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The End of History and the Last Man

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This is a book with a certain fame or notoriety, not least due to its title. Having finally read it, I can appreciate its appeal and yet am perplexed at why it has been misinterpreted so widely, and why such a badly-written and ill-thought-out work has been taken so seriously.

The danger of a book like this is that it can reinforce or pander to some people's prejudices - after the fall of Communism we in the West did deserve a metaphorical pat on the back, but that's a long way from just kicking back as saying "well folks, this is as good as it gets". A cursory reading of "The End of History" would no doubt assure the armchair warriors that all's well with the world now the Reds have gone.

BUT, Fukuyama is not so sure as that. He puts forward an hypothesis about the triumph of liberal democracy (this is what human history has been leading up to) but utterly fails to prove that hypothesis. That's not to say that the hypothesis is not worthy of thought and debate - Fukuyama is at least to be congratulated for that. What I found less satisfactory was the quality of argument and analysis found in the book, and I'm no professional historian or philosopher. Just two among many examples - Fukuyama classes the USA and Great Britain as a "liberal democracies" from, respectively, 1790 and 1848: utterly astounding. I was equally perplexed by this:

"A century of Marxist thought has accustomed us to think of capitalist societies as highly inegalitarian, but the truth is that they are far more egalitarian in their social effects than the agricultural societies they replaced". Well so what? Last time I was in Rome, I noticed they were no longer throwing Christians to the lions.

Yet the main problem I found was that Fukuyama's paradigms were themselves utterly conventional, causing him to either miss or duck fundamental issues such as how the rise of globalism, multi-national companies and fundamentally undemocratic super-states such as the European Union will affect liberal democracies. Is democracy a dispensable item provided we have material wealth - voter turn-outs might suggest this - or is this a real and new "internal contradiction"?

So, congratulations to Fukuyama for opening the debate. Beware of people who regard this work as some sort of Bible. Read it carefully and be prepared to plough your way through a lot of ropey analysis.

Fukuyama's far fetched and frankly irrelevant theories bore me, I'm afraid to say. This was the book that introduced me to that way of thinking - it's basically written by a wealthy American academic (who has spent most of his life employed by the US government), claiming that the American capitalist system has conquered all political alternatives, surpassing even that of democracy and especially that of communism. Capitalism is, for Fukuyama, the end of the evolution of man and the start of an eternal status quo. This idea is laughable in concept and is further ridiculed by his over-selective choice of material which is already outdated. Clearly it is his ideal world - but I not sure that everyone shares it and even less sure that we have reached it.

It's really hard to top that priceless review below, but I'll give it a shot. It's really amazing that after about seven years of hindsight, people are still writing rave reviews of this book for its amazing philosophical insights. Fukuyama himself had to back-pedal several times to qualify the bubbling optimism he expressed in the early nineties about the final victory of liberal democracy and the "end of History" (he essentially refutes his own thesis in the conclusion to this book). It's also quite interesting that none of the reviewers who loved this book so much noted the inherent contradiction in Fukuyama's use of Marxist philosophical methods to arrive at a "non-Marxist conclusion," or his continuous extolling of Hegel as some sort of predecessor to liberal democracy. Hegel was hardly democratic in outlook (he greatly admired the powerful and autocratic Prussian state) and he can rightfully be considered an early proponent of an exclusive northern German nationalism. Fukuyama's book is very flawed, and should have been relegated to the dustbin of history (no capital "H") long ago.

Doubtless, this book received so much media attention because it was a gullible attempt at turning liberal democracy into a philosophy. This was unskillfully done through cutting and pasting from other existing modes of thought. I particullarly found his generalisations about Islam, Japan or even China quite offensive. If one wishes to stigmatise a whole civilisation, I suggest Mr. Fukuyama ignore the current modes of politicised Islam and have a look at the Middle ages when Muslim and Arab scholary work was the first thing scientists and thinkers turned to salvage themselves from the darkness of the middle ages. It is sufficient to point out that Greek philosophy was revived in Europe through back translation of Muslim scholars not to mention other fields such as Medicine, Chemistry, Math, the list goes on... I beleive that in order to understand where the world is going, one should not engage in re-constructing a meta-narrative with half-truths like that which pertains to liberal democracy which may have offered more choice in terms of how many brands of tea are available but at the expence of creating violence, anxieties, tattered family structures and social fiber. I suggest Mr. Fukuyama read history a bit more closely next time and he will find that the only system which managed to truly free humnity and push civlisation to the forefront is the version of Islam that existed before the 16th century.

A great book has a kernel of an idea so profound that you will never forget it. This is such a book. Once human beings have "discovered" liberal democracy, once they have tasted freedom, that discovery can never be forgotten. You'd have to erase the collective memory of man to subjugate the world again.

The march of freedom is inexorable. There will be missteps and failings along the way, but the world's course is unalterable. If that doesn't give you some hope, I don't know what will.

Fukuyama's persistence that history has come to an end reflects all that is wrong with our current socio-economic system. I would contend that it is the tension between democratic principles (by the people, for the people) and capitalist ideology (by the corporate, for the corporate) that is a defining feature of our times. How can one man proclaim the end of history? Furthermore, how can a mass of people shrug their shoulders and say, "Huh? O.K." From the corporate domination of information via ownership of the media and the hoodwinks of soft money campaign contributions by corporate sponsors on the government level, to the insatiable appetites of consumers, the proliferation of television survival shows and the marketing of well-tanned teens as pop star commodities on the consumer level, we can easily see a society of unfulfilled expectations, watered-down spectator culture, deferred gratifications, and strictly defined "alternatives." Is this what mankind has strived for through years of strife, death, and struggle? If history does indeed have a teleology, surely its consummation is more than this. What exists at the moment is not a perfectly realized ideal born of any "democratic" dialectic of history. It is rather, a deeply-flawed system balanced in favor of the elite. To counter the revolutionary texts of Marx and Engels, capitalism created for itself a new agenda - consumerism. In the words of a famous guy: "We have everything that we want and nothing that we need." Fukuyama's book is the worst type of post-modern garbage. It is that type which asks us to revel in our trash culture, to breathe in the dizzying fumes of its bloated corpse because hey, it smells so good! If we as a culture and a people allow ideological garbage derivative of Fukuyama's "End of History and the Last Man" to penetrate our Americentric minds any further we will be in serious trouble of becoming the world's largest self-fulfilling prophecy. In Nietzsche's "Also sprach Zarathustra," he describes the last man: "He blinks." Don't be just another blinking TV eye, people. Participate, learn, think critically. History is only over if WE say it is.

With the arrogance of Hegel some 200 years ago, Fukuyama, a coddled, Washington beltway "think-tank" elitist--long on theory unsupported by empirical data and short on practical experience of the real world--proclaims American global Capitalism of the Reagan era (this came out just on the cusp of our current dizzying hi-tech computer decade) to be the "best of all possible worlds" (if I may paraphrase "Candide"). Would that Fukuyam had just an iota of Hegel's intellect to balance the presumptous arrogance. One reviewer said this should be mandatory reading "even for the lay person"! Folks, this Is written FOR the layperson BY a layperson! Fukuyama, like all political hacks, selectively chooses the data that supports his theories and ignores everything else that would embarrass them. He is considered a laughable hack by all serious Historians and current affairs global analysts. His writing is the apotheosis of comfortable, elite, armchair detachment that the ignorant, conformist "gray flannel dwarves" love to eat up to placate their gnawing insecurities that the future of the planet cannot, perhaps, be so neatly and cleanly understood. Fukuyama has never been hungry, underpaid, unappreciated, or exploited, has never worked on a production line for subsitance wages, has never likely gotten dirt or grease under the finger nails of his finely manicured soft white hands out of necessity (but perhaps to amuse himself Sunday afternoon in the rose garden). Neitzsche was dead on target about guys like this. The "best of all possible worlds" that Fukiyama envisions--and even claims is here already--is absolute death for anyone with a soul. But that world is not here, and never will be, despite the pathetic efforts of all who espouse his credo. God has not "retired" and turned over his authority to the Hegels and Fukuyamas of the world, much as they would like to believe it. The "universal cyclone" of history is known to God alone, and sweeps away all things known in the present, but it is most shocking to arrogant poseurs like Fukuyama who claim authority that is not theirs.

Perhaps it's not fair to write a review of this book, since I read it after it's thesis has been shown to be false in light of the events of 9-11. But, I'll do it anyways.

For me, this is a strange book. The main reason for this is Fukuyama's reliance on the work of Hegel and the dialectic of history. It's essentially Marx, except capitalism and liberalism are the final state. I just don't see why we should buy all of the Hegel stuff.

The essence of Fukuyama's argument boils down to the following empirical claims. (1) Communisim failed. And (2), despite some rogue nations like Iraq and Iran, most countries have accepted liberal democracy as the final form of government. (1) is true. (2) however is not. It seems like history has proven Fukuyama wrong. But, I already said that.

Aside from that, I don't think this book is all that great. The last section "the last man" doesn't make the persuasive case that Fukuyama thinks it does. He, himself, thinks it's an open question whether or not man's essential spirited (thymotic) nature will be satisfied by the artificial nature of liberal democracy (read: no chest beating wars). Well, apparently those are in vogue again. So, perhaps, Fukuyama was right about something: to appease his thymotic spirit, the liberal democratic man must wage war. Could he have Rumsfeld and Cheney pegged?

Fukuyama argues in The End of History that 'the last man [i.e., us] becomes concerned above all for his own personal health and safety, because it is uncontroversial.... For Americans, the health of their bodies - what they eat and drink, the exercise they get, the shape they are in - has become a far greater obsession than the moral questions that tormented their forebears'.

He doesn't seem to think that the victory of market economies is much of a victory. It has become the universal way of organizing society, but life itself, in his view, has become worthless.

By 'the end of history' Fukuyama means that humankind has found the ultimate form of governance and that the period of experimentation has come to an end. Hegel and Marx believed that the evolution of human societies would end when mankind had achieved a form of society that satisfies its deepest and most fundamental longings. For Hegel this was the liberal state while for Marx it was a communist society. Fukuyama believes that humanity will be led to liberal democracy.

The book is divided into five sections. Part I addresses the issue of universal history. As individuals we can be optimistic about the 20th century with its improving prospects of health and happiness but pessimistic at the slow progress towards liberal democracy. This 20th century pessimism is in contrast to the optimism of the 19th century marked by peace and improvements in material well being. Science was conquering disease and poverty and the spirit of 1776 and the French Revolution was spreading throughout the world. There was a feeling of accumulating knowledge, increasing wisdom and advancement from the lower to higher levels of intelligence and well being. Free trade was replacing empire building and it seemed that war would be economically irrational. But the 20th century started disastrously with thousands dying daily over a few yards of ground in World War I. Horrendous as this war turned out to be, it was only a foretaste of new forms of evil backed by modern technology and more sophisticated political organization. The ultimate evil of the holocaust emerged in a country with the most advanced industrial economy and one of the most cultured and well-educated populations in Europe, highlighting the need for technological progress to be accompanied by moral progress. Without moral progress, technology will be turned to evil purposes and mankind will be worse off than previously.

However, the author argues that during the second half of the 20th century the world got better and the final quarter of the century saw communism and authoritarian governments collapsing or undergoing severe crisis. In most cases reforms were not imposed from the outside but were due to an internal crisis of confidence that had infected the ruling elite. In Fukuyama's opinion liberal democracy remains the only coherent political aspiration spanning the globe and this is his basis of optimism. After a millenium of experimentation and false starts humankind can at last see the light at the end of the tunnel and this is his rational for drawing our attention to the need to plan the next steps.

Part II uses natural science to explain the direction and coherence of history, based on the fact that technology confers a decisive military advantage and limitless wealth. The logic of natural science seems to dictate a move towards capitalism; the world's most developed countries are also its most successful democracies.

Part III introduces the concept of man's struggle for recognition. Only man can move beyond self-preservation for the sake of higher, abstract principles and goals. Much of human behavior can be explained as a combination of desire and reason, but Hegel maintains that self-esteem drives the whole historical process. When we are not recognized we feel anger; when we fall short of our own sense of worth we feel shame; and when we are correctly evaluated we feel pride. It is self-esteem that drives men into a battle to the death, creating masters of those willing to risk their lives and slaves of those who give in. But the relationship of lordship and bondage would ultimately fail because humanity is not complete. Lordship and bondage led to the French and American revolutions to be replaced by the principles of popular sovereignty, the rule of law and universal and reciprocal recognition. Adoption of these principles should ensure that every citizen recognizes the dignity and humanity of every other citizen. Dissatisfaction with the flawed recognition available in aristocratic societies caused revolutions while Communism is being superceded by liberal democracy primarily because it has a defective form of recognizing man's self-worth. Seeking recognition has been the central problem of politics for the past millenium; it was the origin of tyranny and the desire to dominate. The author warns us that communities must cater to the desire for recognition while protecting themselves from its destructive effects.

The deeper and more profound question concerns the goodness of liberal democracy itself and not only whether it will succeed against its rivals. The internal contradictions have already lead to such serious problems as drugs, homelessness, crime, environmental damage and consumerism. Part IV questions whether today's liberal democracy is completely satisfying because capitalism creates economic inequality and equal people are recognized unequally. In addition peace and prosperity leaves unsatisfied that part of us that seeks struggle, danger, risk and daring.

Part V: The Last Man brings us to the important part of the book which can be summed up by these sentences: "Common sense would indicate that liberal democracy has many advantages over its 20th-century rivals, fascism and communism, while loyalty to our inherited values and traditions would dictate unquestioning commitment to democracy. But the cause of liberal democracy is not necessarily best served by unthinking partisanship, and by the failure to address squarely democracy's failings. And it is obviously impossible to answer the question of whether history has come to an end without looking more deeply at the question of democracy and its discontents." Left to itself can liberal democracy be indefinitely self-sustaining, or will it collapse from internal rot much as communism has done? This is the part of the book which we must study carefully to ensure that never again will technology and sophisticated political systems be turned to evil purposes leaving mankind worse off than he was before.