Darwin: Progress as Productivity?

In Chapter 5 of The Descent of Man, Darwin had some very interesting things to say about his view on the progress of civilizations:
(link to above)

"It is, however, very difficult to form any judgment why one particular tribe and not another has been successful and has risen in the scale of civilisation. Many savages are in the same condition as when first discovered several centuries ago. As Mr. Bagehot has remarked, we are apt to look at the progress as normal in human society; but history refutes this. The ancients did not even entertain the idea, nor do the Oriental nations at the present day. According to another high authority, Sir Henry Maine, "The greatest part of mankind has never shewn a particle of desire that its civil institutions should be improved."* Progress seems to depend on many concurrent favourable conditions, far too complex to be followed out. But it has often been remarked, that a cool climate, from leading to industry and to the various arts, has been highly favourable thereto. The Esquimaux, pressed by hard necessity, have succeeded in many ingenious inventions, but their climate has been too severe for continued progress. Nomadic habits, whether over wide plains, or through the dense forests of the tropics, or along the shores of the sea, have in every case been highly detrimental. Whilst observing the barbarous inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, it struck me that the possession of some property, a fixed abode, and the union of many families under a chief, were the indispensable requisites for civilisation."

What does Darwin mean exactly by ‘progress’ and ‘civilization’. He seems to see ‘savages’ as less civilized because of their lack of contribution to the ‘arts’ or ‘sciences’. English society is, in Darwin’s eyes, the highest level of superiority and progress because of what it has achieved by greater industry and production.

If human progression is based on natural selection: if “it is the selection of the slightly better-endowed and the elimination of the slightly less well-endowed individuals, and not the preservation of strongly-marked and rare anomalies, that leads to the advancement of a species”, then why is this natural selection not effective in the colder climate of the ‘Eskimo’? In Darwin’s view, natural selection has allowed the Eskimo ‘ingenious inventions’ but since the climate held back their ‘industry’, they are considered low on the ‘scale of civilization. Here, Eskimos and other ‘savages’ have not achieved ‘civilization’ because of their lack of industry and property. Progress does not seem to be judged on moral terms or even ‘survival of the fittest’ but on the measured productivity of a particular race.

As A.N. Wilson points out in "God's Funeral", Darwin's 'best endowed' seem to be the 'most ruthless', it is definitely not the meek that shall inherit the earth! Wilson asks "Was this Darwin the naturalist speaking?" Or Darwin the grandson of one of the most famous and successful of capitalists, Josiah Wedgewood - inventor, social climber, aesthete, potter, businessman of genius, who did not allow the loss of a leg in early life to prevent his magnificent, exuberant, energetic rise through society." (emphasis chosen by blog author)

It is an interesting question that perhaps can never be answered but Wilson effectively draws a parallel through Darwin's Natural Selection and the interests of Capitalism.

Wilson, A.N. God's Funeral: A Biography of Faith and Doubt in Western Civilization Ballantine Publishing Group, New York, 1999.