‘We as a people’: Eugenics and Capitalism

Thomas C. Leonard argues that during the period 1880-1917, the United States transformed into an ‘industrial… world power.’[1] This led to a reshaping of ‘American political economy from a… public discourse’ into a ‘scientific practice—economics,’[2] or more specifically, industrial capitalist economics. Towards the end of this period, Charles Davenport published Heredity in Relation to Eugenics (1911), advocating ‘the science of the improvement of the human race by better breeding’ and controlling ‘the propagation of the mentally incompetent.’[3] Leonard notes that many of ‘the founders of American economics’ held views similar to Davenport, and this is no coincidence. [4] The temporal proximity between the refinement of capitalist economics and the birth of eugenics is not correlation, but causation— eugenics is capitalism applied to human biology.

Michel Foucault, in Society Must be Defended coined the term biopolitics which encapsulates the eugenic worldview. Biopolitics ‘deals… with the population as a political problem,’[5] seeking to strengthen its body through the eradication of weaker parts: “The more inferior species die out… the fewer degenerates there will be in the species as a whole, and the more I— as species rather than individual— can live, the stronger I will be.”[6] Indeed, Davenport, in removing hereditary traits conducive to ‘crime, disease and degeneracy’[7] from the gene pool, hoped to improve the American species, to make it live more. In short, eugenics seeks to solve the biopolitical problem by maximising life.

Alternatively, for Marx, ‘the chief end and aim’ of capitalism is ‘the production of surplus-value.’[8] Essential to this production is ‘labour-power,’ as it ‘not only reproduces its own value but produces value over and above it.’[9] Marx terms labour expended in the reproduction of its own value ‘necessary labour’ and anything in excess ‘surplus labour.’[10] Accordingly, surplus value is ‘nothing but materialised, surplus labour.’[11] Since labour is ‘the manifestation of [the] power residing in [man],’ man himself can be ‘viewed as the impersonation of labour-power,’ and— more importantly— of potential surplus value, capitalism’s ‘chief end.’[12]

Reflecting on Davenport’s remark that ‘the human babies born each year constitute the world’s most valuable crop,’[13] it becomes apparent that capitalism inflects eugenic thinking. Marx employs a pertinent simile: ‘vampire-like [capital] only lives by sucking living labour… absorb[ing] the greatest possible amount of surplus-labour.’[14] If eugenics seeks to effectively cultivate the human crop, capitalism functions by a vampiric absorption of its yield: the potential surplus-value embodied by labourers. Thus, eugenics aims to solve both the political and economic population problem simultaneously—it is both biopolitical and bioeconomic. As such, in bioeconomic terms, the eugenic solution reads: the more unprofitable species die out, the more I— as species rather than individual— can profit, the greater surplus value I will have.[15]

For Davenport, the unprofitable portions of the population can be split into two categories: those whose deficiencies could be remedied by ‘better breeding,’ and those so deficient that their propagation must be controlled by the state.[16] Those of the former category presented problems regarding labour-time. Davenport argued that ‘heredity… plays a part’ in poverty, as ‘the man of strong stock will not suffer from prolonged disease,’ and because poverty ‘means relative inefficiency and… mental inferiority.’[17] Prolonged disease necessitates greater periods of rest to allow the labourer, in Marx’s terms, ‘to work with the same normal amount of force,’ every day.[18] This problematises the capitalist desire to ‘make the working-day as long as possible,’ in order to maximise surplus labour time.[19] Meanwhile, inefficiency extends the duration of necessary labour time (as it takes longer to reproduce labour costs), likewise reducing surplus labour time. As such, for Davenport, hereditarily deficient people could not be ‘fully effective in rendering productive… the unparalleled natural resources of the country.’[20] Consequently, the breeding of strong, mentally superior labourers is a paramount objective of capitalist eugenics.

Concerning the latter category, Davenport writes that ‘it is a reproach to our intelligence that we as a people… should have to support’ so many ‘insane, feeble-minded, epileptic, blind and deaf,’ people, ‘prisoners’ and ‘paupers at a cost of over 100 million dollars per year.’[21] He addresses the reality— horrifying to the capitalist— that some people cannot labour and instead occupy state-funded institutions. His tendency to see a ‘multiplicity of men’[22] rather than individuals is palpable in the syntactic parallels with Foucault, ‘we as a people’ echoing the latter’s ‘I— as species…’[23] Bioeconomically, ‘non-productive’[24] people are deficit value, a cost of labour without the necessary means to reproduce it and an intolerable drain on the surplus value of the American species. For this reason, Davenport suggests sterilising ‘every feeble-minded, epileptic, insane or criminalistic person,’ in order to bring about ‘an enormous reduction of the population of our institutions,’[25] and ‘in 1911,’— the same year as Heredity’s publication— ‘Governor Woodrow Wilson signed New Jersey’s forcible sterilization legislation, which targeted “the hopelessly defective and criminal classes.”’[26]

To conclude, Davenport writes that ‘the practical question in eugenics is this: What can be done to reduce the frequency of the undesirable… traits which are so large a burden to our population?’[27] The practical question of capitalism is this: what can be done to reduce the labour costs and necessary labour time which are so large a burden to our surplus value? What capitalism asks of economics, eugenics asks of biology. Eugenics is not simply a symptom of capitalism; it is the logical end to its chain of reasoning.

Endnotes

[1] Thomas C. Leonard, Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics & American Economics in the Progressive Era (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), ix.

[2] Leonard, Illiberal Reformers, ix.

[3] Davenport, Heredity, 1, 4.

[4] Leonard, Illiberal Reformers, xiii

[5] Michel Foucault, "Society Must Be Defended": Lectures at the Collège De France, 1975-76, eds. Mauro Bertani and Alessandro Fontana, trans. David Macey ( New York: Picador, 1997), 245.

[6] Foucault, Society, 255, [emphasis is my own].

[7] Davenport, Heredity, 4.

[8] Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Vol. 1 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1887), https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/index.htm.

[9] Marx, Capital.

[10] Marx, Capital.

[11] Marx, Capital.

[12] Marx, Capital.

[13] Davenport, Heredity, 2, [emphasis is my own].

[14] Marx, Capital.

[15] [Phrasing borrowed from] Foucault, Society, 255.

[16] Davenport, Heredity, 1, 4.

[17] Davenport, Heredity, 80.

[18] Marx, Capital.

[19] Marx, Capital.

[20] Davenport, Heredity, 1, 3.

[21] Davenport, Heredity, 4.

[22] Foucault, Society, 242.

[23] Foucault, Society, 255.

[24] Davenport, Heredity, 3.

[25] Davenport, Heredity, 256.

[26] Paul Lombardo (2003) “Taking Eugenics Seriously: Three Generations of ??? Are

Enough.” Florida State University Law Review 30(2): 191–219, p. 209.  Quoted in Leonard, Illiberal Reformers p. 110.

[27] Davenport, Heredity, 255- 256.

Bibliography

Davenport, Charles Benedict. Heredity in Relation to Eugenics. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1911.

Foucault, Michel. "Society Must Be Defended": Lectures at the Collège De France, 1975-76. Edited by Mauro Bertani and Alessandro Fontana. Translated by David Macey. New York: Picador, 1997.

Leonard, Thomas C. Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics & American Economics in the Progressive Era. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017.

Marx, Karl. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Vol. 1. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1887. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/index.htm.