Social Darwinism takes the key concepts from Darwinism itself of competition, natural selection, and improvement as an end result to sustain itself and justify both capitalism and imperialism. Even though Darwinism itself has to do with organisms over millions of years from a scientific point of view, instead of people on a generation basis, people were still able to relate key concepts to develop it. These 3 concepts one again were tied in specifically with economic process and national process to justify Capitalism and Imperialism.
Social Darwinism is able to overcome huge differences from Darwinism to adapt its theories. Darwinism states that species and organisms undergo evolution through thousands of years, and is thus a very gradual process. This is important because if a group of organisms does better than another other group for a hundred years, the other group wouldn't be labeled less naturally adept if they were then far more successful over the next several thousand years and made the first group extinct. However, if a group of people are less successful in business for a generation since capitalism was first developed, they would be labeled less naturally adept and it would be justified for them to stay in their position of a lack of power. The difference is that because Darwinism involves a longer timeframe than Social Darwinism, it shows a much more accurate conclusion of what group is more naturally select. Despite this difference on a grand scale, Social Darwinism can easily be formed from Darwinism on the particular details. Social organisms are in just as much competition with each other as living organisms themselves are. The ones with better traits for this competition are the ones that succeed in both cases. In the realm of organisms, it is the theory that because of the natural selection, the species and ecosystems become better as a whole. Social Darwinism is able to complete itself as a belief by claiming that the better peoples/people in positions of success are more naturally adept.