The End of History and the Last Man

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The End of History and the Last Man is a 1992 book by Francis Fukuyama, expanding on his 1989 essay "The End of History?", published in the international affairs journal The National Interest. In the book, Fukuyama argues the controversial thesis that the end of the Cold War signals the end of the progression of human history:

"What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government." (quoted from "The End of History?", 1989)

This thesis conflicts most particularly with Karl Marx's philosophy of history: historical materialism. Marx's version of the "end of history" is a time when class distinctions no longer exist, believing them to be the cause of the evolution of "all hitherto existing society." He called this state of classlessness inevitable (though he did not venture to guess how long it would take for it to come about), and named it communism. Fukuyama's thesis, coming at the end of the Cold War, is an obvious reference to Marx's historical dialectic. However, Fukuyama reverts to the work of Marx's original source, Hegel (in particular the interpretation of Hegel by the French thinker Alexandre Kojève). Fukuyama seems to have been pointed in Kojève's direction by the prominent Straussian political philosopher Allan Bloom, who taught Fukuyama.

[edit] Fukuyama's thesis

Fukuyama's thesis consists of three main elements.^[1]

• First, there is an empirical argument. Fukuyama points out that since the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, democracy, which started off as being merely one amongst many systems of government, has grown until nowadays the majority of governments in the world are termed "democratic". He also points out that democracy's main intellectual alternatives (which he takes to be various forms of dictatorship) have become discredited.

• Second, there is a philosophical argument, taken from Hegel. Very briefly, Fukuyama sees history as consisting of the dialectic between two classes: the Master and the Slave. Ultimately, this thesis (Master) and antithesis (Slave) must meet in a synthesis, in which both manage to live in peace together. This can only happen in a democracy.

• Finally Fukuyama also argues that for a variety of reasons radical socialism (or communism) is likely to be incompatible with modern representative democracy. Therefore, in the future, democracies are overwhelmingly likely to contain markets of some sort, and most are likely to be capitalist or social democratic.

[edit] Misinterpretations

Since the French Revolution, according to Fukuyama, democracy has repeatedly proven to be a fundamentally better system (ethically, politically, economically) than any of the alternatives.

The most basic (and prevalent) error in discussing Fukuyama's work is to confuse 'history' with 'events'. Fukuyama does not claim at any point that events will stop happening in the future. What he is claiming is that all that will happen in the future (even if totalitarianism returns) is that democracy will become more and more prevalent in the long term, although it may have 'temporary' setbacks (which may, of course, last for centuries).

[edit] Arguments in favor of Fukuyama's thesis

This graph shows the number of nations in the different categories given by Freedom House in their survey Freedom in the World for the period for which there are surveys, 1972-2005. Nations are categorised as "Free", "Partly Free", and "Not Free". Freedom House considers "Free" nations to be liberal democracies.

• Empirical evidence has been used to support the theory. Freedom House argues that there was not a single liberal democracy with universal suffrage in the world in 1900, but that today 120 (62%) of the world's 192 nations are such democracies. They count 25 (19%) nations with 'restricted democratic practices' in 1900 and 16 (8%) today. They counted 19 (14%) constitutional monarchies in 1900, where a constitution limited the powers of the monarch, and with some power devolved to elected legislatures, and none today. Other nations had, and have, various forms of non-democratic rule.[3]
• The democratic peace theory argues that there is statistical evidence that democracy decreases systematic violence such as external and internal wars and conflicts. This seems compatible with Fukuyama's theory, but hardly with the increasing class conflicts that Marx predicted.
• The end of the Cold War and the subsequent increase in the number of liberal democratic states were accompanied by a sudden and dramatic decline in total warfare, interstate wars, ethnic wars, revolutionary wars, and the number of refugees and displaced persons [4].

[edit] Criticisms of Fukuyama's thesis

There have been many criticisms of the "end of history" thesis. Some of these include:

• Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has argued against "the end of history", stating the future lies in so-called Chavismo. He argued his case in his September 2006 address to the United Nations General Assembly.^[2] As recently as August 2006, Fukuyama has written in response to the Chavez argument. ^[3]

• Some critics state that Islamic Fundamentalism (as represented by Osama Bin Laden for example) stands in the same relation to 21st century democracy as, for example, Stalinism and Fascism did in the 20th century (i.e. as a fundamental intellectual alternative). Fukuyama discusses this briefly in The End of History. He argues that Islam is not an Imperialist force like Stalinism and Fascism: i.e. that it has little intellectual or emotional appeal outside the Islamic 'heartlands'. Moreover, when Islamic states have actually been created (for example Afghanistan), they were easily defeated militarily by the powerful democracies. Fukuyama points to the economic and political difficulties that Iran and Saudi Arabia are facing, and argues that such states are fundamentally unstable: either they will become democracies with a Muslim society (like Turkey) or they will simply disintegrate.

• Marxism is another "end of history" philosophy. Therefore Marxists like Perry Anderson have been amongst Fukuyama's fiercest critics. Apart from pointing out some obvious facts (that capitalist democracies are still riven with poverty, racial tension etc.), Marxists also reject Fukuyama's reliance on Hegel. According to them, Hegel's philosophy was fatally flawed until Marx 'turned it on its head' to create historical materialism. Fukuyama argues that even though there is poverty, racism and sexism in present-day democracies, there is no sign of a major revolutionary movement developing that would actually overthrow capitalism. Whether such a movement will develop in the near future remains to be seen. While Marxists disagree with Fukuyama's claim that capitalist democracy represents the end of history, they support the idea that the "end of history" will consist of the victory of democracy: communism, in the Marxist view, must necessarily involve a form of direct democracy.

• Jacques Derrida criticized Fukuyama in Specters of Marx (1993) as a "late reader" of Alexandre Kojève, who already described US society in the 1950s as the "realization of communism". According to Derrida, Fukuyama — and the quick celebrity of his book — is one symptom of the fear brought by the "Specters of Marx". Fukuyama's celebration of liberal hegemony is critcized by Derrida:

For it must be cried out, at a time when some have the audacity to neo-evangelise in the name of the ideal of a liberal democracy that has finally realised itself as the ideal of human history: never have violence, inequality, exclusion, famine, and thus economic oppression affected as many human beings in the history of the earth and of humanity. Instead of singing the advent of the ideal of liberal democracy and of the capitalist market in the euphoria of the end of history, instead of celebrating the ‘end of ideologies’ and the end of the great emancipatory discourses, let us never neglect this obvious macroscopic fact, made up of innumerable singular sites of suffering: no degree of progress allows one to ignore that never before, in absolute figures, have so many men, women and children been subjugated, starved or exterminated on the earth.^[4]

A reply is that it is misleading to look at absolute numbers instead of percentage living in poverty when the world's population has rapidly increased, that worldwide poverty is rapidly declining, and that it is mainly nondemocracies that have such problems to extreme degrees.

• There is also the environmentalist challenge. Environmentalists argue that the capitalist economies' propensity towards growth will soon collide with the Earth's natural limits to growth. Some radical alteration in the socio-economic situation of the developed world would then have to take place.

• Some radical libertarians (represented by Hans-Hermann Hoppe) argue that democracy failed the classical liberal tradition by subordinating individual rights (especially private property) to the public interest, and that democracy is actually a decline of civilization compared to monarchy (see Democracy: The God That Failed).

• Numerous other intellectuals and thinkers have disagreed with the End of History thesis. For example, Samuel P. Huntington, in his essay and book, "The Clash of Civilizations," argues that the temporary conflict between ideologies is being replaced by the ancient conflict between civilizations. The dominant civilization decides the form of human government, and these will not be constant.

Fukuyama himself later conceded that his thesis was incomplete, but for a different reason: "there can be no end of history without an end of modern natural science and technology" (quoted from Our Posthuman Future). Fukuyama predicts that humanity's control of its own evolution will have a great and possibly terrible effect on the liberal democracy.

Some argue that Fukuyama presents 'American-style' democracy as the only 'correct' political system and that all countries must inevitably follow this particular government system; however, many Fukuyama scholars claim this is a misreading of his work. Fukuyama's argument is only that in the future there will be more and more governments that use the framework of parliamentary democracy and that contain markets of some sort. Sweden, Venezuela, Turkey, India and Ghana fit this description as well as (or better than) the United States.

It has also been argued that Fukuyama's notion of the "end of history" is merely a Hegelian articulation of the Whig interpretation of history. However, as the latter sections of his book makes clear, Fukuyama is no liberal optimist: instead he is a pessimist influenced by Nietzsche (especially Nietzsche as interpreted by Leo Strauss) who sees the end of history as being ultimately a sad and emotionally unsatisfying era, as reflected in Nietzsche's concept of the Last Man.

[edit] Notes

[edit] Publication history

• Free Press, 1992, hardcover (ISBN 0-02-910975-2)
• Perennial Publishing, 1993, paperback (ISBN 0-380-72002-7)
• Late Modern, 2005, paperback (ISBN 978-1-905659-00-5 )

[edit] See also

• Clash of civilizations
• Cultural evolution
• World peace
• War to end all wars
• Democratic peace theory
• Susak expo

[edit] External sources

• The Essay
• The Essay in PDF
• Introduction to Text