The End of History: Religious Fundamentalism, Politics, Scientific Progress, Ethics & War (1992)

• published: 06 Mar 2015
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The End of History: Religious Fundamentalism, Politics, Scientific Progress, Ethics & War (1992) The End of History and the Last Man is a 1992 book by Francis Fukuyama, expanding on his 1989 essay The End of History?, published in the international affairs journal The National Interest. In the book, Fukuyama argues that the advent of Western liberal democracy may signal the endpoint of humanity's sociocultural evolution and the final form of human government. What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or 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. Fukuyama's position contradicts that of Karl Marx, who imagined that antagonistic history would end with communism displacing capitalism. Fukuyama himself identifies on some level with Marx, but identifies most strongly with the German philosopher Hegel, by way of Alexandre Kojève. Kojève argued that the progress of history must lead toward the establishment of a universal and homogenous state,[3] most likely incorporating elements of liberal or social democracy; but Kojeve's emphasis on the necessarily post-political character of such a state (and its citizens) makes such comparisons inadequate, and is irreducible to any mere triumph of capitalism. Various Western commentators have described the thesis of The End of History as flawed because it does not sufficiently take into account the power of ethnic loyalties and religious fundamentalism as a counter-force to the spread of liberal democracy, with the specific example of Islamic fundamentalism, or radical Islam, as the most powerful of these. Benjamin Barber wrote a 1992 article and a 1995 book, Jihad vs. McWorld, that addressed this theme. Barber described McWorld as a secular, liberal, corporate-friendly transformation of the world and used the word jihad to refer to the competing forces of tribalism and religious fundamentalism, with a special emphasis on Islamic fundamentalism. Samuel P. Huntington wrote a 1993 essay, The Clash of Civilizations, in direct response to The End of History; he then expanded the essay into a 1996 book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. In the essay and book, Huntington argued that the temporary conflict between ideologies is being replaced by the ancient conflict between civilizations. The dominant civilization decides the form of human government, and these will not be constant. He especially singled out Islam, which he described as having bloody borders. After the September 11, 2001, attacks, The End of History was cited by some commentators as a symbol of the supposed naiveté and undue optimism of the Western world during the 1990s, in thinking that the end of the Cold War also represented the end of major global conflict. In the weeks after the attacks, Fareed Zakaria called the events the end of the end of history, while George Will wrote that history had returned from vacation.[12] Fukuyama did discuss radical Islam briefly in The End of History. He argued that Islam is not an Imperialist force like Stalinism and Fascism; that is, it has little intellectual or emotional appeal outside the Islamic heartlands. Fukuyama pointed to the economic and political difficulties that Iran and Saudi Arabia face and argued that such states are fundamentally unstable: either they will become democracies with a Muslim society (like Turkey) or they will simply disintegrate. Moreover, when Islamic states have actually been created, they were easily dominated by the powerful Western states. In October 2001, Fukuyama, in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, responded to the declarations that the September 11 attacks had disproved his views by stating that time and resources are on the side of modernity, and I see no lack of a will to prevail in the United States today. He also noted that his original thesis does not imply a world free from conflict, nor the disappearance of culture as a distinguishing characteristic of societies. Another challenge to the end of history thesis is the growth in the economic and political power of two countries, Russia and China; China has a single-party state government, while Russia, though a democracy, has been described by some as de facto authoritarian.