The End of History and the Last Man
Author(s)	Francis Fukuyama
Language	English
Publisher	Free Press
Publication date	1992
Pages	418
ISBN	0-02-910975-2

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 that the advent of Western liberal democracy may signal the end point of humanity's sociocultural evolution and the final form of human government.

"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."^[1]

Fukuyama's position contradicts that of Karl Marx, who imagined that antagonistic history would end with communism displacing capitalism.^[2] Fukuyama himself identifies on some level with Marx, but identifies most strongly with the German philosopher Hegel, by way of Alexandre Kojève. Kojeve argued that the progress of history must lead toward the establishment of a "universal and homogenous" state,^[3] most likely incorporating elements of liberal or social democracy; but Kojeve's emphasis on the necessarily "post-political" character of such a state (and its citizens) makes such comparisons inadequate, and is irreducible to any mere "triumph" of capitalism.^[4]

Highlights [edit]

• History should be viewed as an evolutionary process
• Events still occur at the end of history
• Pessimism about man's future is warranted because of man's inability to control technology
• The end of history means liberal democracy is the final form of government for all nations. There can be no progression from liberal democracy to an alternative system.

Misinterpretations [edit]

According to Fukuyama, since the French Revolution, 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).

• Some argue^[who?] 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.^{[citation needed]} 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. Indeed, Fukuyama has stated:

"The End of History was never linked to a specifically American model of social or political organization. Following Alexandre Kojève, the Russian-French philosopher who inspired my original argument, I believe that the European Union more accurately reflects what the world will look like at the end of history than the contemporary United States. The EU's attempt to transcend sovereignty and traditional power politics by establishing a transnational rule of law is much more in line with a "post-historical" world than the Americans' continuing belief in God, national sovereignty, and their military."^[5]

• ^[6] When the essay "The End of History" was published, according to the book "the New Asian Hemisphere" by Kishore Mahbubani, it was misused by the many in the West to support "The Triumph of the West" mood or "western triumphalismTriumphalism" after the Cold War ended. Many in the West showed positive responses to the essay but used the essay to misinterpret it, gleaning "something they wanted to hear: that the world had reached the End of History with the triumph of Western Civilization." This mood was shown, for example, from the Belgian foreign minister, Willy Claes, who was the president of the EU in the early 1990s, said at ASEAN-EU meeting that the United States and the European Union were only two superpowers left in the world with the end of the Cold war. Mahbubani says this statement implied "these two new superpowers would dominate the world, while other nations would have to adapt and adjust to their wishes."

Arguments in favor [edit]

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 categorized as "Free", "Partly Free", and "Not Free". Freedom House considers "Free" nations to be liberal democracies. The trend is much weaker when counting population instead, as countries classified as "free" tend to be smaller and have lower population growth.

• One argument used to support the theory is the dramatic rise in democratic nations over the course of the 20th century. An extensive study by Freedom House in 2003 counted zero liberal democracies with universal suffrage in the world in 1900 but 119 (60 percent) at the time. They counted 25 (19 percent) nations with 'restricted democratic practices' in 1900 and 16 (8%) today. Additionally, they counted 19 (14 percent) 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.^[7]
• Another argument in favor of Fukuyama's thesis is the democratic peace theory, which argues that mature democracies rarely or never go to war with one another. This theory has faced criticism, with arguments largely resting on conflicting definitions of "war" and "mature democracy". Part of the difficulty in assessing the theory is that democracy as a widespread global phenomenon emerged only very recently in human history, which makes generalizing about it difficult. (See also list of wars between democracies).
• Other major empirical evidence includes the elimination of inter-state warfare in South America, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe among countries that moved from military dictatorships to liberal democracies.
• 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.^[8][9]

Criticisms [edit]

There have been many criticisms of the "end of history" thesis.

Critics of liberal democracy [edit]

Some have argued against the book due to an ideological disagreement with the concept of liberal democracy.

• Jacques Derrida criticized Fukuyama in Specters of Marx (1993) as a "come-lately reader" of Alexandre Kojève "in the tradition of Leo Strauss," who already described U.S. society in the 1950s as the "realization of communism." According to Derrida, Fukuyama — and the quick celebrity of his book — is but one symptom of the anxiety to ensure the "death of Marx." Fukuyama's celebration of liberal hegemony is criticized by Derrida:

Derrida goes on to analyze Fukuyama's book as taking part in the intellectual branch of current Western Hegemony and the spreading of its "New Gospel": "This end of History is essentially a Christian eschatology. It is consonant with the current discourse of the Pope on the European community: destined to become a Christian State or Super-State, this community would still belong therefore to some Holy Alliance." He claims that the book uses a 'sleight-of-hand trick' of making use of empirical data whenever it seems to suit its message, while appealing to an ideal whenever the empirical data contradicts it. Derrida points out that Fukuyama himself sees the real states of the United States and the European Union as imperfect compared to the "ideals" of Liberal Democracy and Free Market. Even the author understands that such final Ideals are not demonstrated by empirical evidence or ever could be demonstrated empirically. They belong entirely to the realm of philosophy or religion, owing their birth to the Gospels of Philosophy of Hegel. And yet Fukuyama still uses a movement toward empirical observations, which he himself grants are imperfect and incomplete, to validate an idea which is purely idealistic and transcendent of any empirical reality or possibility.^[10]

• Marxism. Certain versions of Marxism can be conceived as "end of history" philosophies. Therefore Marxists like Perry Anderson have been among Fukuyama's fiercest critics. Apart from pointing out 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. 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.

• Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez argued against "the end of history": he argued his case in his September 2006 address to the United Nations General Assembly.^[11] As recently as August 2006, Fukuyama has written in response to Chávez's argument, his main point being that Chavismo is only possible due to the unique oil reserves of Venezuela, and thus will not spread.^[12]

• ^[13]Mahbubani argues that it is wrong to believe "differences in culture did not matter because Western liberal democratic society was universally applicable to all societies." Mahbubani says "western blindness to differences in culture" shows both 'generosity and arrogance" at the same time. Western blindness shows generosity by viewing the East and the West to be "all the same" and "all humans can achieve what the West has reached." However, it also shows arrogance by demonstrating "unwillingness to accept the simple human reality that other cultures are different." and "they may have different values and different perspectives of the world." For example, many countries suffered from the democratic experiment in the post-Cold War era. As Amy Chua, a law professor at Yale University, explains in her book World on Fire, free market democracy often turned into an engine of ethnic conflagration as people saw from the cases of ethnic cleansing of Croats in parts of former Yugoslavia, the attacks on the Chinese minority in Indonesia, the Tutsi slaughter in Rwanda.

Radical Islam, tribalism, and the "Clash of Civilizations" [edit]

Various Western commentators have described the thesis of The End of History as flawed because 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.

Benjamin Barber wrote a 1992 article and 1995 book, Jihad vs. McWorld, that addressed this theme. Barber described "McWorld" as a secular, liberal, corporate-friendly transformation of the world, and used the word "jihad" to refer to the competing forces of tribalism and religious fundamentalism, with a special emphasis on Islamic fundamentalism.

Samuel P. Huntington wrote a 1993 essay, "The Clash of Civilizations", in direct response to The End of History; he then expanded the essay into a 1996 book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. In the essay and book, Huntington argued 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. He especially singled out Islam, which he described as having "bloody borders".

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, The End of History was cited by some commentators as a symbol of the supposed naivete and undue optimism of the Western world during the 1990s, in thinking that the end of the Cold War also represented the end of major global conflict. In the weeks after the attacks, Fareed Zakaria called the events "the end of the end of history", while George Will wrote that history had "returned from vacation".^[14]

Fukuyama did discuss radical Islam briefly in The End of History. He argued 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'. Fukuyama pointed to the economic and political difficulties that Iran and Saudi Arabia face, and argued that such states are fundamentally unstable: either they will become democracies with a Muslim society (like Turkey) or they will simply disintegrate. Moreover, when Islamic states have actually been created, they were easily dominated by the powerful Western states.

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."^[14]

In a 2008 Washington Post opinion piece, Fukuyama wrote:

Democracy's only real competitor in the realm of ideas today is radical Islamism. Indeed, one of the world's most dangerous nation-states today is Iran, run by extremist Shiite mullahs. But as Peter Bergen pointed out in these pages last week, Sunni radicalism has been remarkably ineffective in actually taking control of a nation-state, due to its propensity to devour its own potential supporters. Some disenfranchised Muslims thrill to the rantings of Osama bin Laden or Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but the appeal of this kind of medieval Islamism is strictly limited.^[15]

The resurgence of Russia and China [edit]

Another challenge to the "End of History" theory is the growth in economic and political power of two countries, Russia and China; China has a single-party state government, while Russia, though a democracy, has been described by some as de facto authoritarian.^[16]

Azar Gat, Professor of National Security at Tel Aviv University, argued this point in his 2007 Foreign Affairs article "The Return of Authoritarian Great Powers", stating that the success of these two countries could "end the end of history".^[17] Gat discussed radical Islam as well, but stated that the movements associated with it "represent no viable alternative to modernity and pose no significant military threat to the developed world". He considered the challenge of China and Russia to be the more major threat, since they could pose a viable rival model which could inspire other states.

This view was echoed by Robert Kagan in his 2008 book The Return of History and the End of Dreams, whose title was a deliberate rejoinder to The End of History.^[18]

In his 2008 Washington Post opinion piece, Fukuyama also addressed this point. He wrote, "Despite recent authoritarian advances, liberal democracy remains the strongest, most broadly appealing idea out there. Most autocrats, including Putin and Chávez, still feel that they have to conform to the outward rituals of democracy even as they gut its substance. Even China's Hu Jintao felt compelled to talk about democracy in the run-up to Beijing's Olympic Games."^[15]

Posthuman future [edit]

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.

Publication history [edit]

• Free Press, 1992, hardcover (ISBN 0-02-910975-2)
• Perennial, 1993, paperback (ISBN 0-380-72002-7)

See also [edit]

• Democratic peace theory
• Last Man
• Sociocultural evolution
• The Clash of Civilizations
• Whig history

Notes [edit]

References [edit]

• Jacques Derrida (1994). Specters of Marx: State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-91045-5. 
• Francis Fukuyama (1992). The End of History and the Last Man. Free Press. ISBN 0-02-910975-2. 

• Morton Halperin, Joanne J. Myers, Joseph T. Siegle, Michael M. Weinstein. (2005-03-17). The Democracy Advantage: How Democracies Promote Prosperity and Peace. Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. Retrieved 2008-06-18.

• Potter, Robert (2011), 'Recalcitrant Interdependence', Thesis, Flinders University
• Mahbubani, Kishore (2008). The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresisble Shift of Global Power to the East. New York: PublicAffairs

• W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman (1930). 1066 and All That. Methuen. ISBN 0-413-77270-5. 

External links [edit]

• The Essay
• Islam and America... Friends or Foes?
• Introduction to Text
• Booknotes interview with Fukuyama on The End of History and the Last Man, February 9, 1992