social Darwinism

n. The belief that social position reflects one's biological fitness and that societies evolve through the survival of the fittest and are hampered by the survival of those who are not successful within the context of the society. This point of view was rejected by Charles Darwin but gained widespread popularity in Great Britain and the United States and was used to justify economic deprivation of the poor, including starving them to death, and unbridled accumulation of wealth by those able to exploit the laissez-faire economic system of the time. It was also later used as the theoretical basis for the eugenics movements in the United States, Great Britain, and Nazi Germany, in which sterilization of those deemed by the wealthy and powerful including doctors to be unfit members of society was considered a good thing.