With the news today that Francis Fukuyama has been placed on the Russian no-entry list, it seems like a good time to revisit his most famous work
The End of History and the Last Man, first published thirty years ago.
I think it is safe to say that far more people have an opinion on this work than have actually read it. The title of course is rather dramatic, and criticism always seems the focus is always on the first part, while the second half is less often discussed, even though I think it is by far the more interesting part of the book. The notion that even without facing any real ideological foes liberalism can be torn apart by the thymotic urges of people who cannot find outlets in societies at the end of history seems, in a sense, to be a relatively born out in both the struggles over identity within the west where such conflicts are resurgent in post-industrial economies and in the aggression of powers like Russia.
One can rightly dispute many elements of the first part of the argument Fukuyama makes, but one passage highlights what I do consider to be a more lasting element of the now much derided first part of the thesis
"In parts of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, we are likely to see the Marxist-Leninists replaced by a variety of dictators, nationalists, and colonels; even communists may stage comebacks in certain areas. But the authoritarianism they represent will remain localized and unsystematic...The only coherent ideology that enjoys widespread legitimacy in this part of the world remains liberal democracy." (p. 37)
I broadly think this is true. I have yet to find any systemic attempt, even by those who are self-proclaimed "anti-liberals," that develops a coherent ideological opponent to liberal democracy that enjoys widespread support and serves as the systemic animating and legitimating force of a sate. Rod Dreher's recent article in
The American Conservative "American Orbanism" is a good example of what I mean. In the article, Dreher goes to great lengths not only to deny that Orban is illiberal, but to cast his critics as illiberal, proponents of an "illiberal leftism, which wears liberalism like a skin suit" and touts how same-sex couples in Hungary could still enter civil unions and academics were free to criticize Orban and his government. Whatever one thinks of the merits of this argument, the fact that Orban supporters feel the need to make it, to claim that Orban is in fact the inheritor of, and not an enemy of, liberalism if not in name then in substance, demonstrates that "illiberalism" of this sort has yet to define itself in any real, systemic way.
I have also yet to see any real articulation of a systematic ideology behind Vladimir Putin's regime in Russia that is actually embraced by any meaningful number of people within that regime. Aleksandr Dugin, of course, is often cited as providing an intellectual or philosophical vision for Putin, but beyond some of his geopolitical thought, I see no real indication that Russian thinkers have embraced his work as the basis for some new, post-liberal paradigm. He might represent the return of a particularly aggressive realism (which, in itself, would be a blow to part of Fukuyama's theory, his critique of realism was relatively poor in my view anyway), but I do not think his thought has been adopted as the basis of new Russian state, which still holds 'elections' of dubious merit.
The major stumbling block on this issue is China, but that is also one of the few areas in which Fukuyama was more pessimistic about the chances of liberal democracy triumphing. Still, he rightly notes that Chinese communism is no longer systemic, and it might be fair to say that it is not in fact guided by a coherent ideology. I think China has come much closer than anyone else to articulating an alternative to liberal democracy, but I am not sure that it has a systemic and exportable alternative. China makes no real pretensions of having elections on the liberal democratic model, but I do not think it has any interest in exporting its Marxist-Leninist market economy to the rest of the world when unsystemic authoritarians or collaborative democrats will do just as well to achieving its ends. China does pose a threat to liberal democracy, but not because it is advancing an exportable, consistent, systemic ideology abroad in the way the Soviet Union was. In this sense too, I suppose, China represents a return of "realism," but not really the rise of a new and self-conscious and systematic alternative to liberal democracy I would be interested, though, to see what others think, as I am perfectly open to the notion that China does have some sort of systemic view of a post-liberal world and I have just yet to encounter it.
Finally, returning to my point about the second part of the work, I tend to think there is much to be said about the struggle for recognition in our present moment. The rise of nationalism is, in particular I think, emblematic of the sort of reaction Fukuyama suggested some might have to living in a period like the end of history. The frustration and the failure to fully sublimate thymos has, perhaps, brought us near the point where we are reminded that "those who remain dissatisfied will always have the potential to restart history" (p. 334), and at the very least recent years have shown the wisdom in Fukuyama's own call to treat his thesis as largely provisional and reliant on the notion that the end of history would be generally agreeable and not produce the sort of dissatisfaction which could upend it.
Overall, if you have not read the book, I highly suggest that you do. For all that it gets wrong, and it does get much wrong, there is still much to think about in it, and it is hard not to read about the frustration of some at the end of history and not find parallels to our own moment, both domestically and internationally. Sadly, the more nuanced aspects of the work have been rather reductively ignored in favor of cheap point scoring, but it is really worth a read. I mean one of the reviewers on my copy even notes that he disagrees with the basic thesis but still recommends it. For those that have read it, I'm interested to hear your thoughts on it.
