[lit-ideas] Re: Fukuyama and the End of... well...
- From: Robert Paul <robert.paul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2006 19:58:32 -0800
Lawrence wrote:
Fukuyama thought that with the fall of Communism the last challenge to
Liberal Democracy had been conquered and that the End of History had
arrived -- with but a few loose ends to be tied up – some minor players
who had not yet accepted Liberal Democracy like the Arab Nations, North
Korean and a few others but nothing to worry about. We may as well
declare victory. In that sense Fukuyama was being descriptive, but he
was being predictive by arguing that the minor inconveniences like the
Arab nations would inevitably become Liberal-Democracies. He was being
predictive but /merely predictive/. He wasn’t advocating that anyone
should hasten the process by militarily exporting Liberal-Democracy.
Fair enough. Certainly nobody would expect a
historian-cum-political-scientist to suggest that in giving an account
of how things would turn out from the 'point of view' of 'history'
(viz., that the political state of the world was tending to a special
sort of entropy, in which every state would be a liberal democracy),
such a theorist was giving a blueprint for how to bring that about, much
less that as a theorist he was willing to pitch in and see that things
turned out as he had said they would.
I would concede that he probably hadn’t worked out the details of why
the exporting of Liberal-Democracy wouldn’t work when he wrote /The End
of History and the Last Man/ in 1992. As time went on it was reasonable
for him to disapprove of tyrants who opposed Liberal-Democracy like
Saddam Hussein. It wasn’t inconsistent of him to want a regime change,
but when the Bush Administration conquered Iraq and proposed to demand
that the next regime there be a democratic one – something seemingly
consistent with /The End of History/ – Fukuyama balked. He didn’t see
the precursors of Liberal Democracy in Iraq. This wasn’t what he had in
mind at all. It wouldn’t have been an evolution of his thinking for him
to feel this was all wrong.
If I understand Fukuyama at all, it seems to me that he's thinking of
history (History) as the evolution of political ideologies, and in this
(as he says) he's following Hegel and Marx; he adopts Hegel's entropic
state—the liberal state—and uses some of Hegel's arguments. All three
(H, M, F) believe that history has a 'direction,' that it is tending
towards something, a 'final' state, after which there cannot be a
transfer of ideological energy back into a state in which there is an
ideological imbalance. (Why anyone would believe this is not clear to
me.) But if it were true, that would be by definition the end of history
(which is an account of humans' passing from one ideology to another).
Yet there is no reason, no reason at all, for someone who believes that
ultimately it will be liberal democracies all the way down, to believe
that liberal democracies can come about in only one way—unless, of
course, his 'theory' is a set of definitional truths, disguised as
empirical generalizations, as were those of Hegel and Marx. The moment
his theory becomes honestly empirical, it must become honestly
falsifiable, to the extent, at least, that he must be able to say what
would count against it, in advance. So, there's no reason why Fukuyama
would have 'balked' at this, except for the uninteresting reason I've
suggested: liberal democracies must 'as a matter of logic' come about in
just one way. But there is no 'logic' in the world, only contingencies,
something of which an honest theorist should have been well aware.
Prior to the invasion of Iraq there were theorists who advocated a
benign autocracy as the most suitable replacement for Saddam’s regime.
Perhaps Fukuyama wouldn’t have objected as much if that were proposed,
but to imply, or permit others to imply, that the Bush administration
was carrying out his theories – putting his theories into effect – was
too much for him. While Liberal-Democracies are inevitable, they
develop from within a given nation by people wanting what they see in
other Liberal Democracies. They can not be forced upon a people from
without.
It is the notion that they are 'inevitable' which makes his views, in
the end, no more interesting than Marx or Hegel's. (I grant that there's
a lot of interest in the writings of Marx and Hegel, just as there are
in the great works of Hume; but Hume's epistemology can be of great
interest even if one thinks it's completely wrong.) It is as if Fukuyama
had said, 'The rocks lying at the bottom of the cliff which fell because
the soil eroded under them are really rocks, but those the kids tossed
down aren't.'
Whether liberal democracies can be forced on anyone an empirical claim,
and whether it's true we have yet to see.
I’m guessing in the foregoing at what went on in Fukuyama’s mind. He
wasn’t in a good position. If the Democracy failed in Iraq, people
would say his theory was wrong; so he had to distance himself from it at
once. If Democracy succeeded in Iraq and he had distanced himself from
it prior to its success, people might say he didn’t have the courage of
his theory – which is kind of what I am saying. On the other hand, by
distancing himself in advance he is taking the honest way out. He never
advocated exporting democracy militarily; so even if it succeeds it
won’t be succeeding in the way he anticipated. But if it does succeed
and he has predicted that all nations will one day be Liberal-Democratic,
doesn’t that fit in with his theory despite his denial?
He cannot say both that if it failed there his theory was wrong AND
maintain that the only true liberal democracy is one that (by
definition) came about in a certain way. That is, he cannot be saying
both things, and if he believes in a definitional account, he wouldn't
need to.
Robert Paul
Reed College
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