( Got a screen shot. It'll be good to look at after I've been seen to...)

@Jag, interesting post as usual. My understanding is that 'social Darwinist' means people applied Darwinian ideas of the survival of the fittest to cultures, this often happening along side more pseudo-biological Darwinism applied to what were termed 'races'. My understanding/belief is that the term 'race' has no sensible medical or biological function. For, me variation in hair colour (one or two genes) doesn't affect this. We are creatures of culture, debate the nature nurture mix but there you go.

The social Darwinist view would be at odds with Marxism which saw history as class struggle. It's a key emotive word for Harker I think, a bit like 'bourgeois' and tending to get annoying (but who am I to talk).

I really don't know much about Sharp apart from a few articles, Wiki and his own work. A lot of Victorians called themselves Socialists who were more like what we would call liberal today, certainly not clause 4 types. Maybe Sharp did a lot of philanthropy? I think he gave one of his informants a concertina (but does that pollute his results??)

There are difficult decisions relating to how far we let knowledge that some of our heroes believed and did things we now see as pernicious bother us. I feel racism/racialism is possibly worth pointing out and challenging.

I think some of Sharp's ideas are a little absurd. And a lot of them do sound like romantic imagination, as at one point Sharp himself more or less concedes.

Have a nice day all. May or may not see you later.