Fukuyama 1989 The End of History PDF

The End of History? Francis Fukuyama The National Interest Summer 1989 IN WATCHING the flow of events the intellectual climate of the world's over the past decade or s...

The End of History? Francis Fukuyama The National Interest Summer 1989 IN WATCHING the flow of events the intellectual climate of the world's over the past decade or so, it is hard to two largest communist countries, and avoid the feeling that something very the beginnings of significant reform fundamental has happened in world movements in both. But this history. The past year has seen a flood phenomenon extends beyond high of articles commemorating the end of politics and it can be seen also in the the Cold War, and the fact that "peace" ineluctable spread of consumerist seems to be breaking out in many Western culture in such diverse regions of the world. Most of these contexts as the peasants' markets and analyses lack any larger conceptual color television sets now omnipresent framework for distinguishing between throughout China, the cooperative what is essential and what is restaurants and clothing stores opened contingent or accidental in world in the past year in Moscow, the history, and are predictably Beethoven piped into Japanese superficial. If Mr. Gorbachev were department stores, and the rock music ousted from the Kremlin or a new enjoyed alike in Prague, Rangoon, and Ayatollah proclaimed the millennium Tehran. from a desolate Middle Eastern What we may be witnessing is not capital, these same commentators just the end of the Cold War, or the would scramble to announce the passing of a particular period of rebirth of a new era of conflict. postwar history, but the end of history And yet, all of these people sense as such: that is, the end point of dimly that there is some larger process mankind's ideological evolution and at work, a process that gives coherence the universalization of Western liberal and order to the daily headlines. The democracy as the final form of human twentieth century saw the developed government. This is not to say that world descend into a paroxysm of there will no longer be events to fill the ideological violence, as liberalism pages of Foreign Affair's yearly contended first with the remnants of summaries of international relations, absolutism, then bolshevism and for the victory of liberalism has fascism, and finally an updated occurred primarily in the realm of Marxism that threatened to lead to the ideas or consciousness and is as yet ultimate apocalypse of nuclear war. incomplete in. the real or material But the century that began full of self- world. But there are powerful reasons confidence in the ultimate triumph of for believing that it is the ideal that Western liberal democracy seems at its will govern the material world in the close to be returning full circle to long run. To understand how this is so, where it started: not to an "end of we must first consider some ideology" or a convergence between theoretical issues concerning the capitalism and socialism, as earlier nature of historical change. predicted, but to an unabashed victory of economic and political liberalism. I The triumph of the West, of the Western idea, is evident first of all in the total exhaustion of viable THE NOTION of the end of history systematic alternatives to Western is not an original one. Its best known liberalism. In the past decade, there propagator was Karl Marx, who have been unmistakable changes in  The End of History? Francis Fukuyama The National Interest, Summer 1989 believed that the direction of historical interpreters and to resurrect him as development was a purposeful one the philosopher who most correctly determined by the interplay of speaks to our time. Among those material forces, and would come to an modern French interpreters of Hegel, end only with the achievement of a the greatest was certainly Alexandre communist utopia that would finally Kojève, a brilliant Russian émigré who resolve all prior contradictions. But taught a highly influential series of the concept of history as a dialectical seminars in Paris in the 1930s at the process with a beginning, a middle, Ecole Practique des Hautes Etudes.1 and an end was borrowed by Marx While largely unknown in the United from his great German predecessor, States, Kojève had a major impact on Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. the intellectual life of the continent. Among his students ranged such For better or worse, much of future luminaries as Jean-Paul Sartre Hegel's historicism has become part of on the Left and Raymond Aron on the our contemporary intellectual Right; postwar existentialism baggage. The notion that mankind has borrowed many of its basic categories progressed through a series of from Hegel via Kojève. primitive stages of consciousness on his path to the present, and that these Kojève sought to resurrect the stages corresponded to concrete forms Hegel of the Phenomenology of Mind, of social organization, such as tribal, the Hegel who proclaimed history to slave-owning, theocratic, and finally be at an end in 1806. For as early as democratic-egalitarian societies, has this Hegel saw in Napoleon's defeat of become inseparable from the modern the Prussian monarchy at the Battle of understanding of man. Hegel was the Jena the victory of the ideals of the first philosopher to speak the language French Revolution, and the imminent of modern social science, insofar as universalization of the state man for him was the product of his incorporating the principles of liberty concrete historical and social and equality. Kojève, far from rejecting environment and not, as earlier Hegel in light of the turbulent events natural right theorists would have it, a of the next century and a half, insisted collection of more or less fixed that the latter had been essentially "natural" attributes. The mastery and correct.2 The Battle of Jena marked transformation of man's natural the end of history because it was at environment through the application that point that the vanguard of of science and technology was humanity (a term quite familiar to originally not a Marxist concept, but a Hegelian one. Unlike later historicists whose historical relativism 1 Kojève's best known work is his degenerated into relativism tout court, Introduction à la lecture de Hegel (Paris: however, Hegel believed that history Editions Gallimard, 1947), which is a culminated in an absolute moment - a transcript of the Ecole Practique lectures moment in which a final, rational form from the 1930's. This book is available in of society and state became victorious. English entitled Introduction to the Reading of Hegel arranged by Raymond It is Hegel's misfortune to be Queneau, edited by Allan Bloom, and known now primarily as Marx's translated by James Nichols (New York: precursor; and it is our misfortune Basic Books, 1969). that few of us are familiar with Hegel's 2 In this respect Kojève stands in sharp work from direct study, but only as it contrast to contemporary German has been filtered through the interpreters of Hegel like Herbert Marcuse distorting lens of Marxism. In France, who, being more sympathetic to Marx, however, there has been an effort to regarded Hegel ultimately as an save Hegel from his Marxist historically bound and incomplete philosopher. 2  The End of History? Francis Fukuyama The National Interest, Summer 1989 Marxists) actualized the principles of struggle or conflict over "large" issues, the French Revolution. While there and consequently no need for generals was considerable work to be done after or statesmen; what remains is 1806 - abolishing slavery and the slave primarily economic activity. And trade, extending the franchise to indeed, Kojève's life was consistent workers, women, blacks, and other with his teaching. Believing that there racial minorities, etc. - the basic was no more work for philosophers as principles of the liberal democratic well, since Hegel (correctly state could not be improved upon. The understood) had already achieved two world wars in this century and absolute knowledge, Kojève left their attendant revolutions and teaching after the war and spent the upheavals simply had the effect of remainder of his life working as a extending those principles spatially, bureaucrat in the European Economic such that the various provinces of Community, until his death in 1968. human civilization were brought up to To his contemporaries at mid- the level of its most advanced century, Kojève's proclamation of the outposts, and of forcing those societies end of history must have seemed like in Europe and North America at the the typical eccentric solipsism of a vanguard of civilization to implement French intellectual, coming as it did on their liberalism more fully. the heels of World War II and at the The state that emerges at the end of very height of the Cold War. To history is liberal insofar as it comprehend how Kojève could have recognizes and protects through a been so audacious as to assert that system of law man's universal right to history has ended, we must first of all freedom, and democratic insofar as it understand the meaning of Hegelian exists only with the consent of the idealism. governed. For Kojève, this so-called "universal homogenous state" found real-life embodiment in the countries II of postwar Western Europe - precisely those flabby, prosperous, self-satisfied, inward-looking, weak-willed states FOR HEGEL, the contradictions whose grandest project was nothing that drive history exist first of all in the more heroic than the creation of the realm of human consciousness, i.e. on Common Market.3 But this was only to the level of ideas4 - not the trivial be expected. For human history and election year proposals of American the conflict that characterized it was politicians, but ideas in the sense of based on the existence of large unifying world views that might "contradictions": primitive man's best be understood under the rubric of quest for mutual recognition, the ideology. Ideology in this sense is not dialectic of the master and slave, the restricted to the secular and explicit transformation and mastery of nature, political doctrines we usually associate the struggle for the universal with the term, but can include religion, recognition of rights, and the culture, and the complex of moral dichotomy between proletarian and values underlying any society as well. capitalist. But in the universal Hegel's view of the relationship homogenous state, all prior between the ideal and the real or contradictions are resolved and all human needs are satisfied. There is no 4 This notion was expressed in the famous 3 Kojève alternatively identified the end of aphorism from the preface to the history with the postwar "American way of Philosophy of History to the effect that life," toward which he thought the Soviet "everything that is rational is real, and Union was moving as well. everything that is real is rational." 3  The End of History? Francis Fukuyama The National Interest, Summer 1989 material worlds was an extremely reversed the priority of the real and complicated one, beginning with the the ideal completely, relegating the fact that for him the distinction entire realm of consciousness - between the two was only apparent. 5 religion, art, culture, philosophy itself He did not believe that the real world - to a "superstructure" that was conformed or could be made to determined entirely by the prevailing conform to ideological preconceptions material mode of production. Yet of philosophy professors in any another unfortunate legacy of simpleminded way, or that the Marxism is our tendency to retreat "material" world could not impinge on into materialist or utilitarian the ideal. Indeed, Hegel the professor explanations of political or historical was temporarily thrown out of work as phenomena, and our disinclination to a result of a very material event, the believe in the autonomous power of Battle of Jena. But while Hegel's ideas. A recent example of this is Paul writing and thinking could be stopped Kennedy's hugely successful The Rise by a bullet from the material world, and Fall of the Great Powers, which the hand on the trigger of the gun was ascribes the decline of great powers to motivated in turn by the ideas of simple economic overextension. liberty and equality that had driven the Obviously, this is true on some level: French Revolution. an empire whose economy is barely above the level of subsistence cannot For Hegel, all human behavior in bankrupt its treasury indefinitely. But the material world, and hence all whether a highly productive modern human history, is rooted in a prior industrial society chooses to spend 3 state of consciousness - an idea similar or 7 percent of its GNP on defense to the one expressed by John Maynard rather than consumption is entirely a Keynes when he said that the views of matter of that society's political men of affairs were usually derived priorities, which are in turn from defunct economists and determined in the realm of academic scribblers of earlier consciousness. generations. This consciousness may not be explicit and self-aware, as are The materialist bias of modern modern political doctrines, but may thought is characteristic not only of rather take the form of religion or people on the Left who may be simple cultural or moral habits. And sympathetic to Marxism, but of many yet this realm of consciousness in the passionate anti-Marxists as well. long run necessarily becomes manifest Indeed, there is on the Right what one in the material world, indeed creates might label the Wall Street Journal the material world in its own image. school of deterministic materialism Consciousness is cause and not effect, that discounts the importance of and can develop autonomously from ideology and culture and sees man as the material world; hence the real essentially a rational, profit- subtext underlying the apparent maximizing individual. It is precisely jumble of current events is the history this kind of individual and his pursuit of ideology. of material incentives that is posited as the basis for economic life as such in Hegel's idealism has fared poorly at economic textbooks.6 One small the hands of later thinkers. Marx 6 In fact, modern economists, recognizing 5 Indeed, for Hegel the very dichotomy that man does not always behave as a between the ideal and material worlds profit-maximizer, posit a "utility" function, was itself only an apparent one that was utility being either income or some other ultimately overcome by the self-conscious good that can be maximized: leisure, subject; in his system, the material world sexual satisfaction, or the pleasure of is itself only an aspect of mind. philosophizing. That profit must be 4  The End of History? Francis Fukuyama The National Interest, Summer 1989 example will illustrate the problematic Wall Street Journal school of character of such materialist views. deterministic materialism habitually points to the stunning economic Max Weber begins his famous success of Asia in the past few decades book, The Protestant Ethic and the as evidence of the viability of free Spirit of Capitalism, by noting the market economics, with the different economic performance of implication that all societies would see Protestant and Catholic communities similar development were they simply throughout Europe and America, to allow their populations to pursue summed up in the proverb that their material self-interest freely. Protestants eat well while Catholics Surely free markets and stable political sleep well. Weber notes that according systems are a necessary precondition to any economic theory that posited to capitalist economic growth. But just man as a rational profit-maximizer, as surely the cultural heritage of those raising the piece-work rate should Far Eastern societies, the ethic of work increase labor productivity. But in fact, and saving and family, a religious in many traditional peasant heritage that does not, like Islam, communities, raising the piece-work place restrictions on certain forms of rate actually had the opposite effect of economic behavior, and other deeply lowering labor productivity: at the ingrained moral qualities, are equally higher rate, a peasant accustomed to important in explaining their earning two and one-half marks per economic performance.7 And yet the day found he could earn the same intellectual weight of materialism is amount by working less, and did so such that not a single respectable because he valued leisure more than contemporary theory of economic income. The choices of leisure over development addresses consciousness income, or of the militaristic life of the and culture seriously as the matrix Spartan hoplite over the wealth of the within which economic behavior is Athenian trader, or even the ascetic formed. life of the early capitalist entrepreneur over that of a traditional leisured aristocrat, cannot possibly be FAILURE to understand that the explained by the impersonal working roots of economic behavior lie in the of material forces, but come realm of consciousness and culture preeminently out of the sphere of leads to the common mistake of consciousness - what we have labeled attributing material causes to here broadly as ideology. And indeed, phenomena that are essentially ideal a central theme of Weber's work was in nature. For example, it is to prove that contrary to Marx, the commonplace in the West to interpret material mode of production, far from the reform movements first in China being the "base," was itself a and most recently in the Soviet Union "superstructure" with roots in religion as the victory of the material over the and culture, and that to understand ideal - that is, a recognition that the emergence of modern capitalism ideological incentives could not and the profit motive one had to study replace material ones in stimulating a their antecedents in the realm of the highly productive modern economy, spirit. As we look around the 7 One need look no further than the recent contemporary world, the poverty of performance of Vietnamese immigrants in materialist theories of economic the U.S. school system when compared development is all too apparent. The to their black of Hispanic classmates to realize that culture and consciousness are absolutely crucial to explain not only replaced with a value like utility indicates economic behavior but virtually every the cogency of the idealist perspective. other important aspect of life as well. 5  The End of History? Francis Fukuyama The National Interest, Summer 1989 and that if one wanted to prosper one world; if ideological development had had to appeal to baser forms of self- in fact ended, the homogenous state interest. But the deep defects of would eventually become victorious socialist economies were evident thirty throughout the material world. or forty years ago to anyone who chose I have neither the space nor, to look. Why was it that these frankly, the ability to defend in depth countries moved away from central Hegel's radical idealist perspective. planning only in the 1980s' The The issue is not whether Hegel's answer must be found in the system was right, but whether his consciousness of the elites and leaders perspective might uncover the ruling them, who decided to opt for problematic nature of many the "Protestant" life of wealth and risk materialist explanations we often take over the "Catholic" path of poverty and for granted. This is not to deny the role security.8 That change was in no way of material factors as such. To a literal- made inevitable by the material minded idealist, human society can be conditions in which either country built around any arbitrary set of found itself on the eve of the reform, principles regardless of their but instead came about as the result of relationship to the material world. And the victory of one idea over another.9 in fact men have proven themselves For Kojève, as for all good able to endure the most extreme Hegelians, understanding the material hardships in the name of underlying processes of history ideas that exist in the realm of the requires understanding developments spirit alone, be it the divinity of cows in the realm of consciousness or ideas, or the nature of the Holy Trinity.10 since consciousness will ultimately But while man's very perception of remake the material world in its own the material world is shaped by his image. To say that history ended in historical consciousness of it, the 1806 meant that mankind's ideological material world can clearly affect in evolution ended in the ideals of the return the viability of a particular state French or American Revolutions: of consciousness. In particular, the while particular regimes in the real spectacular abundance of advanced world might not implement these liberal economies and the infinitely ideals fully, their theoretical truth is diverse consumer culture made absolute and could not be improved possible by them seem to both foster upon. Hence it did not matter to and preserve liberalism in the political Kojève that the consciousness of the sphere. I want to avoid the materialist postwar generation of Europeans had not been universalized throughout the 10 The internal politics of the Byzantine Empire at the time of Justinian revolved 8 I understand that a full explanation of the around a conflict between the so-called origins of the reform movements in China monophysites and monothelites, who and Russia is a good deal more believed that the unity of the Holy Trinity complicated than this simple formula was alternatively one of nature or of will. would suggest. The Soviet reform, for This conflict corresponded to some extent example, was motivated in good measure to one between proponents of different by Moscow's sense of insecurity in the racing teams in the Hippodrome in technological-military realm. Nonetheless, Byzantium and led to a not insignificant neither country ion the eve of its reforms level of political violence. Modern was in such a state of material crisis that historians would tend to seek the roots of one could have predicted the surprising such conflicts in antagonisms between reform paths ultimately taken. social classes or some other modern 9 It is still not clear whether the Soviet economic category, being unwilling to people are as "Protestant" as Gorbachev believe that men would kill each other and will follow him down that path. over the nature of the Trinity. 6  The End of History? Francis Fukuyama The National Interest, Summer 1989 determinism that says that liberal weakness, materialism, anomie, and economics inevitably produces liberal lack of community of the West as politics, because I believe that both fundamental contradictions in liberal economics and politics presuppose an societies that could only be resolved by autonomous prior state of a strong state that forged a new consciousness that makes them "people" on the basis of national possible. But that state of exclusiveness. Fascism was destroyed consciousness that permits the growth as a living ideology by World War II. of liberalism seems to stabilize in the This was a defeat, of course, on a very way one would expect at the end of material level, but it amounted to a history if it is underwritten by the defeat of the idea as well. What abundance of a modern free market destroyed fascism as an idea was not economy. We might summarize the universal moral revulsion against it, content of the universal homogenous since plenty of people were willing to state as liberal democracy in the endorse the idea as long as it seemed political sphere combined with easy the wave of the future, but its lack of access to VCRs and stereos in the success. After the war, it seemed to economic. most people that German fascism as well as its other European and Asian variants were bound to self-destruct. III There was no material reason why new fascist movements could not have sprung up again after the war in other HAVE WE in fact reached the end locales, but for the fact that of history? Are there, in other words, expansionist ultranationalism, with its any fundamental "contradictions" in promise of unending conflict leading human life that cannot be resolved in to disastrous military defeat, had the context of modern liberalism, that completely lost its appeal. The ruins of would be resolvable by an alternative the Reich chancellery as well as the political-economic structure? If we atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima accept the idealist premises laid out and Nagasaki killed this ideology on above, we must seek an answer to this the level of consciousness as well as question in the realm of ideology and materially, and all of the pro-fascist consciousness. Our task is not to movements spawned by the German answer exhaustively the challenges to and Japanese examples like the liberalism promoted by every crackpot Peronist movement in Argentina or messiah around the world, but only those that are embodied in important social or political forces and the frequent misuse of this term to movements, and which are therefore denounce anyone to the right of the user. part of world history. For our "Fascism" here denotes nay organized purposes, it matters very little what ultra nationalist movement with strange thoughts occur to people in universalistic pretensions - not Albania or Burkina Faso, for we are universalistic with regard to its interested in what one could in some nationalism, of course, since the latter is sense call the common ideological exclusive by definition, but with regard to heritage of mankind. the movement's belief in its right to rule In the past century, there have been other people. Hence Imperial Japan would two major challenges to liberalism, qualify as fascist while former strongman Stoessner's Paraguay or Pinochet's Chile those of fascism and of communism. would not. Obviously fascist ideologies The former11 saw the political cannot be universalistic in the sense of Marxism or liberalism, but the structure of 11 I am not using the term "fascism" here the doctrine can be transferred from in its most precise sense, fully aware of country to country. 7  The End of History? Francis Fukuyama The National Interest, Summer 1989 Subhas Chandra Bose's Indian intellectual climate whose most National Army withered after the war. "advanced" members no longer believe that bourgeois society is something The ideological challenge mounted that ultimately needs to be overcome. by the other great alternative to This is not to say that the opinions of liberalism, communism, was far more progressive intellectuals in Western serious. Marx, speaking Hegel's countries are not deeply pathological language, asserted that liberal society in any number of ways. But those who contained a fundamental contradiction believe that the future must inevitably that could not be resolved within its be socialist tend to be very old, or very context, that between capital and marginal to the real political discourse labor, and this contradiction has of their societies. constituted the chief accusation against liberalism ever since. But surely, the class issue has actually been ONE MAY argue that the socialist successfully resolved in the West. As alternative was never terribly plausible Kojève (among others) noted, the for the North Atlantic world, and was egalitarianism of modern America sustained for the last several decades represents the essential achievement primarily by its success outside of this of the classless society envisioned by region. But it is precisely in the non- Marx. This is not to say that there are European world that one is most not rich people and poor people in the struck by the occurrence of major United States, or that the gap between ideological transformations. Surely the them has not grown in recent years. most remarkable changes have But the root causes of economic occurred in Asia. Due to the strength inequality do not have to do with the and adaptability of the indigenous underlying legal and social structure of cultures there, Asia became a our society, which remains battleground for a variety of imported fundamentally egalitarian and Western ideologies early in this moderately redistributionist, so much century. Liberalism in Asia was a very as with the cultural and social weak reed in the period after World characteristics of the groups that make War I; it is easy today to forget how it up, which are in turn the historical gloomy Asia's political future looked as legacy of premodern conditions. Thus recently as ten or fifteen years ago. It black poverty in the United States is is easy to forget as well how not the inherent product of liberalism, momentous the outcome of Asian but is rather the "legacy of slavery and ideological struggles seemed for world racism" which persisted long after the political development as a whole. formal abolition of slavery. The first Asian alternative to As a result of the receding of the liberalism to be decisively defeated class issue, the appeal of communism was the fascist one represented by in the developed Western world, it is Imperial Japan. Japanese fascism (like safe to say, is lower today than any its German version) was defeated by time since the end of the First World the force of American arms in the War. This can he measured in any Pacific war, and liberal democracy was number of ways: in the declining imposed on Japan by a victorious membership and electoral pull of the United States. Western capitalism and major European communist parties, political liberalism when transplanted and their overtly revisionist programs; to Japan were adapted and in the corresponding electoral success transformed by the Japanese in such a of conservative parties from Britain way as to be scarcely recognizable.12 and Germany to the United States and Japan, which are unabashedly pro- market and anti-statist; and in an 12 I use the example of Japan with some caution, since Kojève late in his life came 8  The End of History? Francis Fukuyama The National Interest, Summer 1989 Many Americans are now aware that Here again we see the victory of the Japanese industrial organization is idea of the universal homogenous very different from that prevailing in state. South Korea had developed into the United States or Europe, and it is a modern, urbanized society with an questionable what relationship the increasingly large and well-educated factional maneuvering that takes place middle class that could not possibly be with the governing Liberal Democratic isolated from the larger democratic Party bears to democracy. trends around them. Under these Nonetheless, the very fact that the circumstances it seemed intolerable to essential elements of economic and a large part of this population that it political liberalism have been so should be ruled by an anachronistic successfully grafted onto uniquely military regime while Japan, only a Japanese traditions and institutions decade or so ahead in economic terms, guarantees their survival in the long had parliamentary institutions for over run. More important is the forty years. Even the former socialist contribution that Japan has made in regime in Burma, which for so many turn to world history by following in decades existed in dismal isolation the footsteps of the United States to from the larger trends dominating create a truly universal consumer Asia, was buffeted in the past year by culture that has become both a symbol pressures to liberalize both its and an underpinning of the universal economy and political system. It is homogenous state. V.S. Naipaul said that unhappiness with strongman traveling in Khomeini's Iran shortly Ne Win began when a senior Burmese after the revolution noted the officer went to Singapore for medical omnipresent signs advertising the treatment and broke down crying products of Sony, Hitachi, and JVC, when he saw how far socialist Burma whose appeal remained virtually had been left behind by its ASEAN irresistible and gave the lie to the neighbors. regime's pretensions of restoring a state based on the rule of the Shariah. Desire for access to the consumer BUT THE power of the liberal idea culture, created in large measure by would seem much less impressive if it Japan, has played a crucial role in had not infected the largest and oldest fostering the spread of economic culture in Asia, China. The simple liberalism throughout Asia, and hence existence of communist China created in promoting political liberalism as an alternative pole of ideological well. attraction, and as such constituted a threat to liberalism. But the past The economic success of the other fifteen years have seen an almost total newly industrializing countries (NICs) discrediting of Marxism-Leninism as in Asia following on the example of an economic system. Beginning with Japan is by now a familiar story. What the famous third plenum of the Tenth is important from a Hegelian Central Committee in 1978, the standpoint is that political liberalism Chinese Communist party set about has been following economic decollectivizing agriculture for the 800 liberalism, more slowly than many had million Chinese who still lived in the hoped but with seeming inevitability. countryside. The role of the state in agriculture was reduced to that of a tax to conclude that Japan, with its culture collector, while production of based on purely formal arts, proved that consumer goods was sharply increased the universal homogenous state was not in order to give peasants a taste of the victorious and that history had perhaps universal homogenous state and not ended. See the long note at the end of thereby an incentive to work. The the second edition of Introduction à la reform doubled Chinese grain output Lecture de Hegel, 462-3. 9  The End of History? Francis Fukuyama The National Interest, Summer 1989 in only five years, and in the process Western countries, almost all of them created for Deng Xiaoping a solid the children of the Chinese elite. It is political base from which he was able hard to believe that when they return to extend the reform to other parts of home to run the country they will be the economy. Economic Statistics do content for China to be the only not begin to describe the dynamism, country in Asia unaffected by the initiative, and openness evident in larger democratizing trend. The China since the reform began. student demonstrations in Beijing that broke out first in December 1986 and China could not now be described recurred recently on the occasion of in any way as a liberal democracy. At Hu Yao-bang's death were only the present, no more than 20 percent of its beginning of what will inevitably be economy has been marketized, and mounting pressure for change in the most importantly it continues to be political system as well. ruled by a self-appointed Communist party which has given no hint of What is important about China wanting to devolve power. Deng has from the standpoint of world history is made none of Gorbachev's promises not the present state of the reform or regarding democratization of the even its future prospects. The central political system and there is no issue is the fact that the People's Chinese equivalent of ghost. The Republic of China can no longer act as Chinese leadership has in fact been a beacon for illiberal forces around the much more circumspect in criticizing world, whether they be guerrillas in Mao and Maoism than Gorbachev with some Asian jungle or middle class respect to Brezhnev and Stalin, and students in Paris. Maoism, rather than the regime continues to pay lip service being the pattern for Asia's future, to Marxism-Leninism as its ideological became an anachronism, and it was underpinning. But anyone familiar the mainland Chinese who in fact were with the outlook and behavior of the decisively influenced by the prosperity new technocratic elite now governing and dynamism of their overseas co- China knows that Marxism and ethnics - the ironic ultimate victory of ideological principle have become Taiwan. virtually irrelevant as guides to policy, Important as these changes in and that bourgeois consumerism has a China have been, however, it is real meaning in that country for the developments in the Soviet Union - the first time since the revolution. The original "homeland of the world various slowdowns in the pace of proletariat" - that have put the final reform, the campaigns against nail in the coffin of the Marxist- "spiritual pollution" and crackdowns Leninist alternative to liberal on political dissent are more properly democracy. It should be clear that in seen as tactical adjustments made in terms of formal institutions, not much the process of managing what is an has changed in the four years since extraordinarily difficult political Gorbachev has come to power: free transition. By ducking the question of markets and the cooperative political reform while putting the movement represent only a small part economy on a new footing, Deng has of the Soviet economy, which remains managed to avoid the breakdown of centrally planned; the political system authority that has accompanied is still dominated by the Communist Gorbachev's perestroika. Yet the pull party, which has only begun to of the liberal idea continues to be very democratize internally and to share strong as economic power devolves power with other groups; the regime and the economy becomes more open continues to assert that it is seeking to the outside world. There are only to modernize socialism and that currently over 20,000 Chinese its ideological basis remains Marxism- students studying in the U.S. and other 10  The End of History? Francis Fukuyama The National Interest, Summer 1989 Leninism; and, finally, Gorbachev become steadily more radical in their faces a potentially powerful support for free markets, to the point conservative opposition that could where some like Nikolai Shmelev do undo many of the changes that have not mind being compared in public to taken place to date. Moreover, it is Milton Friedman. There is a virtual hard to be too sanguine about the consensus among the currently chances for success of Gorbachev's dominant school of Soviet economists proposed reforms, either in the sphere now that central planning and the of economics or politics. But my command system of allocation are the purpose here is not to analyze events root cause of economic inefficiency, in the short-term, or to make and that if the Soviet system is ever to predictions for policy purposes, but to heal itself, it must permit free and look at underlying trends in the sphere decentralized decision-making with of ideology and consciousness. And in respect to investment, labor, and that respect, it is clear that an prices. After a couple of initial years of astounding transformation has ideological confusion, these principles occurred. have finally been incorporated into policy with the promulgation of new Émigrés from the Soviet Union laws on enterprise autonomy, have been reporting for at least the last cooperatives, and finally in 1988 on generation now that virtually nobody lease arrangements and family in that country truly believed in farming. There are, of course, a Marxism-Leninism any longer, and number of fatal flaws in the current that this was nowhere more true than implementation of the reform, most in the Soviet elite, which continued to notably the absence of a mouth Marxist slogans out of sheer thoroughgoing price reform. But the cynicism. The corruption and problem is no longer a conceptual one: decadence of the late Brezhnev-era Gorbachev and his lieutenants seem to Soviet state seemed to matter little, understand the economic logic of however, for as long as the state itself marketization well enough, but like the refused to throw into question any of leaders of a Third World country the fundamental principles underlying facing the IMF, are afraid of the social Soviet society, the system was capable consequences of ending consumer of functioning adequately out of sheer subsidies and other forms of inertia and could even muster some dependence on the state sector. dynamism in the realm of foreign and defense policy. Marxism-Leninism was In the political sphere, the like a magical incantation which, proposed changes to the Soviet however absurd and devoid of constitution, legal system, and party meaning, was the only common basis rules amount to much less than the on which the elite could agree to rule establishment of a liberal state. Soviet society. Gorbachev has spoken of democratization primarily in the sphere of internal party affairs, and WHAT HAS happened in the four has shown little intention of ending years since Gorbachev's coming to the Communist party's monopoly of power is a revolutionary assault on the power; indeed, the political reform most fundamental institutions and seeks to legitimize and therefore principles of Stalinism, and their strengthen the CPSU'S rule.13 replacement by other principles which Nonetheless, the general principles do not amount to liberalism per se but whose only connecting thread is 13 This is not true in Poland and Hungary, liberalism. This is most evident in the however, whose Communist parties have economic sphere, where the reform taken moves toward true power sharing economists around Gorbachev have and pluralism. 11  The End of History? Francis Fukuyama The National Interest, Summer 1989 underlying many of the reforms - that Gorbachev's claim that he is the "people" should be truly seeking to return to the true Lenin is responsible for their own affairs, that perfectly easy to understand: having higher political bodies should be fostered a thorough denunciation of answerable to lower ones, and not vice Stalinism and Brezhnevism as the root versa, that the rule of law should of the USSR's present predicament, he prevail over arbitrary police actions, needs some point in Soviet history on with separation of powers and an which to anchor the legitimacy of the independent judiciary, that there CPSU'S continued rule. But should be legal protection for property Gorbachev's tactical requirements rights, the need for open discussion of should not blind us to the fact that the public issues and the right of public democratizing and decentralizing dissent, the empowering of the Soviets principles which he has enunciated in as a forum in which the whole Soviet both the economic and political people can participate, and of a spheres are highly subversive of some political culture that is more tolerant of the most fundamental precepts of and pluralistic - come from a source both Marxism and Leninism. Indeed, fundamentally alien to the USSR's if the bulk of the present economic Marxist-Leninist tradition, even if they reform proposals were put into effect, are incompletely articulated and it is hard to know how the Soviet poorly implemented in practice. economy would be more socialist than those of other Western countries with Gorbachev's repeated assertions large public sectors. that he is doing no more than trying to restore the original meaning of The Soviet Union could in no way Leninism are themselves a kind of be described as a liberal or democratic Orwellian doublespeak. Gorbachev country now, nor do I think that it is and his allies have consistently terribly likely that perestroika will maintained that intraparty democracy succeed such that the label will be was somehow the essence of Leninism, thinkable any time in the near future. and that the various lib era1 practices But at the end of history it is not of open debate, secret ballot elections, necessary that all societies become and rule of law were all part of the successful liberal societies, merely that Leninist heritage, corrupted only later they end their ideological pretensions by Stalin. While almost anyone would of representing different and higher look good compared to Stalin, drawing forms of human society. And in this so sharp a line between Lenin and his respect I believe that something very successor is questionable. The essence important has happened in the Soviet of Lenin's democratic centralism was Union in the past few years: the centralism, not democracy; that is, the criticisms of the Soviet system absolutely rigid, monolithic, and sanctioned by Gorbachev have been so disciplined dictatorship of a thorough and devastating that there is hierarchically organized vanguard very little chance of going back to Communist party, speaking in the either Stalinism or Brezhnevism in any name of the demos. All of Lenin's simple way. Gorbachev has finally vicious polemics against Karl Kautsky, permitted people to say what they had Rosa Luxemburg, and various other privately understood for many years, Menshevik and Social Democratic namely, that the magical incantations rivals, not to mention his contempt for of Marxism-Leninism were nonsense, "bourgeois legality" and freedoms, that Soviet socialism was not superior centered around his profound to the West in any respect but was in conviction that a revolution could not fact a monumental failure. The be successfully made by a conservative opposition in the USSR, democratically run organization. consisting both of simple workers afraid of unemployment and inflation 12  The End of History? Francis Fukuyama The National Interest, Summer 1989 and of party officials fearful of losing is remediable through politics. Modern their jobs and privileges, is outspoken liberalism itself was historically a and may be strong enough to force consequence of the weakness of Gorbachev's ouster in the next few religiously-based societies which, years. But what both groups desire is failing to agree on the nature of the tradition, order, and authority; they good life, could not provide even the manifest no deep commitment to minimal preconditions of peace and Marxism-Leninism, except insofar as stability. In the contemporary world they have invested much of their own only Islam has offered a theocratic lives in it.14 For authority to be state as a political alternative to both restored in the Soviet Union after liberalism and communism. But the Gorbachev's demolition work, it must doctrine has little appeal for non- be on the basis of some new and Muslims, and it is hard to believe that vigorous ideology which has not yet the movement will take on any appeared on the horizon. universal significance. Other less organized religious impulses have been successfully satisfied within the IF WE ADMIT for the moment that sphere of personal life that is the fascist and communist challenges permitted in liberal societies. to liberalism are dead, are there any The other major "contradiction" other ideological competitors left? Or potentially unresolvable by liberalism put another way, are there is the one posed by nationalism and contradictions in liberal society other forms of racial and ethnic beyond that of class that are not consciousness. It is certainly true that resolvable? Two possibilities suggest a very large degree of conflict since the themselves, those of religion and Battle of Jena has had its roots in nationalism. nationalism. Two cataclysmic world The rise of religious wars in this century have been fundamentalism in recent years within spawned by the nationalism of the the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim developed world in various guises, and traditions has been widely noted. One if those passions have been muted to a is inclined to say that the revival of certain extent in postwar Europe, they religion in some way attests to a broad are still extremely powerful in the unhappiness with the impersonality Third World. Nationalism has been a and spiritual vacuity of liberal threat to liberalism historically in consumerist societies. Yet while the Germany, and continues to be one in emptiness at the core of liberalism is isolated parts of "post-historical" most certainly a defect in the ideology Europe like Northern Ireland. - indeed, a flaw that one does not need But it is not clear that nationalism the perspective of religion to rep resents an irreconcilable recognize15 - it is not at all clear that it contradiction in the heart of liberalism. In the first place, 14 This is particularly true of the leading nationalism is not one single Soviet conservative, former Second phenomenon but several, ranging from Secretary Yegor Ligachev, who has mild cultural nostalgia to the highly publicly recognized many of the deep organized and elaborately articulated defects of the Brezhnev period. doctrine of National Socialism. Only 15 I am thinking particularly of Rousseau systematic nationalisms of the latter and the Western philosophical tradition sort can qualify as a formal ideology that flows from him that was highly critical on the level of liberalism or of Lockean or Hobbesian liberalism, communism. The vast majority of the though one could criticize liberalism from world's nationalist movements do not the standpoint of classical political have a political program beyond the philosophy as well. 13  The End of History? Francis Fukuyama The National Interest, Summer 1989 negative desire of independence from developed nations of the West as some other group or people, and do liberal societies any time in the not offer anything like a foreseeable future, but suppose for a comprehensive agenda for socio- moment that Marxism-Leninism economic organization. As such, they ceases to be a factor driving the foreign are compatible with doctrines and policies of these states - a prospect ideologies that do offer such agendas. which, if not yet here, the last few While they may constitute a source of years have made a real possibility. conflict for liberal societies, this How will the overall characteristics of conflict does not arise from liberalism a de-ideologized world differ from itself so much as from the fact that the those of the one with which we are liberalism in question is incomplete. familiar at such a hypothetical Certainly a great deal of the world's juncture? ethnic and nationalist tension can be The most common answer is - not explained in terms of peoples who are very much. For there is a very forced to live in unrepresentative widespread belief among many political systems that they have not observers of international relations chosen. that underneath the skin of ideology is While it is impossible to rule out a hard core of great power national the sudden appearance of new interest that guarantees a fairly high ideologies or previously unrecognized level of competition and conflict contradictions in liberal societies, between nations. Indeed, according to then, the present world seems to one academically popular school of confirm that the fundamental international relations theory, conflict principles of sociopolitical inheres in the international system as organization have not advanced such, and to understand the prospects terribly far since 1806. Many of the for conflict one must look at the shape wars and revolutions fought since that of the system - for example, whether it time have been undertaken in the is bipolar or multipolar - rather than at name of ideologies which claimed to the specific character of the nations be more advanced than liberalism, but and regimes that constitute it. This whose pretensions were ultimately school in effect applies a Hobbesian unmasked by history. In the view of politics to international meantime, they have helped to spread relations, and assumes that aggression the universal homogenous state to the and insecurity are universal point where it could have a significant characteristics of human societies effect on the overall character of rather than the product of specific international relations. historical circumstances. Believers in this line of thought take the relations that existed between the IV participants in the classical nineteenth century European balance of power as a model for what a de-ideologized WHAT ARE the implications of the end of history for international contemporary world would look like. Charles Krauthammer, for example, relations? Clearly, the vast bulk of the recently explained that if as a result of Third World remains very much mired Gorbachev's reforms the USSR is in history, and will be a terrain of shorn of Marxist-Leninist ideology, its conflict for many years to come. But behavior will revert to that of let us focus for the time being on the nineteenth century imperial Russia. 16 larger and more developed states of the world who after all account for the greater part of world politics. Russia See his article, "Beyond the Cold War," 16 and China are not likely to join the New Republic, December 19, 1988. 14  The End of History? Francis Fukuyama The National Interest, Summer 1989 While he finds this more reassuring culture of Rabelais and Moliere. But than the threat posed by a communist whatever the particular ideological Russia, he implies that there will still basis, every "developed" country be a substantial degree of competition believed in the acceptability of higher and conflict in the international civilizations ruling lower ones - system, just as there was say between including, incidentally, the United Russia and Britain or Wilhelmine States with regard to the Philippines. Germany in the last century. This is, of This led to a drive for pure territorial course, a convenient point of view for aggrandizement in the latter half of the people who want to admit that century and played no small role in something major is changing in the causing the Great War. Soviet Union, but do not want to The radical and deformed accept responsibility for outgrowth of nineteenth-century recommending the radical policy imperialism was German fascism, an redirection implicit in such a view. But ideology which justified Germany's is it true? right not only to rule over non- In fact, the notion that ideology is a European peoples, but over all non- superstructure imposed on a German ones. But in retrospect it substratum of permanent great power seems that Hitler represented a interest is a highly questionable diseased bypath in the general course proposition. For the way in which any of European development, and since state defines its national interest is not his fiery defeat, the legitimacy of any universal but rests on some kind of kind of territorial aggrandizement has prior ideological basis, just as we saw been thoroughly discredited.17 Since that economic behavior is determined the Second World War, European by a prior state of consciousness. In nationalism has been defanged and this century, states have adopted shorn of any real relevance to foreign highly articulated doctrines with policy, with the consequence that the explicit foreign policy agendas nineteenth-century model of great legitimizing expansionism, like power behavior has become a serious Marxism-Leninism or National anachronism. The most extreme form Socialism. of nationalism that any Western European state has mustered since 1945 has been Gaullism, whose self- THE EXPANSIONIST and assertion has been confined largely to competitive behavior of nineteenth- the realm of nuisance politics and century European states rested on no culture. International life for the part less ideal a basis; it just so happened of the world that has reached the end that the ideology driving it was less of history is far more preoccupied with explicit than the doctrines of the economics than with politics or twentieth century. For one thing, most strategy. "liberal" European societies were The developed states of the West do illiberal insofar as they believed in the maintain defense establishments and legitimacy of imperialism, that is, the in the postwar period have competed right of one nation to rule over other vigorously for influence to meet a nations without regard for the wishes of the ruled. The justifications for imperialism varied from nation to 17 It took European colonial powers like nation, from a crude belief in the France several years after the war to legitimacy of force, particularly when admit the illegitimacy of their empires, but applied to non-Europeans, to the decolonialization was an inevitable White Man's Burden and Europe's consequence of the Allied victory which Christianizing mission, to the desire to had been based on the promise of a give people of color access to the restoration of democratic freedoms. 15  The End of History? Francis Fukuyama The National Interest, Summer 1989 worldwide communist threat. This troublesome aspects to contemporary behavior has been driven, however, by Chinese foreign policy, such as the an external threat from states that reckless sale of ballistic missile possess overtly expansionist technology in the Middle East; and the ideologies, and would not exist in their PRC continues to manifest traditional absence. To take the "neo-realist" great power behavior in its theory seriously, one would have to sponsorship of the Khmer Rouge believe that "natural" competitive against Vietnam. But the former is behavior would reassert itself among explained by commercial motives and the OECD states were Russia and the latter is a vestige of earlier China to disappear from the face of the ideologically-based rivalries. The new earth. That is, West Germany and China far more resembles Gaullist France would arm themselves against France than pre-World War I each other as they did in the 193Os, Germany. Australia and New Zealand would send The real question for the future, military advisers to block each others' however, is the degree to which Soviet advances in Africa, and the U.S.- elites have assimilated the Canadian border would become consciousness of the universal fortified. Such a prospect is, of course, homogenous state that is post-Hitler ludicrous: minus Marxist-Leninist Europe. From their writings and from ideology, we are far more likely to see my own personal contacts with them, the "Common Marketization" of world there is no question in my mind that politics than the disintegration of the the liberal Soviet intelligentsia rallying EEC into nineteenth-century around Gorbachev have arrived at the competitiveness. Indeed, as our end-of-history view in a remarkably experiences in dealing with Europe on short time, due in no small measure to matters such as terrorism or Libya the contacts they have had since the prove, they are much further gone Brezhnev era with the larger European than we down the road that denies the civilization around them. "New legitimacy of the use of force in political thinking," the general rubric international politics, even in self- for their views, describes a world defense. dominated by economic concerns, in The automatic assumption that which there are no ideological grounds Russia shorn of its expansionist for major conflict between nations, communist ideology should pick up and in which, consequently, the use of where the czars left off just prior to the military force becomes less legitimate. Bolshevik Revolution is therefore a As Foreign Minister Shevardnadze put curious one. It assumes that the it in mid-1988: evolution of human consciousness has The struggle between two opposing stood still in the meantime, and that systems is no longer a determining the Soviets, while picking up currently tendency of the present-day era. At the fashionable ideas in the realm of modern stage, the ability to build up economics, will return to foreign material wealth at an accelerated rate policy views a century out of date in on the basis of front-ranking science the rest of Europe. This is certainly not and high-level techniques and what happened to China after it began technology, and to distribute it fairly, its reform process. Chinese and through joint efforts to restore competitiveness and expansionism on and protect the resources necessary for the world scene have virtually mankind's survival acquires decisive disappeared: Beijing no longer importance.18 sponsors Maoist insurgencies or tries to cultivate influence in distant African countries as it did in the 1960s. This is 18 Vestnik Ministerstva Inostrannikh Del not to say that there are not SSSR no. 15 (August 1988), 27-46. "New 16  The End of History? Francis Fukuyama The National Interest, Summer 1989 The post-historical consciousness from the Soviet Union will mean its represented by "new thinking" is only death as a living ideology of world one possible future for the Soviet historical significance. For while there Union, however. There has always may be some isolated true believers been a very strong current of great left in places like Managua, Russian chauvinism in the Soviet Pyongyang, or Cambridge, Union, which has found freer Massachusetts, the fact that there is expression since the advent of not a single large state in which it is a glasnost. It may be possible to return going concern undermines completely to traditional Marxism-Leninism for a its pretensions to being in the while as a simple rallying point for vanguard of human history. And the those who want to restore the death of this ideology means the authority that Gorbachev has growing "Common Marketization" of dissipated. But as in Poland, Marxism- international relations, and the Leninism is dead as a mobilizing diminution of the likelihood of large- ideology: under its banner people scale conflict between states. cannot be made to work harder, and This does not by any means imply its adherents have lost confidence in the end of international conflict per se. themselves. Unlike the propagators of For the world at that point would be traditional Marxism-Leninism, divided between a part that was however, ultranationalists in the USSR historical and a part that was post- believe in their Slavophile cause historical. Conflict between states still passionately, and one gets the sense in history, and between those states that the fascist alternative is not one and those at the end of history, would that has played itself out entirely still be possible. There would still be a there. high and perhaps rising level of ethnic The Soviet Union, then, is at a fork and nationalist violence, since those in the road: it can start down the path are impulses incompletely played out, that was staked out by Western even in parts of the post-historical Europe forty-five years ago, a path that world. Palestinians and Kurds, Sikhs most of Asia has followed, or it can and Tamils, Irish Catholics and realize its own uniqueness and remain Walloons, Armenians and Azeris, will stuck in history. The choice it makes continue to have their unresolved will be highly important for us, given grievances. This implies that terrorism the Soviet Union's size and military and wars of national liberation will strength, for that power will continue continue to be an important item on to preoccupy us and slow our the international agenda. But large- realization that we have already scale conflict must involve large states emerged on the other side of history. still caught in the grip of history, and they are what appear to be passing from the scene. V The end of history will be a very sad time. The struggle for recognition, the THE PASSING of Marxism- willingness to risk one's life for a purely abstract goal, the worldwide Leninism first from China and then ideological struggle that called forth daring, courage, imagination, and thinking" does of course serve a idealism, will be replaced by economic propagandistic purpose in persuading calculation, the endless solving of Western audiences of Soviet good technical problems, environmental intentions. But the fact that it is good concerns, and the satisfaction of propaganda does not mean that is sophisticated consumer demands. In formulators do not take many of its ideas the post-historical period there will be seriously. 17  The End of History? Francis Fukuyama The National Interest, Summer 1989 neither art nor philosophy, just the perpetual caretaking of the museum of human history. I can feel in myself, and see in others around me, a powerful nostalgia for the time when history existed. Such nostalgia, in fact, will continue to fuel competition and conflict even in the post-historical world for some time to come. Even though I recognize its inevitability, I have the most ambivalent feelings for the civilization that has been created in Europe since 1945, with its north Atlantic and Asian offshoots. Perhaps this very prospect of centuries of boredom at the end of history will serve to get history started once again. !" Francis Fukuyama is deputy director of the State Department's policy planning staff and former analyst at the RAND Corporation. This article is based on a lecture presented at the University of Chicago's John M. Olin Center and to Nathan Tarcov and Allan Bloom for their support in this and many earlier endeavors. The opinions expresses in this article do not reflect those of the RAND Corporation or of any agency of the U.S. government. 18