History does not repeat but it does rimes.... like a christmas carol
In the western world, by the middle of the nineteenth century, a crude social Darwinism achieved great influence, especially in Great Britain. The new doctrine, associated with the name of Herbert Spencer was Social Darwinism. In economic life, as in biological development, the over-riding rule was survival of the fittest. That phrase — “survival of the fittest” — came, in fact, not from Charles Darwin but from Spencer, and expressed his view of economic life. The elimination of the poor is nature’s way of improving the race. The weak and unfortunate being extruded, the quality of the human family is thus strengthened."
A large part of the "elite" was (easily) convinced but Dickens wanted to give it a try. He was already a popular and successful novelist, a self-made man, who had, as a child, experienced abject poverty he escaped thanks to his immense talent . He could write beautifully and poignantly. "A Christmas Carol" was the most successful book of the 1843 holiday season. By Christmas it sold six thousand copies and it continued to be popular into the new year. Karl Marx himself paid tribute to Dickens and his fellow novelists’ "the present splendid brotherhood of fiction-writers in England, whose graphic and eloquent pages have issued to the world more political and social truths than have been uttered by all the professional politicians, publicists and moralists put together"