The Left and Eugenics

A blogger I enjoy greatly is that brainy swot Tim Worstall .He is something of a Libertarian as I understand it but also a member of UKIP ?( I think), an intriguing if unlikely serving suggestion .Today he touched on Left wing enthusiasm for eugenics, in the context of this terrifying tale of Social worker fascism .This is what I had to say.....
The character of interest in Eugenics in Britain certainly has a left wing slant .There can be few more influential reports than the Beveridge report for example
Years earlier Beveridge had written a paper called "The Problem of the Unemployed," with a solution. Men who can't take their place in industry should be recognized as unemployable, and should be maintained as "the acknowl-edged dependents of the State." But the price for government support was "complete and permanent loss of all citizen rights including not only the franchise but civil freedom and fatherhood."
This was no longer explicit by the time of the time of the report but it does give a glimpse at the arrogant cast of mind required for the ordering of people according to scientific nostrums . It was all very modern once the consideration of population shows that the old assumptions about the rights of elites were still present
The enthusiasm of the Fabian society for eugenics is well documented and they were highly influential in real Policy that had a decided effect in Australia .
Marxism remember pretended to be a scientific view of society and believing themselves scientific and modern , the left have always been much more gripped by the scientific orthodoxies of the time . Eugenic thought was one such orthodoxy , Environmentalism is a contemporary example . Left wing Political intellectuals have also always been against spiritual or religious understanding of man and his conditions believing them to be tricks ( Here they are often in direct conflict with left wing voters ) . This is why abortion for them is an easy matter , the foetus , after all , is incapable of life alone , or rational thought , why not kill it , and then why not kill some more inconvenient people or their unborn children ,its so rational. so scientific .


Of one thing we can be sure , ( because Polly Toynbee told us ) The Nordic Socilaists could not possibly have introduced sterilisation as actual policy could they .... could they ?