End of History by Francis Fukuyama: A Critique
Introduction
Although history has its dynamics and drivers and no individual can predict its course with absolute certainty, in every epoch of history there are one or more visionary intellectuals who can perform this feat with some remarkable accuracy. With the help of their knowledge and experience, they not only accurately describe the prevailing situation but can also make fairly accurate predictions. Consequently, they become instrumental in shaping the perceptions of the opinion-makers in the dominant world powers.
Once formulated, these perceptions then become the perspectives for the decision-makers to make decisions. Actions taken under these set of ideas then shape the world events which again change the constants and variables, justify change next generation of intellectuals to come up with a new thesis to understand reality, predict the likely course of events and prescribe a set of actions, and so on.
In modern times, there are several names, but we can select four who have played larger life roles in this respect. They are George F. Kennan, Francis Fukuyama, Samuel P Huntington, and Robert D. Kaplan.
Before proceeding further, we must be clear about three concepts namely History, Historical Dialectics, and the End of History.
What is History?
In ordinary parlance by history, we mean the record of events and their likely causes and consequences. In other words, it answers the usual questions about what, when, where, why, etc. of any phenomenon. Why did Alexander the Macedonian invade present-day Pakistan in 326 BCE? Who invented the atomic bomb, where it was dropped, why its consequences etc.
However, for political philosophers, history is what they call the philosophy of history-what are the great ideas that are driving this everyday history? It is this concept of history as a battle of ideas that is the topic of discussion in these articles
What is Historical Dialectics?
The other concept, dialectics, or rather a Hegelian dialectic is a process of understanding how history (of ideas) moves forward in stages known as three dialectical stages of historical development namely thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.
- Thesis-: In every age, there is a common narrative accepted by the majority as true (earth is flat). This may be called the Thesis.
- Anti-thesis: However, some dissenting voices are challenging this thesis (no, the earth is not flat; it is round). We call this new narrative Antithesis.
- Synthesis: After some time, people reach a compromise based on hardcore evidence (the earth is neither flat nor round; it is semi-round). We may call it Synthesis.
This is a continuous process-thesis, giving rise to its reaction, an antithesis, which contradicts or negates the thesis, and the tension between the two is resolved using a synthesis. After some time, this synthesis itself will become the accepted truth (Thesis) by the majority. However, again there will be a group of people who will challenge it by presenting their point of view(Anti-thesis). The resulting conflict will be resolved over time by the emergence of a compromise (Synthesis) and so on.
Although this model is often named after Hegel, he never used that specific formulation (he ascribed that terminology to Kant). Hegel used a three-valued logical model that is very like the antithesis model, but Hegel’s most usual terms were: Abstract- Negative- Concrete. For Hegel, the concrete, the synthesis, and the absolute must always pass through the phase of the negative, in the journey to completion, that is, mediation. This is the essence of what is popularly called Hegelian Dialectics.
What is the End of History
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 end-point of humanity’s sociocultural evolution and the final form of human government.
Background to Francis Fukuyama’s Thesis
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 the objective realities necessitated a new paradigm for academia and policymakers for understanding 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 as follows
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 uses the dialectics or rather Hegelian dialectics for understanding how history (of ideas) moves forward. Essentially, history moves forward in stages known as 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 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 will fade but the conflict will 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 a state of tediousness may even “serve to get history started once again.”
Strengths of Thesis
What are the strengths of this thesis and where does it fail, either at the intellectual level or practical implications, depends upon one’s frame of mind. With its publication, he initiated a global debate about the likely post-Cold War scenarios and soon became a recommended reading for anyone interested in understanding international politics.
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 the 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 remains no point to counter it, at least, on the theoretical plane.
And it still rightly occupies a prominent place in this genre of discussions because of its in-depth analysis of the complex situation and the kaleidoscopic reach of his conclusions. 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.
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 empirical evidence of 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.
- 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 an 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 remains no point to counter 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 selective application of 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.
Probably 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 US’s leadership role, he uses Hegel. Because he also ends history with the victory of one state. To show 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/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 huge deterministic theory of history, also a very categoric interpretation of the historical past.
7. Practical Utility Falsified
Francis Fukuyama postulated that once liberal democracy has triumphed, there would be peace in the world as liberal democracies do not fight with each other. However, his thesis was completely falsified firstly with 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 do. Moreover, the cases of Kosovo and especially the events on 11 September 2001 in the USA show that nothing has come to an end, instead of this, 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 which was tried to be analyzed and defined by Fukuyama was only one of the turning points in world history. As we can see, the history is within 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 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, nor 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 Posthuman Future). Fukuyama predicts that humanity’s control of its evolution will have a great and possibly terrible effect on liberal democracy.
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