= Solution
\b[<Charles Darwin>'s theory was political in its sources, conditions of production, implications and uses, but <natural selection> did not logically prescribe a unique political programme.] An adequate answer should distinguish those senses. Otherwise the presence of a social analogy becomes an alleged refutation of <evolution>, or a description of differential <reproduction> becomes an unwarranted moral command.
The clearest connection is with <Thomas Robert Malthus>. In his retrospective <Autobiography of Charles Darwin>, <Charles Darwin> recalled reading the population argument in 1838 and recognizing how a struggle under limited resources could preserve favorable variations. <Thomas Robert Malthus>'s argument belonged to a debate about human subsistence and social provision, not originally to an experimentally established law of all <species>. Moving it into <natural history> was a creative transfer: if more offspring are produced than can persist, then small heritable differences can affect whose offspring contribute to later generations.<Autobiography of Charles Darwin>[Section on the formation of the theory of natural selection: recollection of reading Malthus in October 1838]{ref}<An Essay on the Principle of Population by Thomas Robert Malthus>[1798 edition, chapters I–II: contrast between population increase and subsistence]{ref}
The transfer was not simply an assertion that nature is a competitive market. Chapter III of <On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin> explains the <struggle for existence> broadly, including dependence between <organisms> and difficulty surviving physical conditions. A plant at the edge of its range can struggle against drought without fighting another plant. Chapter IV makes the explanatory connection: inherited differences that affect survival and <reproduction> change what is represented in later generations. Competition is one possible relation within the explanation, not its only mechanism.<On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin>[1859 edition, chapters III–IV: broad sense of struggle, dependence, checks on increase and preservation of useful variations]{ref}
The distinction can be stated precisely without pretending that <Charles Darwin> possessed modern <population genetics>. Suppose a heritable type initially has <relative frequency> $p$ and contributes an average of $w_A$ descendants, while the alternative contributes $w_B$. Under a simple faithful-inheritance <mathematical model>,
$$
p'=\frac{pw_A}{pw_A+(1-p)w_B},\qquad
p'-p=\frac{p(1-p)(w_A-w_B)}{pw_A+(1-p)w_B}.
$$
Thus, when the denominator is positive and $0<p<1$,
$$
\boxed{w_A>w_B\ \Longrightarrow\ p'>p.}
$$
This modern reconstruction identifies a conditional relation between <heredity>, reproductive success and changing <relative frequency>. It contains no statement that a successful type is morally superior, that it is physically strongest, or that governments ought to remove aid. Those conclusions would require additional premises that are absent from the <mathematical model>.
The production of the theory nevertheless had social conditions. <Charles Darwin>'s <natural history> drew on travel, collections, correspondence and the expertise of practical breeders. His voyage was part of a naval surveying expedition, so the geography of observation depended partly on the state's maritime resources and access to distant places. That helps explain the production of his evidence without implying that a naval expedition could dictate the eventual theory.<Autobiography of Charles Darwin>[Account of the Beagle voyage and its importance in his scientific life]{ref} <Artificial selection> in pigeons and domestic plants provided concrete evidence that inherited variation could accumulate, making an initially unfamiliar mechanism intelligible through familiar practices. A breeder's deliberate choice, however, was an analogy for some consequences of differential <reproduction>, not proof that <natural selection> has foresight or a public-policy goal. The evidence and its presentation were historically situated even when the resulting claim concerned processes outside Victorian society.<On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin>[1859 edition, chapter I: variation and selection under domestication; chapter IV: the analogy and differences between human selection and natural selection]{ref}
Human applications created more direct political stakes. <Common descent> challenged rigid accounts of human separation from other animals, while <The Descent of Man by Charles Darwin> extended evolutionary explanations to human mental, social and moral capacities. It also contained hierarchical judgments about peoples that must be recognized as historical assertions, not adopted as scientific facts. An account of universal ancestry could be used to contest fixed human divisions, while assumptions about unequal advancement could support their reconstruction in evolutionary language. The same broad theory therefore entered arguments pulling in different directions.<The Descent of Man by Charles Darwin>[1871 edition, volume I, chapters III, V and VII: social instincts, civilized societies and human races]{ref}
<Charles Darwin>'s discussion of sympathy illustrates why a simple laissez-faire label is inadequate. He worried that medicine and assistance might affect processes of selection, yet argued that suppressing sympathy would damage a noble part of human nature. This passage neither removes the troubling assumptions surrounding it nor supports the claim that he straightforwardly prescribed abandoning vulnerable people. It shows a tension within his own reasoning between evolutionary speculation and moral commitments. A historically responsible reading must retain both.<The Descent of Man by Charles Darwin>[1871 edition, volume I, chapter V: discussion of assistance to the weak and the moral consequences of checking sympathy]{ref}
Later <social Darwinism> and <eugenics> therefore require separate histories of selection and transformation of claims. Invoking <natural selection> does not establish that a policy follows from the biological theory; equally, calling an application a misuse should not hide how readily some contemporary language of hierarchy encouraged it. Historical explanation needs both the available scientific vocabulary and the institutions and interests that put it to work. A political genealogy alone does not settle whether the biological mechanism operates: that issue must also be assessed through evidence about <genetic variation>, <heredity>, <adaptation> and <reproduction>.
\b[The theory was politically situated and politically consequential, but politically underdeterminate.] Its Malthusian stimulus, its practical evidential resources and its human applications belong inside its history. The direction of a social policy cannot be read straight off the fact that inherited differences sometimes produce differential reproductive success.
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