The problem has always been that the phrase 'survival of the fittest' is pretty much an empty tautology because the definition of 'fittest' simply means 'those who survive'. What the social Darwinists like Spencer meant by 'fittest' was 'the most aggressive and dominant'. But even those terms have nuance---that's why we have terms like 'passive-aggressive' and interpersonal strategies where dominance results from things like political whisper campaigns instead of bare-knuckle brawling.
The theoreticians of biology have understood this from the beginning. I understand that the anarchist thinker Prince Kropotkin wrote a respected paper in the field where he showed that many biological organisms use cooperation and mutual help as a survival strategy.
The problem has always been that the phrase 'survival of the fittest' is pretty much an empty tautology because the definition of 'fittest' simply means 'those who survive'. What the social Darwinists like Spencer meant by 'fittest' was 'the most aggressive and dominant'. But even those terms have nuance---that's why we have terms like 'passive-aggressive' and interpersonal strategies where dominance results from things like political whisper campaigns instead of bare-knuckle brawling.
The theoreticians of biology have understood this from the beginning. I understand that the anarchist thinker Prince Kropotkin wrote a respected paper in the field where he showed that many biological organisms use cooperation and mutual help as a survival strategy.