End of History by Francis Fukuyama: A Critique
Abstract
After the fall of the Soviet Union, Francis Fukuyama attempted to provide a new paradigm for academia and policymakers to understand international relations. He argued that after the decline of communism, and the emergence of democracy, humankind had reached an endpoint in ideological evolution, what he called the End of History. Henceforth, he maintains, the world would be dominated by liberal democracies less inclined to go to war with each other and more interested in cooperation to maintain peace in the world.
This article summarises the main ideas expressed by Francis Fukuyama in its highly provocative article
Introduction
The USA fought the Cold War following the theoretical framework postulated by George Kennan in the highly influential article “Sources of Soviet Conduct”, published in 1947. In this essay, (known as Article x), after outlining the reasons for the Soviet conduct, Kennan advised the USA that the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.
For him, the Cold War gave the United States its historic opportunity to assume leadership of what would eventually be described as the “free world. This Kennanian narrative of the superiority of the Western way of life over the collective ideals of Soviet Communists, which needed to be countered by force and contained by anti-Soviet Union alliances, became the bedrock of the foreign policy of the USA and its allies throughout the Cold War.
In the twilight years of the once-mighty superpower USSR, fundamental changes in objective realities necessitated a new paradigm for academia and policymakers to understand international relations. Consequently, several ideas started competing to find acceptance with the intellectuals of the world. One such idea was the End of History thesis, given by Francis Fukuyama in 1989, two years before the collapse of the Soviet Union. He later perfected it in his book, “The End of History and the Last Man.”
Main Points of Fukuyama’s Thesis
What was the essence of the End of History thesis? Well, the idea behind this thesis is very simple and can be explained easily. However, before reading his thesis, kindly remember that the concept of an End of History differs from ideas of an end of the world as expressed in various religions, which may forecast the destruction of the Earth or of life on Earth, and the end of the human race as we know it. The End of History instead proposes a state in which human life continues indefinitely into the future without any further major changes in society, a system of governance, or economics.
The End of History is a political and philosophical concept that supposes that a particular political, economic, or social system may develop that would constitute the endpoint of humanity’s sociocultural evolution and the final form of human government.
1. Hegelian Framework
A great fan of Hegel, Fukuyama accepts the Hegelian assertion that ideology, encompassing not just political doctrines, but the religion, culture, and moral values of society as well, is the driving force of history. As such, he maintains, to properly view current events, one must consider the history of ideology and use dialectics, or rather Hegelian dialectics, for understanding how history (of ideas) moves forward. Essentially, history moves forward in stages known as the three dialectical stages of development, namely thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.
2. Clash of Ideologies
Fukuyama then looks next at mankind’s “common ideological heritage”, and identifies three such alternatives, namely fascism, communism, and capitalism. To him, fascism was self-destructive, as revealed during World War 2 while communism got defeated by Western liberalism.
3. Triumph of Western Liberalism
Based on the above, he concludes that as the former two have failed to resolve the core conflicts of human life, it is now only the political-economic structure of modern liberalism that is the driving force of history. Consequently, he argues, humankind had reached an endpoint in ideological evolution by saying, Humanity has reached “not just the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the End of History, that is, the end-point of mankind’s ideological evolution. There can be no progression from liberal democracy to an alternative system.”
4. Universal Peace
Accordingly, he maintains, that following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the world would be dominated by liberal democracies led by the United States. These democracies would be less inclined to go to war with each other and more interested in cooperation to maintain peace in the world.
5. Localised Conflicts
Finally, Fukuyama maintains that the end of history would mean large-scale ideological conflict would fade, but the conflict would continue on another level. Those areas that have not reached the end of history will continue to conflict with those that have. Nationalist conflict and ethnic conflict have not played themselves out yet, and Fukuyama predicts they will result in increases in terrorism. As we move to economic conflict and environmental issues instead of the powerful and inspiring conflicts of history, Fukuyama supposes that a state of tediousness may even “serve to get history started once again.”
Strengths of Thesis
Fukuyam’s thesis occupies a prominent place in this genre of discussion because of its in-depth analysis of the complex situation and the kaleidoscopic reach of his conclusions. With its publication, he initiated a global debate about the likely post-Cold War scenarios and soon became a recommended read for anyone interested in understanding international politics. Articulating a theoretical framework for analyzing post-Cold War global politics, he provided a strong perspective for taking policy actions by some of the leaders in the world.
What are the strengths of this thesis and where does it fail, either at the intellectual level or with practical implications, depends upon one’s frame of mind. It is an internally consistent framework of analysis in the sense that if one agrees with the assumptions he has stated or taken for granted, then the logical conclusion follows as smoothly as night follows day. For example, if you believe in his implied assumption that the march of history is unidirectional and is synonymous with that of Western civilization, then there is no point in countering it, at least, on the theoretical plane.
One of the main postulations of Fukuyama’s thesis is the democratic peace theory, which argues that mature democracies rarely or never go to war with one another. One major piece of empirical evidence for this postulation is the elimination of interstate warfare in South America, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe among countries that moved from military dictatorships to liberal democracies.
Similarly, according to several studies, 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.
Weaknesses of the Thesis
All great ideas, books, and personalities are invariably controversial, which makes them great. Thus, the End of History thesis by Francis Fukuyama is not without its share of controversy.
1. Not an Original Idea
Although the name Francis Fukuyama has become synonymous with the End of History thesis, he was not the author of the term itself. The phrase, the end of history, was first used by French philosopher and mathematician Antoine Augustin Cournot in 1861 “to refer to the end of the historical dynamic with the perfection of civil society”.
The formal development of the idea of an “end of history” is most closely associated with Hegel, who maintained that the French Revolution, which signalled the triumph of the liberal and democratic system, was the endpoint of history. He argued that the ideas of man’s universal right to freedom and government by consent had been realized in the form of an ideology that could not be improved upon.
After him, this idea was re-interpreted by Alexandre Kojève, who argued that conflict over the type of “large” issues that characterized history would cease and most economic activity would remain.
2. Uni-directional March of History
As stated earlier, if you believe in his implied assumption that the march of history is unidirectional, then there is no point in countering it, at least, on the theoretical plane.
However, the reality is quite the opposite. History has never progressed in one direction and is affected by so many constants and variables that it is impossible to predict its future course of action with reasonable accuracy.
3. Euro-centric Bias
Similarly, his premise that this uni-directional movement of history is identifiable with the march of Western civilization, is questionable. It not only neglects the invaluable contributions made by other civilizations in the past but also ignores the possibility of the formation of a theoretical and practical alternative by these civilisations in the future. In his analysis, the only role of non-Western societies is that of being dependent variables or subjects of the expansion of Western values and institutions.
This reductionism makes the experiences of the Western civilization a universal phenomenon while trivializing the non-western civilizations as non-entities. Similarly, it does not sufficiently take into account the power of ethnic loyalties and religious fundamentalism as a counter-force to the spread of liberal democracy, with the specific example of Islamic fundamentalism, or radical Islam, as the most powerful of these.
4. Oversimplification
Besides the above objections, the End of History thesis of Francis Fukuyama suffers from several serious flaws, even as an analytical framework. In his zeal to postulate a grand general theory of post-Cold War international relations, he has tried to oversimplify a complex situation by selectively applying facts and figures that he feels substantiate his views.
5. Propaganda Piece
Keeping in view his career record as an employee of a think tank responsible for providing inputs to the American deep state, several scholars have criticized him for formulating a theory of endism to prepare the theoretical basis of the status quo, which the USA wanted to maintain in the post-Cold War era. Some argue that Fukuyama presents “American-style” democracy as the only “correct” political system and argues that all countries must inevitably follow this particular system of government.
He did this to legitimize and formulate the theoretical framework of the New World Order. Because to create a new world order, the old one must have an end. To legitimize the US’s leadership role, he uses Hegel. Because he also ends history with the victory of one state. To show the USA’s everlasting victory, he had to create a very optimistic perspective. Maybe those who later caused the deaths of millions of people in the Middle East and Afghanistan were trying to transplant the end-of-history recommendation of liberal democracy to societies still living in the 16th and 17th centuries.
6. Single-factor-driven conception of History
Fukuyama’s methodological approach reduces the essence of historical continuity to one predominant factor: ‘the struggle for recognition. This reduction creates a highly overgeneralized historical theory. This pragmatic approach may lead to a hugely deterministic theory of history and a very categorical interpretation of the historical past.
7. Practical Utility: Falsified
Francis Fukuyama postulated that once liberal democracy has triumphed, there will be peace in the world, as liberal democracies do not fight with each other. However, his thesis was completely falsified, first in Bosnia. Ethnic cleansing in Bosnia marked the end of the optimistic dreams of Fukuyama’s endism. Because none of the liberal democratic countries tried to end this non-humanitarian event. The states that finished their evolution did not act as they had to. Moreover, the cases of Kosovo and especially the events of September 11, 2001, in the USA show that nothing has come to an end, instead, world history will probably face important transformation processes in the future.
CONCLUSION
He tried to make a long-term civilizational analysis but only analyzed short-term indicators. So he may use the term ‘civilizational transformation’, instead of ‘end of history. The era that was tried to be analyzed and defined by Fukuyama was only one of the turning points in world history. As we can see, history is part of an ongoing transformation process that needs further analysis. Consequently, we can say that Fukuyama wanted to give a name to the situation after the collapse of communism. He gave it the name ‘the end of history, with a one-dimensional, ethnocentric perspective.
Tail Piece
In October 2001, Fukuyama, in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, responded to the declarations that the September 11 attacks had disproved his views by stating that “time and resources are on the side of modernity, and I see no lack of a will to prevail in the United States today.” He also noted that his original thesis “does not imply a world free from conflict, or the disappearance of culture as a distinguishing characteristic of societies.
Fukuyama has also stated 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 Post-human Future). Fukuyama predicts that humanity’s control of its evolution will have a great and possibly terrible effect on liberal democracy
From my book “International Relations: Basic Concepts and Global Issues”, published by Amazon and available at
