Fukuyama and the Story So Far

by the educated class

I’ve never read Francis Fukuyama and his iconic The End of History and the Last Man. And I realize that I should, after reading “Fukuyama’s Victory” at Quillette.

Fukuyama is a philosopher that worked for the RAND Corporation and since then in various professorships and think tanks. OK, what’s the short line on End of History?

La Wik says the book, written after the end of the Cold War and the Soviet Union proposed

not just ... the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: That is, the end-point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.

Permit me to disagree. Let us first display some thoughts from the Quillette piece:

Fukuyama argues that the victory of liberal democracy has taken place in the “realm of consciousness,”

Er, I would say it is the suppression of non-educated-class forms of consciousness.

[But then there] is the breakdown of the broad liberal consensus in many Western societies. Beyond the structural problems Fukuyama identified in Political Order and Political Decay (such as powerful interest groups manipulating the formation and implementation of public policy), the rise of populism, nationalism, and other forms of identity politics has created hostility to liberal values on the Left and Right.

No. I’d call the rise of populism and nationalism a middle-class rebellion against the rule of the educated class. And “identity politics” is of course part of the political formula by which the educated class dominates and bullies the middle class.

Recall that liberalism is built upon inclusive ideas such as reasonable pluralism. Nationalist movements like Trumpism reject these ideas in favor of a narrow conception of citizenship[.]

Yeah. Except that the educated class has betrayed that “reasonable pluralism” because of its need to dominate the middle class.

But then there is the threat or “patrimonialism.”

The threat that Fukuyama emphasizes most often in the Political Order series is repatrimonialization—when the impersonal state is captured by rent-seeking elites.

Yes, but all politics is the fight against the enemy and supplying goodies for the supporters: rent-seeking by any other name.

Let us talk first about liberal democracy as “the end-point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”

Permit me to disagree.

It’s easy to see how Fukuyama thinks that liberal democracy is the “end point.” As an academic and high-status member of the educated elite, it is natural for him to think of the present form of government as the end point. That’s because “liberal democracy” really means rule by the educated experts with help from lefty activists. Ordinary Commoners need not apply. So of course an educated expert like Fukuyama thinks that the rule of the educated experts is the end point of history.

In his world view “the rise of populism, nationalism, and other forms of identity politics has created hostility to liberal values on the Left and Right.”

Or, you could say, the rise of populism and nationalism reflect the rebellion of ordinary middle-class Commoners against the dictatorship of the educated class.

And permit me to disagree on another point. It is not “the end of history” until the end of politics. Fukuyama and his class think their rule is the end of history because who would want to change the beneficent rule of the educated Oz?

But it is in the nature of all regimes to rule for the benefit of themselves and their clients. And to experience anyone that disagrees as the enemy. And to make war on the enemy. Because there is no politics without an enemy.

And while there is politics there will be an enemy, and while there is an enemy there will be “history.”

Because, really, history is the narrative of politics so far, as written by the current ruling class. There cannot be an “end of history” until there is an end of politics.