Darwinism fused inherited hierarchy with a doctrine of progress

Evidence

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. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 472

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains how Darwinism as a political doctrine arrived at its conclusion by adding the principle of progress to the inheritance principle.
• XREF: connects to: Property inheritance structures shape the Oedipus complex’s strength. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 339; The ideology of scientific progress legitimated class hierarchy rather than lifting the poor — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 712; Darwin’s evolution carried Christian linear filiation into natural universal History — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 292