No End of History and No Last Man Anytime Soon
Jiayuguan, Gansu Province, China, April 5th, 2014
Salaroche


Francis Fukuyama made a big splash back in 1989 with his “End of History” essay and then made an even bigger splash in 1992 with the publication of his book “The End of History and The Last Man”, an expansion on his initial paper.

At the heart of Fukuyama’s exposé was the idea that, with the demise of the Soviet Union, Western-style liberal democracy (WSLD) now shone triumphantly as the highest conceptual achievement among all possible ideologies and that, in so doing, it declared the end of all possible ideological wars. Political evolution, he proposed, was from now on meant to remain fixed in time allowing only for repairs and improvements to the socio-economic systems embedded in liberal democracy.

In that view, there were to be no more conflicts based on grand ideological designs bent on imposing their fundamental tenets on each other by political ruse or military force. Humanity no longer had anywhere to look in its search for the best possible social system, for it had already attained it, thereby reaching the end of its social, economic, and political quest.

That meant that Western-style liberal Man was now at the cusp of humanity’s ideological evolution, no offspring of such Man could ever aspire to surpass such conceptual achievement, for it was non plus ultra. Pax EurAmericana was to envelope the world in its peaceful mantle and from then on humanity could only anticipate living with increasing levels of harmony.

Alas, however, Fukuyama’s grand postulate was eventually meant to be reduced to a mere plausible theoretical argument for the same reason that Chicago School of Economics theory was meant to be utterly falsified before, during, and after the 2008 financial meltdown: Both theories assumed a perfect world in which human beings are rational actors. But there’s no such thing. Just as much as greed and corruption can generate catastrophic market failures, so religion, nationalism, and lust for power can seriously challenge WSLDs, thereby negating the possibility for any imminent End of History.

In Western conceptuality, WSLD may well be the ultimate ideal for human society, but the chances for Neoclassical Economics and Rational Theory to be constant providers of economic and political stability to the world are as slim and remote as the chances for Homo Democraticus to become Homo Globalis anytime soon.

No doubt Fukuyama had Homo EurAmericanus in mind when conceiving “The Last Man”, but that only represented a misplaced idealization of the world based on his own love of the West, not on objective analyses of the depth and variety of ideas that disagreed with his. Fukuyama pictured communism as the last sizable opponent left to stand against liberal democracy, but in so doing he failed to detect the rising specter in theocratic, authoritarian, and autocratic rivals. More significantly, he failed to factor human weakness into his equation.

The pillars that support any WSLD edifice are as frail as those that support free markets, for they stand on foundations contingent on human nature, which is changeable and unpredictable; worse still, it is corruptible. When markets are left to run as recklessly unbridled as they did in the first decade of this century, there’s no chance for any country embracing such a system to ever reach any Fukuyama-style uncontested Nirvana. No possible “Last Man” can ever walk the Earth under such constant financial threat. Such irrationality can only project uncertainty and conflict on the world’s horizon.

Where is the rationality of the last man when the Supreme Court just keeps depositing the political future of the country in the hands of the moneyed American elites? That’s no enticement for any country in the world to follow such pseudo non-plus-ultra social system. The dialectic continues as American-style decadence keeps pressing the need for alternative social, economic, and political systems. As the situation stands today, Homo EurAmericanus can never become the model for the last man, for he is increasingly corrupt and increasingly complacent in his own corruption.

Some people may have thought that a mini End of History had been reached in Iceland right before 2008: A general high standard of living, an optimal and efficient universal healthcare system, no deep social-class demarcations, and practically no crime rate to speak of. But then the government decided to liberalize the banking system and all hell broke loose. People became greedy and irrational and, by 2008, a solvent nation with a US$ 32 billion GDP had become a bankrupt nation with a US$100 billion national debt.

No doubt the way things have been going is no harbinger for any End of History to descend upon us soon, but that is nothing new. The argument presented here is merely a comment on perceptions and events that have been for long part of the public domain. There’s no ideological or idealist claim in these words aiming to contradict Fukuyama’s postulate regarding Democratic Capitalism for, strictly in my view, such is indeed the non-plus-ultra social Econo-political system existing in the realm of ideals.

In the real world, however, there is no reified example of any triumphant final Western-style Liberal Democracy of the Fukuyama sort. Most existing WSLDs are deeply flawed, unstable and unpredictable, as they carry within their core tenets the seeds for social, economic, and political instability of a kind that isn’t going to abate anytime soon.

The strongest leg in the EurAmerican Last Man was supposed to be the United States, but the US keeps steadily losing its chances of being much longer an enviable sociopolitical and economic model to the world. With its seriously divided and repeatedly paralyzed legislative branch and its elite-leaning judiciary continuing to rule in favor of the privileged few, the US no longer looks like a shining city on a hill. And the now-well-known collusion of the FTC, the SEC and the Credit Rating agencies with the Lehman Brothers, the Bear-Sterns, and the Citicorps of the world, makes America look increasingly like the land of opportunity mostly for the top one percent of the income scale.

That would leave the EurAmerican Last Man limping around on a single enfeebled leg: The European Union. If the EU, particularly the core 18 states of the Eurozone, were to survive the current economic crisis in its present shape and were to go on to become a strong cultural, economic, political, and military power, they could eventually constitute a model that the rest of the world might be very willing to emulate. But that is an “if” that offers no guarantees of success in the foreseeable future, particularly now that Russia is jeopardizing the EU's supply of vital energy sources.

Under this light, there’s no way that nations traditionally accustomed to live under Authoritarian rule will happily switch to any WSLD system that in the long run only offers uncertainty and insecurity to everyone.

The Russian people’s reaction to Putin’s annexation of Crimea is a case in point. In presenting to them the picture of a renewed conservative authoritarian militaristic expansionist Russia standing firm against western “decadent” influence, Vladimir Putin won the hearts and minds of a large majority of Russians, thereby proving that in the eyes of millions of his followers there’s no End of History anywhere in sight. And even as Putin’s anti-western demagoguery doesn’t yet amount to a restart of the Cold War, it does amount to a clear repudiation of WSLDs, which in turn means that the Last Man cannot hope to set foot on Russian soil anytime in the foreseeable future.

And as far as China is concerned, the better educated the Chinese people that you talk to are, the more they affirm that their centralized authoritarian one-party system is superior to any WSLD. In their view, there will indeed come an End of History and a Last Man someday in the future, but the archetype for that Last Man is going to be invested with very distinctive Chinese characteristics, and the End of History will only come the day that China dictates to the rest of the world what to do and what not to do.

In a Western-style ideal world, Fukuyama’s core postulate would definitely have no rivals. As it is, however, the End of History and the Last Man seem to be concepts that will remain unattainable in real life for a very long time to come.

Salaroche