Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. & Biomed. Sci. 39 (2008) 270 272
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Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. & Biomed. Sci.
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Eugenics, sex and the state: an afterword
Richard Overy
School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Amory Building, Rennes Drive, Exeter EX4 4RJ, UK
When citing this paper, please use the full journal title Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Perhaps the most welcome feature of the papers chosen for this capable of rational calculation that fewer births would make more
collection is their wide geographical and chronological span. For sense; what limited their rationality compared with that of secure
too long the study of eugenic theory and practical eugenic policy middle class households were social circumstances, poor education
has been dominated by the experience of the Third Reich, with and the relentless pressure of the male. Marie Stopes recorded
American and Swedish sterilisation policy appended as a reminder hundreds of cases of women from poor backgrounds who desper-
that, different though the circumstances were in both states, severe ately wanted birth control information and equipment rather than
medical intervention was not just the prerogative of the Germans. suffer the debilitating cycle of repeated births.1 Moreover, eugenic
Eugenic discourses were genuinely international, as the large gath- opinion in Britain, for example, regarded the limitation of middle
ering of experts at the major International Eugenics Congresses in class family size as essentially selfish rather than rational; social util-
the early twentieth century testifies. It is also important to recall ity in this case dictated the need for larger families from those who
that almost none of those present at the Congresses was there as could afford them.2
a state representative or an active agent of state power, any more Social utility is itself an elastic, historically rooted concept. It is
than at a congress of physicists or astronomers. What linked the also one that is constructed in layers of official thinking, public dis-
scientists, welfare officials and doctors interested in eugenics with cussion and private preference. What seems evident from many of
the state as such was the clear recognition that in the end eugenic the papers in this collection is the extent to which popular ideas of
policy, if it was to go beyond the limits of propaganda and educa- social utility of what benefited and what penalised social devel-
tion, needed the state to coerce in some form or other. As the cases opment or material progress or the survival of  Western civilisa-
described here indicate, the state was not usually neutral, and pol- tion  played a central part in sustaining and communicating
iticians and state officials could certainly share a eugenic outlook, eugenic ideas. These were discourses, as Alison Sinclair shows,
but the relationship between eugenic lobby groups, state institu- where literary tropes were just as likely as government medical
tions and government was complex, unstable and unpredictable. propaganda to construct popular responses to eugenic issues. The
The shift away from the focus on the German experience also case of Switzerland explored by Gerodetti and Véronique Mottier
makes it possible to see eugenics in its many national guises as a also demonstrates that public initiative and pressure, and public
particular kind of social discourse in which social utility rather anxieties, were important agents in creating eugenic opportunities.
than race preservation played the more important part. Diane Paul These examples suggest that issues of eugenics or sexual mores
has shown that John Stuart Mill had what could be described as a were played out at levels below or beside the political and in are-
 eugenic concern with controlling procreation, but his interest was nas in which the state had no particular place. This approach to
predominantly based on ideas of utility, both for the individuals eugenics as something understood and acted on from below rather
concerned and for the wider community. It might be possible to than from above has helped to modify the original state-centred
demonstrate, as Natalia Gerodetti has argued, that eugenic dis- view, for example, of German eugenic policy. In the German case
course is directly linked with Enlightenment  rationality  that ra- parents who tried to conceal their physically or mentally disabled
tional subjects can control their reproduction more effectively but child risked not only the interference of health officials but their
the arguments for limiting family size were based on social utility neighbours sense of civic  responsibility in denouncing them.
rather than rationality. It would be difficult to make out a case that The role of popular pressure for eugenic reform or  racial cleans-
mothers from disadvantaged social backgrounds were not equally ing could also have paradoxical outcomes. It is worth comparing,
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1
London, Wellcome Library, Contemporary Medical Archives Centre (CMAC), SA/EUG/K.1, Stopes (1930).
2
See, for example, Blacker (1938); London School of Economics, Carr Saunders papers, B/3/4, Cambridge University Democratic Front  Report of the Discussion Group on
Population [n.d. but 1937], pp. 1 5.
1369-8486/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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R. Overy / Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. & Biomed. Sci. 39 (2008) 270 272 271
for example, the role of public pressure in Britain and Germany in It is unthinkable that  hybrid offspring would have suffered the
the debate on sterilisation in the early 1930s. British observers of same fate.
German conditions found that there was not a great deal of popular In many respects the discussion of eugenics, sex and the state
demand for sterilisation, but enough pressure from doctors, scien- sidesteps the issue of the social function of science, for career sci-
tists and officials to get a sterilisation bill drafted in 1932. In Britain entists and scientific institutions were together the driving force
it is possible to chart a rising demand for sterilisation legislation behind the development of eugenic projects, while key scientists
from the late 1920s promoted not just by the members of the small succeeded in shaping the debates which the public then engaged
Eugenics Society, but by a wide range of other public figures and, with. More research needs to be done on why science was widely
more significantly, the willingness of the wider public to buy the regarded as supremely rational and disinterested and why science
books and attend the lectures that promoted the idea. By 1931 a was popularly ascribed so much power to act impartially to impose
sterilisation private member s bill was before Parliament. Although modern order on old-fashioned chaos. Scientists, of course, regu-
it failed, the government set up an enquiry and in 1934 the Brock larly made these claims themselves. The British zoologist Julian
Committee recommended a form of limited voluntary sterilisation. Huxley, for example, was an important advocate of sterilisation
This, too, failed, though, as one senior BMA official observed  public and eugenic reform in the 1930s and 1940s which he regarded as
sentiment had  generally expected legalization.3 In Germany, on essential for the survival of the race and to remove the threat of
the other hand, the Hitler government set about drafting a compre- the long-term physical and mental debilitation or social degenera-
hensive compulsory sterilisation law which was on the statute book tion of the population. But Huxley also insisted that his science was
in January 1934. The role of the state was, in this case, the factor that neutral on the social or moral issues, a contention that a glance at
made the difference. The British government refused to be pushed by any of Huxley s many public pronouncements shows to be entirely
public opinion and hesitated to act where scientific evidence was specious (it is also worth observing that his brother Aldous in Brave
inconclusive; the German government began a programme of edu- new world, published at the height of the sterilisation campaign in
cating the German public into acceptance of eugenic intervention, Britain in 1932, had no such illusions about the neutrality of sci-
assuming that the scientific evidence was sufficiently unambiguous ence).6 The critics of eugenic programmes in Britain and elsewhere
(Weindling, 1989; Blacker, 1933 1934).4 The relationship between refused to accept the claims to neutrality and condemned eugenics
state and public discourse depended on a wide variety of circum- as class-based; the closure of Soviet programmes of genetic research
stances, but public pressure for eugenic reform was never sufficient in the 1930s was justified by the regime on the grounds that genetic
on its own. theory was manipulated by science to suggest permanent hereditary
A key element in the popular construction of eugenic discourse differences between classes (Graham, 1977). Lancelot Hogben, Pro-
is identified by Mottier in the concept of  otherisation . The argu- fessor of Social Biology at the London School of Economics in the
ment that Swiss anxieties about the  unfit derived from the ab- 1930s, privately argued that the Eugenics Society was the British
sence of a homogeneous identity could be extended to other variety of Fascism.7 Yet in Germany the role assigned to science in
cases. Uncertainty about the terms of social inclusion or national legitimating the eugenic project was essential. Only qualified medi-
identity is commonly expressed in terms of the social exclusion cal personnel could turn on the gas and inspect the bodies in the first
of groups or races identified as different, as Freud (1961, pp. 114 mass exterminations of the physically and mentally disabled. The
115) famously argued in the 1920s. It is striking that the obsession  cleansing of the race was presented as a rational, scientific
with racial characteristics and the  ideal man in Germany was programme which transcended normative morality in the name of
based not only on wide fears about the national or racial future, social efficiency.
but on the need to find some element that might unite a majority The second issue that emerges from these papers is the extent
of Germans otherwise divided by political allegiance and social to which science, and particularly the biological sciences, became
class. In Fascist Italy too, race laws were finally promulgated in a key reference point in the construction of collectivist social
1938, perhaps to meet the regime s need to find ways of reinforcing theory in the early twentieth century. Eugenics was presented as
a specific sense of Italian racial identity and separateness, but also a social obligation, not merely a useful tool of social engineering.
to challenge the insecurities prompted by German claims to be the The central notion behind eugenics is the priority of the health of
master race. In the weekly magazine Defence of the Race [La Difesa the population over the interests of the individual. Indeed the
della Razza] could be found pictures of smiling blond Italian men extension of organic metaphors to society, so popular from the
and women with blue eyes alongside the ludicrous claim that these 1870s up to the inter-war years, was a useful linguistic tool to dis-
were the classic physical characteristics of the Italian people.5 guise the shift from absolute individualism to social theories which
Some instances of eugenic intervention derived from the exis- placed individual interests below those of the collective racial or
tence of unstable or insecure identities in the majority population social body.8 Science certainly played a part in sustaining these
which could only be transfigured by penalising an identifiable ra- metaphors, and indeed the hereditarian revolution after 1900
cial threat. In Germany the so-called  Rhineland bastards , offspring encouraged the view that society should root out or contain the in-
of relations between German women and black French soldiers in fected genetic substance before it spread to all the healthy tissues. If
the early 1920s, were compulsorily sterilised in the mid-1930s, the individuals who carried this infection could also be defined as
even though their case was not covered by the existing eugenic anti-social or in some sense  unfit then the denial of the right to
legislation (Weindling, 1989; Lusane, 2002). This pattern of exclu- marry or procreate could more easily be sanctioned by social neces-
sion/inclusion, however, operated differently in Britain, where a sity. This issue was linked in ambiguous ways with the movement
sense of national, or imperial identity was more historically rooted. for sexual reform, since sexual emancipation also threatened to limit
3
London, British Medical Association archives, B/239/1/2, Mental Deficiency Committee agenda and minutes, 20 November 1931, p. 22.
4
For a useful study of sterilisation in practice see Kaminsky (1995).
5
Landra (1938a,b).
6
CMAC, SA/EUG/C.185, draft article by Julian Huxley,  What are we to do with our mental defectives? is a good example. See also idem (1936 1937). On Aldous Huxley see the
comments by Cyril Joad (1935), who cited Aldous Huxley s comment that  science is no truer than common sense or lunacy .
7
Cambridge, University Library, Bernal papers, ADD 8287 Box 83, letter from Hogben to Bernal, 21 January 1936. See too Hogben s views on the debate (Hogben, 1931, pp. 209
214).
8
See the excellent study by Gregory Moore (2002). See also the essays in Maasen et al. (1995).
272 R. Overy / Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. & Biomed. Sci. 39 (2008) 270 272
the family size of those regarded as the best endowed in the popu- their parts need to be recorded too in the complex interplay be-
lation while there were fears it might also encourage the very sexual tween state, science and peoples.
profligacy among the  less fit that eugenists were committed to
eradicate. The implicit collectivism of eugenic reform was difficult References
to reconcile with individual sexual freedom, but in the long run it
Blacker, C. P. (1933 1934). Eugenics in Germany. Eugenics Review, 25, 157 159.
is the latter that has prevailed.
Blacker, C. P. (1938). Problems of population and birth control in Great Britain.
One final consideration is prompted by these papers. It is clearly
Journal of Contraception, 3, 27 29.
important that eugenics, or, as Lesley Hall has rightly stressed, the Freud, S. (1961). Civilization and its discontents. In idem, The standard edition of the
complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. XXI (pp. 64 145). London:
various strands of eugenic discourse should be understood not just
Hogarth.
as a precursor to coercive medical intervention but also as part of a
Graham, L. R. (1977). Science and values: The Eugenics Movement in Germany and
broader movement for better public health, improved health edu- Russia in the 1920s. American Historical Review, 82, 1139 1143.
Hogben, L. T. (1931). Genetic principles in medicine and social science. London:
cation, universal access to welfare provision and an end to sexual
Williams & Norgate.
restriction. Eugenics declined in popularity among the wider public
Huxley, J. (1936 1937). Eugenics and society. The Eugenics Review, 28, 30 31.
after 1945, following the revelations from wartime Germany. In his
Huxley, J. (1970). Memories. London: Allen & Unwin.
Joad, C. (1935). The challenge to reason. The Rationalist Annual, 56 57.
memoirs, written in the late 1960s, Julian Huxley (1970) failed to
Kaminsky. (1995). Zwangssterilisation und  Euthanasie im Rheinland. Cologne:
mention the Eugenics Society or his own role in proselytising its
Rheinland-Verlag.
causes in the 1930s, and it is not difficult to understand why.
Landra, G. (1938a). Caratteri fisici della razza italiana. La Difesa della Razza, 5
September, 9 12.
However, he was still arguing a eugenic case in scientific circles
Landra, G. (1938b). Concetti del razzismo italiano. La Difesa della Razza, 20 August,
in the 1960s. The papers presented here show the variety of entry
9 10.
points for those who engaged with eugenic concerns, some from
Lusane, C. (2002). Hitler s black victims. New York & London: Routledge.
Utopian aspirations for the ideal modern community (left or right), Maasen, S., Mendelsohn, E., & Weingart, P. (Eds.). (1995). Biology as society, society as
biology: Metaphors. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.
others from a genuine desire to ameliorate debilitating social con-
Moore, G. (2002). Nietzsche, biology and metaphor. Cambridge: Cambridge
ditions and to remove cultural taboos, still others intent on ensur-
University Press.
ing that human evolution could be scientifically monitored and Stopes, M. (1930). The mothers clinic for birth control. In N. Haire (Ed.), Sexual Reform
Congress: London 8 14. ix. 1929. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner.
scientifically ordered. Some of these concerns were driven by the
Weindling, P. (1989). Health, race and German politics between national unification
state, some by public bodies, some by professionals and some by
and Nazism 1870 1945 (pp. 522 527). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
the wider public. There were many actors outside the regular cast;