Herbert Spencer and Karl Marx

Spencer

Marx

Herbert Spencer is commonly misunderstood, and Karl Marx had several things wrong about his socialist ideas. First, Herbert Spencer. Herbert Spencer was born on April 20th, 1820, and developed the idea of survival of the fittest. In survival of the fittest, the idea is basically that if two wolves existed, one with teeth and one without, the wolf without teeth would starve and die while the other would survive and pass on its traits to the following generations of wolves, all of which would have teeth. His ideas are commonly thought of as a stepping stool for the idea of Social Darwinism, which Herbert Spencer would have been appalled at. The ideas were manipulated by Richard Hofstadter, a Socialist and a Progressive. He wrote one of the most dishonest history books of all time, Social Darwinism in American Thought 1860-1915. The book completely made up Social Darwinism and said that Herbert Spencer and other Classical Liberals, Libertarians, and Paleo-Conservatives came up with it, even though Social Darwinism is exactly opposite to everything they ever said.

Now for Karl Marx. Marx was born on May 5th, 1818, and lived until 1883. He believed in socialism, so let's point out the two main problems with Socialism. First, socialism would destroy independent thinking, which would kill off all religion. Secondly, it could quite easily lead to communism, where everyone serves under a dictatorship. The idea of communism might sound great, with everything ideally being distributed evenly, but it usually results in everyone being dirt poor with the exception of military leaders and politicians, which is why Karl Marx's ideas were rejected.