<< That is him, but he was right, although everybody misunderstood him. Fukuyama is (imo) one of America's best political scientists. Fukuyama was defining history in the Hegelian sense - that is, as the clash between two competing ideologies. He said that with the fall of the Soviet Union, there was no longer any meaningful ideological alternative to free-market liberal democracies, just small variations on the theme. He was, and remains, correct. No ideological alternative has presented itself, nor is it likely that one ever will. Thus the end of history, even though historical events continue. >>
See, with all due respect, this is bullshit. This is the fallacious so-called "Whig Interpretation" of history. It assumes that "history" has an ending point, which is, in this case, the triumph of free-market liberal democracies. Except, A) it hasn't triumphed yet; and B) you are assuming that it will. And even if it does, there's no guarantee that it will stay triumphant. Plenty of ideological alternatives have presented themselves. There's one brewing as we speak in Afghanistan, parts of Pakistan, and elsewhere in the Islamic world. It doesn't seem attractive to most of us in the West, but it seems to have a mighty appeal in some areas. History will not end until the world does. Nobody can predict the future. Fukuyama, to me, was just an avatar of right-wing Republican tub-thumping triumphalism, celebrating the here-and-now as if it were the whole point all along. Well, Marx was wrong, and so is Fukuyama. Tom Beck
