Darwinism was politically neutral and initially served anti-colonial and pacifist causes

Evidence

In the seventies and eighties of the last century, Darwinism was still almost exclusively in the hands of the utilitarian anti-colonial party in England. And the first philosopher of evolution, Herbert Spencer, who treated sociology as part of biology, believed natural selection to benefit the evolution of mankind and to result in everlasting peace. For political discussion, Darwinism offered two important concepts: the struggle for existence with optimistic assertion of the necessary and automatic “survival of the fittest,” and the indefinite possibilities which seemed to lie in the evolution of man out of animal life and which started the new “science” of eugenics. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 473

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the field’s understanding that scientific doctrines are ideologically multivalent until captured by specific political projects — parallels how race-thinking appropriated sciences of inheritance. — connects to: Darwinism prepared but did not directly cause racial nativism — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 787
• DEFINE: Establishes the two usable political concepts Darwinism offered — survival of the fittest and eugenics — as a toolkit premise.