The End of History and the Last Man

A development of a 1989 essay, The End of History and the Last Man is a book by Francis Fukuyama, in which he argues that two forces, "the logic of modern science" and the "struggle for recognition" make liberal democracy a natural end state of historical development. If this is the case, however, he asks whether man will be satisfied with this, or if the "last man" will have a need to seek power and fulfillment through military or theological dictatorship.

Fukuyama's model is certainly not universal in futures studies or political science. His teacher and friend, Samuel Harrington, has a quite different view in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.

Strong vs. liberal states

While many think of the changes in authoritarianism in terms of the Soviet Union, he points to events fifteen years before, in Southern Europe:

• 1974: Caetano regime in Portugal overthrown, replaced in 1976 by Soares government
• 1974: Greek military government replaced by Karamanlis
• 1975: Peaceful transition after the death of Francisco Franco
• 1980: Turkish martial law triggered by terrorism, but return to civil rule by 1983

These transitions took place in a seemingly natural way, just as a series of Latin American totalitarian regimes were replaced by democracies in the 1980s. The new governments of Latin America withstood economic crisis.

The Philippines and South Korean governments reformed, with more subtle changes in Taiwan. In 1990, the Afrikaner-dominated government of South Africa peacefully moved to a power-sharing multiracial one.

What did all these events have in common? The strong states had a failure of legitimacy. The security organs of a totalitarian state, at least, must accept some legitimacy on the part of the dictator. They still do in Syria and Saudi Arabia. Fascism died with Hitler and Mussolini not being able to deliver on their promises of world domination; it was one thing to have torchlight parades and another to be overwhelmed.

Universal history

Even before looking at theories and examples of history, he poses the basic question: "do all or most societies evolve in a certain uniform direction, or do their histories follow either a cyclical or simply random path?" He mentions that Irving Kristol argued for the latter in his response to Fukuyama's original "End of History" article. Teilhard de Chardin argued, for theological reasons, that it was indeed directional, but as a matter of faith not subject to proof.

To support the hypothesis that history is directional, there is one human endeavor that is unquestionably "cumulative and directional" natural science. While some artistic work builds on earlier artists, scientific knowledge always builds on earlier work. Economic development also is directional and cumulative.

Science and the military

Scientific progress is not only an abstract influence on direction, due to its influence on military capability. No matter how brave a Zulu warrior with a spear might be, he could not win against an alert British soldier properly using a rifle. Diffusion of innovations, indeed, is how some Third World nations can regain sovereignty. While Fukuyama did not address it specifically, consider the relative position of a state with nuclear weapons.

Moving a step further, the threat of war forces a state to restructure in a manner that allows it to use military technology. Mobilizing resources is one aspect, but increasing education is necessary for high-technology militaries. Ethnic and kinship ties cannot interfere with military efficiency; consider the lack of common languages and the rivalries in the Soviet military, versus the increased human resources made available by racial integration in the U.S. military. A great deal of Russian modernization, going back to Peter the Great, was driven by military needs. The threats represented by Commodore Perry's Black Ships led to the Meiji Restoration and its replacement of the samurai with a large peasant army.

Economic development and efficient labor

He says that apartheid broke down due to a flawed assumption that black industrial labor could be kept apart from industry. While complex organizations are necessary, the organizations need not be large nor in one physical location, as demonstrated by software development. The rejection of the distinction between physical and mental labor led to catastrophic suffering under Mao and the Khmer Rouge.

Spain's economic development in the 1950s and 1960s came from moving markets into the countryside and disrupting traditional patron-client relationships.

By the end of the 1980s, China, the Soviet Union, and Eastern Union accepted the economic logic of advanced industrialization. China accepted markets and decentralized decisionmaking even after Tiamamen Square. While the timing varied, the Eastern European states all were moving to market economies by 1989. After Fukuyama's writing, Vietnam, while still officially Communist, was accepting doi moi reforms starting in 1988 and well developed by 2008.

Reversal of direction?

Could a science-driven direction be reversed? Fukuyama suggests it cannot, for several reasons. First are the expectations created by economic growth and the imperfect but real quality of life are hard to reject. Burma and Cambodia tried to stop development, which was hard alongside Singapores and Thailands.

Could simply freezing technology work? For small societies such as the Amish, yes. While radical environmentalism is seen as a real threat, the mainstream of the environmental movement sees development of alternative technologies as the most realistic way to reach their goals.

The struggle for recognition

While Fukuyama agrees the term may not be familiar, he traces it to the earliest Western political philosophy. Plato wrote there were three parts to the soul:

• A desiring part
• A reasoning part
• thymos, or a spiritual part

Fukuyama wrote that "the propensity to feel self-esteem arises...out of the thymos. It is like an innate sense of justice."

When human beings are treated as being less than their sense of self-worth, they feel anger, while if they fail to live up to their own sense of self-worth, they feel guilt. The relative emphasis is dependent on the society, with anthropological discussions of shame-based cultures and guilt-based cultures.

He returns, again and again, to Hegel's ideas in this area "the desire to be recognized as a human being with dignity drove man at the beginning of history into a bloody battle for the death for prestige...[this divided society] into a class of masters, who were willing to risk their lives, and a class of slaves, who gave in to their natural fear of death." Observing that both Hegel and Marx thought in terms of classes, while Marx saw them as economic, Hegel saw them as the willingness to confront death.

Fukuyama coins two Greek-derived words based on thymos, but adding Hegelian stuggle.

• megalothymia, or tyrannical ambition; the compulsion to be superior to others,
• isothymia, "the desire to be recognized as the equal of other people" This is closely tied to the idea of dignity

Technological innovation

An argument that socialism was the better vehicle for Third World development was strengthened, at first, by the failure of capitalism to bring economic growth in areas such as Latin America. The most recent attempt to continue Marxism as a rational approach as the dependencia or "dependency theory" that pitted the impoverished south, in the 1960s and 1970s, against an exploitative and industrialised North. Dependency theory traces back to Lenin's 1914 pamphlet, Imperialism, the highest form of capitalism. The key spokesman was the Argentine economist Raul Prebisch, who worked with the UN Economic Committee for Latin America (ECLA) in the 1950s, and late for the UN Conference on Trade and Development. He said that the poverty of the south was tied to a need for the north to keep it in dependency.

Dependency theorists defended against multinationals with tariff barriers; more radical members of the movement supported withdrawal from the capitalist system and movement into the Soviet bloc, as had Cuba. While this may continue as an intellectual model, the economic growth of East Asia, according to Fukuyama, has destroyed its legitimacy. If Third World underdevelopment was due to staying in the capitalist system, how could South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaya and Thailand be explained? These countries were not mineral-rich as were some nations of Latin America, but achieved their results with human capital.

Asian experience suggested that late modernization might well be an advantage, because the newly developing countries could obtain high technology and not be burdened with aging infrastructure. A counterargument is that East Asia has social institutions different than those in Latin America, which somehow interfere with growth.

Another counterargument is that capitalism has never really been tried in Latin America; the model remained mercantilist. Argentina, Brazil and Chile, in the 1930s and 1940s, avoided the labor-intensive industries that had been key in Asia. Brazil ran communications ifrastructure, provides electric power, runs mines, and operates financial institutions that cannot go bankrupt. Prices were set less the market than by negotiation between the state and strong unions.

Men without chests

Were liberal politics to go too far in banning ambition, which is a manifestation of the struggle for recognition, something critical might be lost. C.S. Lewis wrote of "men without chests", who had desire and reason, but not the core of self-assertiveness needed to get things done. "The chest was what made man man, 'by his intellect he is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal.'" Were we to use a Japanese rather than an English metaphor, we might speak of "men without bellies", as the spirit of the martial artist concentrates there.

Democratic institutions control megalothymia. James Madison, in Federalist 10, recognized that passion and political interest are intertwined. They could not reasonably be repressed, but the mechanics of speaking on issues, on running for office, on debating, could move them into constructive directions. The wolves could evolve to be the sheepdogs proudly guarding the flock. While a politician might want to be Caesar or Napoleon, "the system would allow him or her to be no more than a Jimmy Carter or a Ronald Reagan."

He suggests that recognition based on nationality or race, while not rational, is a real and dangerous one. If a liberal state is trusted to protect rights rather than persons, dignity follows.