I'm curious as to the reasoning behind your opinion that Francis Fukuyama’s “End of History” thesis was correct? I guess some could argue that it comes down to matters of subjective interpretation but I'm not so sure about that. The Liberal Democracies, after decades of centralization, public and private sector consolidation, and various sorts of de-democratization through the degradation of democratic governance structures such as the USA's two parties changing from being, at least to significant degrees, decentralized and publicly accessible mass-member parties into centralized and publicly inaccessible exclusionary membership parties. And, at least in the case of the USA, his adopted country at the time he wrote the essay in the 1980s, by the mid-1980s after a big leap towards centralization that had begun in the latter 1970s, the economy had been transformed from a diffuse one that was at least to a significant degree at all levels, if not mostly governed by competitive market structures into a concentrated one that is mostly governed by private sector central planning. Same with our government, it became far more centralized and very publicly inaccessible. So the "Liberal Democracy" that Francis Fukuyama was referring to in his “End of History” thesis was actually just centralized technocratic dictatorships. But even by then it had begun to fail according to its own terms: even their own -- oversimplified and in many contexts just sort of dumb --sacred metrics such Real GDP growth rates, Real GDP per capita growth rates. etc. had already begun to decline and have been on a downward trend ever since. Where they've failed the most is in the developing world. Those same indicators have been failing for most developing nations as well, especially after after 1990s when most countries there came fully on board with capital "G" Globalism. There is certainly mass discontent against the system all around the world, but this isn't because, as Francis Fukuyama posited, of a a romantic desire for adventurous rebellion or conflict or whatever, but rather good old fashioned discontent towards a cognitively deficient and morally corrupt centralized extraction system that is harming most all people under its remit.
Even if you think liberalism has had bad economic and political effects or whatever, that hardly means Fukuyama was wrong. There's been no serious ideological challenge to liberalism, just some half-baked challenges to aspects of the liberal order.
Hi thanks for the response! Respectfully, I would retort with two points in response to that: 1) What Fukuyama was referring to when he wrote "Liberal Democracy" (I guess we'll refer to it as "Liberalism" here) was/is radically different than what preceded it and it has only been in power since the latter 1970s, in historical contexts this is quite a short time and we're already seeing massive discontent with it all around the world. Which leads to point 2), Liberalism has in several big ways been a fundamentally imperialist project, one of those ways has been through centralized discourse control which its cartelization of politics has prevented any opposition from expressing itself at scale; but its there, and its growing, and there's even glimmers of great hope for civilization that seem to be emerging in areas of the so called "Global South" (not a fan of that term) bur for most people in the West and even for most native Liberals within those countries, these ideas and conversations and historical and contemporary analyses may as well be happening on Saturn. There are masses of people all across the planet who realize they are being subjugated and have picked up on (or in many cases just formulated them themselves!) the old and accurate opposition to Liberal and Conservative (and in some cases sort of Whig) thought that began to be slowly but forcibly erased from the Western mind after WW2. And by the mere fact that people all around the world are seeking actual political representation, actual ability to access and effect their governance, and a meaningful amount of actual decentralization means that they are challenging the system that has ruled since the latter 1970s and that is the system Fukuyama was referring to.
I'm curious as to the reasoning behind your opinion that Francis Fukuyama’s “End of History” thesis was correct? I guess some could argue that it comes down to matters of subjective interpretation but I'm not so sure about that. The Liberal Democracies, after decades of centralization, public and private sector consolidation, and various sorts of de-democratization through the degradation of democratic governance structures such as the USA's two parties changing from being, at least to significant degrees, decentralized and publicly accessible mass-member parties into centralized and publicly inaccessible exclusionary membership parties. And, at least in the case of the USA, his adopted country at the time he wrote the essay in the 1980s, by the mid-1980s after a big leap towards centralization that had begun in the latter 1970s, the economy had been transformed from a diffuse one that was at least to a significant degree at all levels, if not mostly governed by competitive market structures into a concentrated one that is mostly governed by private sector central planning. Same with our government, it became far more centralized and very publicly inaccessible. So the "Liberal Democracy" that Francis Fukuyama was referring to in his “End of History” thesis was actually just centralized technocratic dictatorships. But even by then it had begun to fail according to its own terms: even their own -- oversimplified and in many contexts just sort of dumb --sacred metrics such Real GDP growth rates, Real GDP per capita growth rates. etc. had already begun to decline and have been on a downward trend ever since. Where they've failed the most is in the developing world. Those same indicators have been failing for most developing nations as well, especially after after 1990s when most countries there came fully on board with capital "G" Globalism. There is certainly mass discontent against the system all around the world, but this isn't because, as Francis Fukuyama posited, of a a romantic desire for adventurous rebellion or conflict or whatever, but rather good old fashioned discontent towards a cognitively deficient and morally corrupt centralized extraction system that is harming most all people under its remit.
Even if you think liberalism has had bad economic and political effects or whatever, that hardly means Fukuyama was wrong. There's been no serious ideological challenge to liberalism, just some half-baked challenges to aspects of the liberal order.
Hi thanks for the response! Respectfully, I would retort with two points in response to that: 1) What Fukuyama was referring to when he wrote "Liberal Democracy" (I guess we'll refer to it as "Liberalism" here) was/is radically different than what preceded it and it has only been in power since the latter 1970s, in historical contexts this is quite a short time and we're already seeing massive discontent with it all around the world. Which leads to point 2), Liberalism has in several big ways been a fundamentally imperialist project, one of those ways has been through centralized discourse control which its cartelization of politics has prevented any opposition from expressing itself at scale; but its there, and its growing, and there's even glimmers of great hope for civilization that seem to be emerging in areas of the so called "Global South" (not a fan of that term) bur for most people in the West and even for most native Liberals within those countries, these ideas and conversations and historical and contemporary analyses may as well be happening on Saturn. There are masses of people all across the planet who realize they are being subjugated and have picked up on (or in many cases just formulated them themselves!) the old and accurate opposition to Liberal and Conservative (and in some cases sort of Whig) thought that began to be slowly but forcibly erased from the Western mind after WW2. And by the mere fact that people all around the world are seeking actual political representation, actual ability to access and effect their governance, and a meaningful amount of actual decentralization means that they are challenging the system that has ruled since the latter 1970s and that is the system Fukuyama was referring to.