Analysis Of The End Of History By Fukuyama

The further development of industrialisation led to social and economic inequality. This led to a revision of classical liberal ideas to prevent the spread of ignorance and poverty. It is suggested that modern liberals have betrayed classical liberal ideas as they embrace collectivism and diverge from classical liberalism on issues such as freedom. However, it can be argued that modern liberals have simply built on classical liberal ideas such as its commitment to the individual.

Fukuyama argues that a modern liberal democracy needs a state, rule of law and accountability. A state is a centralized authority that holds military power on a selected territory. It is the armed forces that keep a nation safe on a domestic and foreign level. On the other hand, the rule of law came about through written legislation. Thus, written rules, organize power in a system no matter who is in power. This implies that a modern democracy must have legal institutions that are superior to a ruler, the army and bureaucracy. Finally, political accountability comes through accountable bodies like parliament’s and assemblies that represent the people. In the end, Fukuyama claims democracy is truly born when laws reflecting the people’s desires are stronger than individual rulers and elections are held.

World History in Context, written by David Christian (2003), questions the context of world history as well as the complexity of human history and the societies with which they live. In Christian’s article he argues that looking at world history in its global context, rather than one specific moment in history, is the way it is intended to be interpreted and allows historians to recognize reoccurring patterns and themes. World history is meant to be an unbiased account of only one specific species, humans (Christian 2003, 437-438). Historians often struggle with this challenging topic and tend to produce works extremely biased, usually towards stable ‘western civilizations’ and

Samuel Huntington’s controversial article “The Clash of Civilizations?” was first published in Foreign Affairs in 1993 and was subsequently turned into a book in 1996 titled The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. As this paper will show Huntington’s work can be seen as a product of the post-Cold War context it was written in. Huntington’s article takes a new perspective on the new world order and outlines a different way a thinking about how future world conflicts will unfold. Since the initial journal article was published in 1993 there has been a great deal of response from academics and also from Huntington himself. A majority of the responses come in the form of critiques, with the authors offering their own insight into how the post-Cold War World will operate. Although the validity of Huntington’s arguments have been questioned, it did create a great deal of controversy in the academic world. As Huntington explained in the preface of his 1996 book, the original article published in Foreign Affairs created more discussion in three years than any other article published in the journal since the 1940s.

In being so, liberalism possesses both economic and political components. Economic liberalism argues that, increasing economic interdependence would lead to a more peaceful international realm. Political liberalism bases itself on the belief that ‘A just world order assumes the establishment of republics ’. Thus, political liberalism as practiced by the United States during Cold War becomes a critical proponent of democracy promotion by noting that overlapping national interests will allow for a tamer international environment, engendering the notion that democracies do not engage in wars. Although democracy as interpreted by liberal theory on its own does not lead to free market, it may create the necessary infrastructure for such an event to occur. The promotion of democracy, to a great extent, increases economic interdependence through the alignment of core national values and therefore decreasing the probability of hegemony between the states. However, The notion of liberalism was undermined in the literature of the United States foreign policy after the Cold War. Even though the states were economically interdependent during the Cold War yet they engaged in rivalry for resources to the extent that if, assumingly, the “World Trade Organization” came to be perceived as a corrupt institution,

Fukuyama looks at whether any core conflicts of human life could be resolved by a political-economic structure other than modern liberalism. In terms of mankind’s “common ideological heritage”, two such alternatives have been fascism and communism. The seemingly self-destructive nature of fascism was revealed during World War II, and its failure has deflated further fascist movements. With the loss of fascism as a viable ideology, Fukuyama turns to communism as the greatest competitor for the Western liberal democracy ideology. However, he notes that with the failure of the Soviet Union and fundamental differences of China’s communism compared to Marx’s original idea eventually the strong of pull of communism dwindle out by itself. This points out a glaring flaw in his argument since there were many actions taken by Western Countries to diminish the spread of the ideology and attempts to undermine its

In his article, ‘The Worldwide Liberal Revolution’ he emphasizes on liberalization, democracy, and communism, authoritarian and totalitarian governments. He adds that there has been a much quieter revolution occurring over the past twenty or thirty odd years. This may be seen in the exceptional economic growth in East Asia since World War II.

For Marx, liberalism in the form of political emancipation and political elevation, is an incomplete force that attempts to solve problems we face in the world but doesn’t truly get to the core of

Samuel Huntington has made famous his thesis "the clash of civilizations", which was developed in his article in Foreign Affairs in 1993 and in the book that followed, in which the author expanded his thesis and reaffirmed the validity of his theory after the success and controversy that followed the publication of his article. In fact, the “civilizational” approach of conflicts today is now intrinsically linked to a comprehensive theory of international relations, which Samuel Huntington has developed by giving it an important value and a dominant paradigm

To begin with Francis Fukuyama's, provocative thesis, that after the fall of communism in Europe and the withering of the grand ideological contests, history too has ended. In his "end of history" theory, he maintained that the western liberal democracy had become the `final form of human government'. The fact is that though not all theorists have this kind of a faith in liberal democracy, and believe that it's not the only feasible form of democracy, they are in a minority. The theoretical circles and the popular discourse have been dominated by "liberal democracy."

Rather than eradicate capitalism, socialism exists within it. Moreover, democratic socialism is characterised through the balance and compromise between free market capitalism and the Governmental state (Bernstein 1993: 142, Heywood 2012:128, Anderson 1985: 10). Marx considered socialism as a class movement, which is what subsequently played out in the political realm, once universal suffrage had been achieved. For previously powerless people it was the only peaceful way to be heard: “Electoral politics constitutes the mechanism through which anyone can as a citizen express claims to goods and services.” (Przeworski 1985:11).

Capitalists and supporters of democracy believe that socialism and modern liberalism are detrimental to economic progress. Because prices of goods and wage of workers is controlled directly by the government, privately-owned companies and institutions cannot flourish under a socialist or modern liberalist government. People who value freedom of speech and human rights likewise oppose socialism and modern liberalism, because they believe that such ideologies limit a citizen’s right to choose which products to buy, what job to take, what religious belief to espouse. Even though modern liberalism is more subtle and suave than socialism, it still ends up giving too much power to the government in the guise of economic, political, and social security.

In conclusion, however, I find that it is not a meaningful argument to examine if ‘the end of history’ has indeed taken place, simply because Francis Fukuyama has set the basis of his theory too wide. People will naturally gravitate towards having more options in their lives, be it socially, economically or in this case, politically. This tendency would thus make Fukuyama’s ‘end of history’ irrefutable. The more pertinent question to explore would be how the end goal of liberal democracy can be properly managed, with it being based on the twin principles of liberty and equality. At this end point of history as we know it, trade-offs have to be made between the two- equality cannot be achieved without the actions of a state controlling liberty, while liberty cannot be attained fully without social inequality. The end of history has dawned, where there would be no further meaningful challenge to liberal democracy, but a new battle awaits with the conundrum of balance between liberty and equality in liberal

Fukuyama and McFaul make strong arguments for the importance of democracy promotion, but it is not without its flaws. The world is fragmented by ethnic, linguistic and religious differences, and as such, the notion that there exists 'moral universals' is viewed as dangerous (Dunne 2001, pp. 179). Gray (1995, pp. 146) aptly articulated that "the universalizing mission of liberal values such as democracy, capitalism and secularism undermine the traditions and practices of non-Western cultures." And that may illustrate the rejection of Liberalism thus far. Democracy, when promoted by Western states, is inextricably tied in with other Western ideals such as capitalism and secularism. These ideals often do not mesh well with prevailing cultural practices, resulting in dissent and potential military conflict, results contrary to Liberalism's ultimate goal. This leads to the second rationale: national security.

Culture and ideologies shape relationships, in which both define to whom one associates with. The question arises about which has more influence in international relations. Is it cultural factors such as customs, language or societal norms or political polices and philosophy. In 1996 Samuel P.Huntington published “The Clash of Civilizations” which the author gave a geo political theory that cultural differences between civilizations rather than ideological differences would be the primary source of global conflict in the post-cold war. This essay will focuses on the argument in Huntington’s book about how it presents the world, the problem and the proposal for a solution.