Saturday, April 6, 2013
Capitalism and Eugenics
I thought the conversation we had on eugenics was one of the more interesting ones we had this semester. One of the social characteristics that eugenics aims to weed out is poverty. The idea behind poverty is that it is a direct result of laziness. Eugenics believes that everyone should work to contribute to society and no one should be dependent on the masses. Yet we live in a society based on capitalism and a free market. Applying eugenics to the impoverished directly violates the fundamentals of capitalism. Socially demanding that everyone in society work because it is more beneficially is extremely similar to socialism. Socialism controls the labor market in order to benefit the state because the welfare of the state supersedes that of the individual. I just think that this idea is eerily similar to what we were discussing in class.
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I agree with a lot of the points made in this post. In a capitalist society, there are designed winners and losers. Some one will make money, someone won't. It's based a lot on competition in which the weaker will fail (almost like evolution, survival of the fittest.) Eugenics in a "capitalistic" society would eliminate the poverty, thus ending capitalism. But on the other hand, since when has the US ever been truly capitalist? Government and big business have always intertwined.
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