a country and there is given the rule to the man: multiply and fill the earth and make all nature your servants. These are not any universal characteristics of myths. In ancient times people seldom exterminated the original inhabitants. They often enslaved, but seldom exterminated. Egyptians of the Old Kingdom hardly had any wars. In the Middle and New Kingdom they had wars for areas, but they did not exterminate the original people. Neither did Macedonia, Rome, Phoenicia, Babylon or Assyria. Practically no people followed the genocidal philosophy of the Old Testament. Even Azteks, who made wars for getting prisoners to be sacrificed, did it for another purpose than the land: they thought that without sacrifices the world-era would end. Thus, the darwinistic idea of the survival of the fittest seems to be essentially recycling false and immoral Old Testament commands and it is promoted as the rule of nature because some ruling circles think it is the correct rule.
Hitler was a social darwinist. I think he very correctly understood Darwin’s ideas: he followed what darwinism implies and with a predictably poor outcome. The holocaust is the prime example given against social darwinism. I have elsewhere written of the holocaust and how many Jews died in it of the original about 16 million. If the death toll was 4.5 million, it was 28%, if 2.5 million then it was 16%. Let us look at another example, not of genocide but of famine.
In 1866-68 there was the last great famine in Europe. It was in Finland, about 8.5% of the population of Finland died, 150,000-200,000 people of 2 million. It was not the worst famine, the Great Famine of 1695-97 killed one third of the Finnish population. In 1866-68 harvest had been bad every year since 1860. Large groups of people left their homes and went to beg for something to eat, which spread infective diseases as did all large movements of people in those times. The Senate of the Grand Duchy of Finland followed the principle that food cannot be given for free, so it arranged work in building roads and canals. As there was too little flour the Senate added lichen to the bread of the workers, so it was not only of poor value but also unhealthy. One fifth of the builders of Helsinki-Petersburg railroad died within a year to hunger and typhoid fever. Johan Snellman of the Senate got a six million Finnish mark loan from the M.A. von Rothschild and Söhne, but it was not enough to prevent the deaths. Yet, at the time of the famine Finland exported rye, oats, butter and fish more than usually. What caused this catastrophe?
The first foreign loan was taken in 1962 from the M.A. von Rothschild and Söhne and at the time of the famine the financial partner of Finland was the House of Rothschild. The credit risk of the Finnish bond was about 1.2-1.4% from 1864-66. In 1866 it went to 2.5% climbing to 3% in 1867 and in mid 1868 it again went under 2% and lower. (Graph 2 in [1].) The risk was an addition to the interest rate of c. 3.5% for British Consols (bonds) at that time.
During the famine Finland paid more money for the loan. We cannot change the climate but if Finland had got a cheaper loan from bankers, much fewer people would have died. Finland adopted the silver standard in 1865 and because the value of mark in silver had already been tied earlier, it had to severely deflate the mark, which caused an economy slowdown. If the mark had not been tied to silver in 1865, the economy would have been better when Snellman negotiated about the emergency loan with international bankers, but adopting the silver standard probably was for sure discussed with the main financial partner. However, the higher interest rate in 1866 was actually caused by the bad harvest during 1860-1866. The Senate had hard negotiations with Carl von Rothschild for the 1867 emergency loan [1]. In 1890s the Senate changed the financial partner from the House of Rothschild to Crédit Lyonnais, founded in 1871, as its business operations were more transparent [1].
More than this is not needed of the history of this famine. The famine got so bad as a combination of climatic, general political and financial economical issues. The Finnish Senate tried to build a nation, which to some extent contributed to the problems. As the result Finland emerged as a state in 1917. International banking is competitive economy and assigning the risk of bonds is not done with considerations to human suffering. Finland got some international help during the famine, but such help could not come from bankers. As the economy of the loan recipient was bad, the interest was high. That is the competition rule.
The holocaust had some similarities, though with a much bigger death toll. It also was connected with a plan of creating a new state and a combination of issues resulted to the death of millions of people. War is military competition and always causes human suffering. One cannot expect that the rule of the game is something else than competition, especially remembering that both world wars and the creation of a new state after the second war had certain connections to economic circles.
I conclude that economic and military competition causes suffering. It is not a rule of nature as darwinism suggests. It is basically human greedy behavior and dissimilar to aggression and territorial defense in the animal world. It is about material gain. There are areas for competition, like sport, arts and science, where the results can be good, but in general competition is over-appreciated over contemplation. One should forget the thesis that the fittest should survive. While it may be so, it should not be so, and it need not be so.
References:
[1] Mika Arola, Credit risk associated to the central government of Finland and the “Russian premium”, 1863–1938, XIV International Economic History Congress 28 June 2006 Helsinki, Finland, 21 to 25 August 2006 Session 98.