Darwinism displaced polygenism by translating might-right into upstart class language

Evidence

Lasting as the influence of polygenism on English race-thinking proved to be in the long run, in the nineteenth century it was soon to be beaten in the field of public opinion by another doctrine. This doctrine also started from the principle of inheritance but added to it the political principle of the nineteenth century, progress, whence it arrived at the opposite but far more convincing conclusion that man is related not only to man but to animal life, that the existence of lower races shows clearly that gradual differences alone separate man and beast and that a powerful struggle for existence dominates all living things. Darwinism was especially strengthened by the fact that it followed the path of the old might-right doctrine. But while this doctrine, when used exclusively by aristocrats, had spoken the proud language of conquest, it was now translated into the rather bitter language of people who had known the struggle for daily bread and fought their way to the relative security of upstarts. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 472

Categorization

• XREF: Class-based translation of the might-right doctrine connects to later readings on how racial ideology serves rising bourgeois and colonial interests. — connects to: Darwinism prepared but did not directly cause racial nativism — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 787