Author: Principality of Spirit
Before this review of “The End of History and The Last Man” can truly begin, a preface is in order. I did my very best to keep in mind that the book was published in 1992 and thus couldn’t have necessarily predicted many later situations. That being said, while I have omitted certain hindsight-based criticisms, I cannot fully ignore that this book’s purpose is of a mildly prophetic nature regardless. Thus, certain critiques based on later events are unavoidable.
I have to admit that this book brings out a multitude of different feelings in me, due to the premature celebration of liberalism it represents. It is at times very funny, like when Fukuyama writes that the Russians made a “mature choice”1 in electing Boris Yeltsin and allowing him to carry out his vision with similarly-minded reformers. At other times, it becomes an insightful window into the world of elite power plays in the politics of various developing countries, like with his description of the Deng-era Chinese reforms and the political maneuvers at play before, during and after the Tiananmen Square protests 2. Then, a few paragraphs later, it turns into a failed attempt at historiography, as Fukuyama struggles to prove that Liberal democracy is the one system destined to sit at the “end of history”. I often found myself going from laughter, to mild annoyance, to eye rolling, all in the span of seconds.
Fukuyama himself has made plenty of revisions and comments about his book over the decades and my intention is not to simply re-tread the same ground as his already numerous critics. Rather, I would like to focus more on how the deceptive sleights-of-hand he does with some of his arguments have taken a life of their own and many average people, who may have never read him or may not even take him seriously, still believe in the same faulty conclusions as him, adopted second or third-hand. The conclusions reached in the book serve to perpetuate an order that is becoming increasingly untenable and lead only to the delusion of the reader about the state of the world. A delusion dangerous to them, akin to going back to sleep while one’s house is burning.
The Mishandling of Economics:
While the man himself admittedly doesn’t consider the economic angle to be the most significant, it is an appropriate place to start from. Besides, it would be best if I begun with the most laughable argument I have heard thus far.
Fukuyama points out that socialism did, in fact, provide workers with a 4 hour work day and the fulfillment of their basic needs, but he then goes on to say that capitalism remains superior because it provides workers with the bare necessities only in 1 hour of labor. You might be confused here as to why you are working 9-5 if that is the case, don’t worry, he will clear everything up. The reason for the 8 hour work day, he says, is so the worker under capitalism can go beyond mere necessities and buy himself barbecue grills and washing machines! 3 That’s right, people nowadays work 8 hours a day out of some insatiable need for washing machines and grills. I am sure we can all agree! Admittedly, you will find little sympathy for socialism in this article, but it appears clear to me that it is actually a more honest system, in this regard, than capitalism. Socialism concerned itself with the material necessities of life, not just in food, clothing or shelter, but in things like vacations and entertainment as well. What it found out soon, though, is that these things may keep a man alive and happy for a little while, but they do not grant him the fundamental purpose he so desperately searches for. Capitalism provides the same exact necessities, but the one advantage it has over socialism, something which is also mentioned by Fukuyama, is that it operates by creating a culture of consumerism.
It appears that socialism lacked sufficient mechanisms of keeping its workers continuously but temporarily happy, so as to not imagine alternatives or think too hard about their overall dissatisfaction. What the consumer-oriented economy and culture, in capitalism, have done is not truly fulfil man’s search for meaning, as the mental health/depression/suicide epidemics of today blatantly demonstrate, but grant them enough shiny trinkets and neat gadgets at regular intervals so that they can continuously get their 3 minute thrills, before the boredom and existential dread can truly sink in. Both systems, due to their narrow materialist scope, are so obsessed with this artificial construction of the “homo economicus”4 that neither one can provide their people with a holistic vision for the attainment of meaning in society.
The Sins of Faulty Historiography:
Fukuyama makes a very bizarre claim when it comes to the idea of cyclical history 5. He argues that cyclical history cannot be true because it would require an apocalyptic catastrophe, which erases past knowledge almost completely. Ignoring the fact that the concept is a well-established theme in many different cultures and religions 6, or that it is a well-attested historical fact that we have lost and re-discovered certain technologies and that certain civilizations radically abandoned most of their past knowledge due to some significant event, I don’t think it is particularly hard to say that, for all our cliché statements about “remembering history”, the average person doesn’t give a single care about their past or the wisdom of old thinkers. This doesn’t just mean the ignorant “plebeian mob”, the vast majority of our business leaders, politicians and scientists are just as historically illiterate, considering most historical knowledge as completely irrelevant in the face of modernity.
We praise people like Plato and Aristotle as these “really smart guys from the past” but literally no-one is actually discussing the depth of their ideas – besides taking a few quotes out of context, so they can fortify arguments in favor of the current paradigm. The fact that both men, when read in their totality, reveal to have had caution, if not open contempt, for democracy, or that they would be absolutely horrified by modern ideas of egalitarianism is never mentioned anywhere. In fact, the only times I’ve ever heard these arguments come up is when someone is trying to discredit them as “not so great after all”. This brings us very nicely to the next problem in Fukuyama’s argument: the bias of presentism.
The reason these people claim that Plato and Aristotle, in this example, are not great, is because they are morally judging them through their contemporary ethical lens. To them, Aristotle making arguments in favor of slavery doesn’t mean we need to grant him the benefit of the doubt and read what he has to say, since he is still that “really smart ancient fellow” after all, no, it means we need to condemn him without a “hearing” and completely re-evaluate his status. From “wise ancient guy” to “contemptible primitive oppressor”. I think the problem is obvious here, when faced with historical knowledge or things we supposedly consider “ancient wisdom”, we either ignore anything that doesn’t fit with the fashionable ethical standards promoted today or we condemn these thinkers as unworthy of being read. Almost nobody actually reads them to form a more nuanced perspective or with an open enough mind to see the merits of their arguments.
In this manner, historical knowledge and wisdom is not, and cannot be, cumulative, certainly not in the same way as a field like mathematics. We aren’t building on our past, we are continuously watering down, twisting, misrepresenting, throwing away and otherwise denigrating any historical knowledge we consider unworthy of retaining. Most of the humanities are constantly being re-interpreted in this manner, practically leaving us with nothing, for as long as we are unable to respect our ancestors and not wish damnation on them for every tiny thing we find disagreeable in their thought or conduct. To return to the idea of “presentism”, Fukuyama also makes the argument that since history moves in concrete socio-economic epochs, in Hegel’s view, Liberal democracy must be the final stage of civilization. There is one problem though, none of what he says guarantees that this “final stage” must be liberal democracy. If Fukuyama had a similar idea in 1260s France, would he have said that about liberal democracy, or would it have seemed more likely to him that the illustrious and saintly realm of king Louis IX and his descendants would last millennia as the perfect government? What if Fukuyama had been a courtier of emperor Constantine? Would he not have argued about the “eternity of the Roman Imperium”?. Nothing implies that liberal democracy is any more of a “final stage”, other than the fact that we are currently living in its historical paradigm, similarly to the attempts of earlier authors, in the aforementioned times and many others, who also made such assertions. If anything, those authors probably have more of a point, since liberal democracy is one of the shortest-lived and least stable governments in most of history, as compared to millennia old kingdoms and empires.
Another one of Fukuyama’s pitfalls is his treatment of what we often refer to as “Hegelian dialectics”. It is the idea that there is a system in place, which has contradictions, out of those contradictions grows an antithesis and from the battle between the former and the latter is born a synthesis – a new, better, system without the contradictions of the previous one but with new contradictions. Fukuyama develops this theory, fully accepts it, and then mind-bogglingly goes on to assert that liberal democracy actually has no contradictions. Why so? It is anyone’s guess, it’s not like he explains it anywhere. Even worse, he provides Karl Marx’s explanation of the contradictions inherent in capitalism, only to say “but he was wrong”. You don’t have to be a Marxist to conclude that Fukuyama just lost an argument against the long dead specter of Marx, by willfully quoting him at that. There is no way to be more charitable about this, liberal democracy appears to be exempt from contradictions merely because it is Fukuyama’s political system of choice. “All these things have flaws, except the thing I really really like, that one is just perfect” – An argument I would expect to find in some high school debate club, not written in a book by a serious and credentialed political scientist.
Thymos – The “almost” Saving Grace:
From the third chapter of the book and onward, it actually gets surprisingly better. Long gone are most of the naïve assumptions and assertions made above and now there is a more sober look at the potential pitfalls of liberal democracy, or the elements which may cause it problems, even if Fukuyama considers them ultimately surmountable.
Here we get an exploration of a pivotal concept, the idea of thymos, as originally explained by Plato, connected with Hegel’s idea of the “struggle for recognition”. Fukuyama translates the former as “spiritedness”, explaining that someone cannot understand human nature merely as a result of either hedonistic-animalistic desire or “enlightened” self-interest/reason, but must consider a person’s inner sense of dignity or esteem and how that connects to the way they interact with the world. This is the thymos. Hegel’s “struggle for recognition” is a similar concept, as implied by the name, describing a need among human beings to be respected by their peers, which often leads to conflict historically. Hegel’s idea actually has a very interesting quirk to it that Fukuyama is forced to deal with straightaway. Hegel describes the age of the “first man” as one in which humans risked death fighting other humans merely for the recognition of their moral and social superiority over the other. This led to a political and social order in which those who feared death had to content themselves with a life of servitude to those who risked their lives for recognition and ultimately triumphed. For Hegel, this discarding of the fear of death in order to prove personal exceptionality was absolutely awe-inspiring, Fukuyama sees it much more negatively, as you can imagine.
Then, Fukuyama goes on to explain how the early liberals like Locke and Hobbes saw this innate human trait as a danger to society, pathologized it, and strove to create a new form of man: the bourgeois, who is only interested in staying safe and keeping or growing his material wealth. A man who displays none of the dignity of thymos and is instead quite content by fulfilling his hedonism and rational self-interest alone. Fukuyama’s overall point here is to prove these thinkers wrong by arguing that thymos could be integrated into liberal democracy. My own takeaway on the matter was that this behavior on behalf of Locke and Hobbes is an indictment on the whole liberal project, from start to finish. It is absolutely insane and pathological to attempt to socially engineer humans to forgo their own dignity in exchange for simple pleasures and shiny trinkets, it is absolutely perverse to remove from humanity its most beautiful and constructive drive (the striving for greatness), merely because it has certain destructive side-effects.
Fukuyama here disappoints once again, as he tries to slither his way around the fundamental problem of a reality in which people seek to establish social superiority and differentiation against others, and how that clashes with any political project that supports some form of egalitarianism. He ends up making a division between isothymia – the desire to have the same good standing as others – and megalothymia – this vainglorious quest for social, moral and political superiority, arguing that isothymia is perfectly compatible with a liberal democratic framework and, thus, thymos can be integrated into the system without issue.
This would be all fine and well, if it weren’t for the fact that “isothymia” has never existed. The desire of “why does my neighbor have certain benefits but I don’t” is not about obtaining exactly what the neighbor may have, no more or no less, but about a psychological need to obtain more. When the people who make the demands are given what they originally asked for, harmony is not established, but the goals are shifted and more demands are made. This can be observed easily through the fact that there have been at least 3 separate waves of feminism, with some arguing that we are currently witnessing a 4th or 5th wave as well, or that the fight for civil rights in America could not, and did not, end with the civil rights act.
Whatever one may think of these movements or the righteousness of what they represent, nobody can deny the historical reality that they all expressed different end goals at different periods of time and that none of them have actually been voluntarily disbanded. These particular examples are also of interest, because whatever benefits the “disenfranchised groups” had, before their fight for equality, were kept, regardless of the fact that this made them unequally privileged over the formerly “oppressive” class, which lacked those benefits to begin with. Case in point, the practically automatic female child custody and the expectation of a twisted sense of “gentlemanly behavior” 7 still existing today, even though “actual equality” would have removed them so as to not tip the scales the other way.
With that in mind, I don’t believe it would be cynical of me to argue that such social and political movements are trying to jockey for as many special allowances, benefits and privileges as they can get and, hence, are refusing to let go of their original grievances, with the excuse that the process has not been “completed”. This power-jockeying is a fully natural and fully human phenomenon in my view, but it is also the reason why Fukuyama’s isothymia falls on its face. People will attempt to occupy as high a position as they can get to before they become fearful of danger, back down and content themselves with what they have obtained. Hegel’s original thesis wins out in all ages, not just during the time of the “first man”.
“The Last man” – Death of an Argument:
The fourth chapter of the book is, overall, inconsequential to the overarching points of Fukuyama, as well as the contentions of this article. There, Fukuyama vents out his frustrations with the “realist”, Kissinger-led, school of international diplomacy. As implied before, I will not dwell on it, though here I also think that Fukuyama lost an argument against the inanimate quotes of the people he was trying to intellectually best.
This leaves us with the final and most thrilling chapter of the entire book. Here, Fukuyama fully explores the problems with liberal democracy: that it doesn’t present the satisfaction of the thymotic needs of all people but an unhappy compromise between masters and slaves, that legislating inequality is a fool’s errand since people are naturally unequal, that one’s status in life will inherently be judged differently than another’s and so his “isothymia” concept will fall apart in seconds, that liberal “open-mindedness” has limits because even a liberal society requires the propagation of certain dogmas in the minds of all citizens (a certain uniformity in thought, like the rest of those ancient evil tyrannies 8), he recognizes how the end of community was brought on by liberalism and is paradoxically doing harm to its very function. Furthermore, he even goes as far as to outright admit that no regime is perfect or made for all people, including Liberal democracy. He writes that Aristotle may have been correct to say that political regimes are also cyclical, much like the rest of history, with the dissatisfied men of each system leading to its overthrow and creating another system, which of course leads to a new class of malcontents.
Reading all that, I was finally ready to admit that I, and everyone else who criticized Fukuyama, had been too hasty. That this was a very reasonable thinker who understood things in depth, that I was wrong and he had written a very fair description of history, if only slightly biased towards his system of preference. I could have even called him a modern “Tocqueville”. So why have I not said any of this yet?
“And yet, the two legs of this dyad are hardly equal. The Neitzschean (sic) alternative forces us to break completely with the desiring part of the soul. This century has taught us the horrendous consequences of the effort to resurrect unbridled megalothymia, for in it we have, in a sense, already experienced some of the “immense wars” foretold by Nietzsche. ”9“…If men of the future become bored with peace and prosperity, and seek new thymotic struggles and challenges, the consequences threaten to be ever more horrendous. For now we have nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, which will allow millions to be killed instantly and anonymously.” 10 “By this standard, when compared to the historical alternatives available to us, it would seem that liberal democracy gives fullest scope to all three parts. If it would not qualify as the most just regime ‘in speech’, it might serve as the most just regime ‘in reality.’” 11 These three quotes, which span barely two and a half pages, completely ruined the book, it felt like a movie which had achieved a great buildup and then wasted it on the lamest climax in existence. Fukuyama’s grand contribution to modern political discourse is “yeah there are tons of problems, but we shouldn’t try anything else cuz nukes are, like, really dangerous bro”.
I will not go into too much detail on how ridiculous the idea that nukes will ever be used is, but I will say that literally every ruler of any country has a vested interest in personally surviving, even if they don’t care about anyone else (which is also a big if, as most humans, politicians included, like having families, children, neighbors and communities around them). I can chalk this up to Fukuyama suffering through the full weight of Cold War “nuclear Armageddon panic”, what I cannot ignore in this argument is how easy it is to see that the world was not going to turn itself into “the meatgrinders of the world wars again, now with nukes™”. At one point, he says that war has been thoroughly “democratized”, leading to the offloading of casualties to the entire civilian population, like it happened with the World Wars. Are we supposed to ignore the direct admission that democracy has offloaded unimaginable suffering to millions of otherwise average civilians? seems like a pretty significant indictment against Fukuyama’s favorite system.
It should also be said that, even in the 80s and 90s, one could observe private military companies (i.e. mercenaries), like the Wagner Group, were coming back. It was also visible that wars were now fought by limited professional armies in proxy countries and not directly by major powers. At most, reservists are called into conflict or there are some volunteer drives, but the mass draft is dead and will remain so for a long time. These are actually the perfect conditions for thymotic glory-seeking men and the return of a historical warrior class, or the so-called first men and ancient “masters”, ruling over a mass of people who, seeking safety and comfort, simply do not concern themselves with military and political matters.
Beyond this though, is it not awfully convenient that, for Fukuyama, the end of history must necessarily be 90s liberal democracy, because anything else risks bringing about “THE APOCALYPSE”?. If Khrushchev had made this same point in the 1950s, arguing that we must accept the inevitability of worldwide socialism, I wonder, would Fukuyama and co. willingly surrender, or would the “possibility of nuclear annihilation” be a risk “worth taking” in our “struggle against communism” then? If Hitler had developed the nuclear bomb in 1935 and argued for the inevitability of National Socialism, would Fukuyama spend his time writing books about “preserving the dominion of the Aryan and Japanese master races”, because all else would mean mass suffering? Surely not.
This is a weak cop-out, intended to handwave away the mounting issues that Fukuyama himself was able to recognize about his precious little government form. His arguments in-between and after the above-mentioned quotes also amount to handwaving, since they mention things that he has already provided the counter-argument to, or shown the problems of.
An End to the “End of History”:
In conclusion, I would like to caution the reader. One should never confuse what they like with what is inevitable, nor should they assume that the conditions of today are historically unique or more special just because we live in the present day. These things are illusions, which a proper reading of history can exorcise quite handily. Many much greater and much wiser men than you or I have tried to craft the perfect government, many more have tried to justify the existing system they lived in as a form of “perfection”. I would not urge someone to not have a preferred government nor would I tell them to dispense with the notion that some forms of government may be better than others, but I would still say that history always moves forward.
We are in this world for countless generations and we will be here for countless more. You cannot freeze time, you cannot stop history, and you cannot guarantee that you will always be safe and prosperous. These delusions must be cleansed from the system of anyone who seeks to weather the storms of existence. This is the contribution of Nietzsche to personal and political philosophy and this is what weak bourgeois men like Fukuyama cannot come to terms with.
Fundamentally, they are scared little people, hiding in shadows out of fear that the suffering of past generations may yet come to bite them as well. They do not truly believe that history can end, but it is only that false idea which pushes away their existential dread, so they embrace it and spread it as a form of validation. Going back to the experiences of the “first man”, it is only the ability to forgo a fear of suffering and death that allows a man to truly become a man, it is only this suffering, felt or deeply pondered, that can bring out the greatest things in men. As Nietzsche writes in The Gay Science: “I doubt that such pain makes us ‘better’; but I know that it makes us more profound” 12. That is the feeling which brings about the explosive creative energy needed for a civilizational resurgence. Anything less is just adding tape to the cracks on the wall and praying the building collapses later rather than sooner.
Author: Principality of Spirit
Footnotes