Fukuyama's Basic Contention in The End of History and the Last Man
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In The End of History and the Last Man, Fukuyama's basic constention is as such. Liberal democracy and free market capitalism, as the most fundamentally satisfying form of government and method of organising the economy, represents the final stage of human government. All competing ideologies will fall in its wake. All states that are not presently liberal democracies must justify their rule so as to state that they are moving towards liberal democracy. They must promise freedom, they must promise democratic voting, because the legitimacy of the state is in question if it does not.

As such, those who contend that just because "x occurs" or "y happened" that Fukuyama is wrong are clearly missing the complexities of his argument.

Fukuyama's basic argument is divided into two, very long parts. The first is an empirical argument. It deals with the notion of "History" as opposed to history. The lower case history is simply the happening of events, whilst the upper-case History refers to the telelogical dimension to history. He states that capitalism is ultimately the only viable economic system in the modern world (given that he is writing at then of the Cold War) and that all states must ultiamtely adopt free market capitalism.

However, he fails to find that there is a necessary connection between free market capitalism and the emergence of democracy. Indeed, when capitalism is first incipient in a state a degree of autocracy is perhaps preferable - it enables the teething pains to be overcome.

Throughout all of this, science and technology acts as a "regulator or mechanism to explain the directionality and coherence of history". All human societies, regardless of their cultural or historical make-up, are inevitably drawn into a global consumer culture.

Thymos - The Trans-historical Standard

Failing to find the empirical argument compelling, Fukuyama moves on to the theoretical, philosophical argument to try to prove his point. He attempts to create a tran-historical standard through which to judge history. This standard is "thymos". Like science and technology, it is a motor behind history. It is a platonic concept, which for Plato means spiritedness, but for Fukuyama means "desire for recognition".

Fukuyama asserts that liberal capitalist democracy is the only form of society that can fully satify our longings for "thymos". Communism failed to provide thymos, because it humiliates and supresses our thymos. We must all be subservient to the state, and attempt to demonstrate this subservience. (Fukuyama refers to Havel's The Power of the Powerless, and story of a greengrocer publicly submitting to the state by displaying the sign "Workers of the World Unite").

Other Notes in this Category

1. Criticisms of Fukyama's Thesis
2. Fukuyama's Basic Contention in The End of History and the Last Man

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