Is it possibly that simple? That a hundred million people killed by Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot were all the result of utopian ideas?
The horror of utopian determinism, once recognized, is no longer accepted by thinking people, right?
Unfortunately, there are still modern historians, such as Francis Fukuyama, who believe in the utopian concept that history is developing in a linear fashion, that there can be an end of history.
Fukuyama, like Hegel, believes that as history unfolds there will come a time when all internal contradictions in ideas resolve themselves and an “end to history” ensues. Hegel saw the American and French revolutions as indicative of the end of history.
Marx also believed history was moving directionally toward an “end of history” that culminated in a workers’ paradise. Hegel saw the dialectical process of ideas being countered by opposing ideas and their subsequent resolution or synthesis as the driver of history. Popper viewed both Hegel’s and Marx’s historical determinism as dangerous because once the planners were convinced of the inevitability of the workers’ paradise, they also became convinced of their own unlimited authority to coerce the “inevitable” end of history.1
Fukuyama’s announcement in the late 1980s, as the Berlin Wall fell and the Cold War came to a close, that the world was now approaching an “end of history” moment alarmed followers of Popper. Even though Fukuyama argued that the “end of history” he was announcing would be followed by an era of liberal democracy, some worried that Fukuyama’s embrace of historical determinism would encourage modern-day zealots to assume, since liberal democracy was inevitable, that perhaps a little war here and there to nudge us toward it was in order. This concept was doubly worrying since there already existed in Washington a well-connected cabal promoting this neoconservative foreign policy.
Elizabeth Glaser puts Fukuyama in a contemporary context: “When he wrote ‘The End of History?’, Fukuyama was a neocon. He was taught by Leo Strauss’s protege Allan Bloom, author of The Closing of the American Mind; he was a researcher for the Rand Corporation, the think tank for the American military-industrial complex; and he followed his mentor Paul Wolfowitz into the Reagan administration.”2
Although Karl Popper’s arguments predate Fukuyama, they still are spot-on. Fukuyama is a contemporary Hegelian. So, when Fukuyama announced the “end of history” and the triumph of liberal capitalist democracy, many observers worried that the deterministic doctrines that encouraged first Hegel and then Marx were being resurrected.
Fukuyama argued that the world now understood that democracy provided greater prosperity than centrally planned economies. Big government–planned economies, even communist states, would now wither away and be replaced by capitalism. Sounds great, if you ignore that Fukuyama’s theory is based on the same “end of history” suppositions of Marx that morphed into the totalitarian dystopias of the twentieth century.
Timothy Stanley and Alexander Lee wrote in the Atlantic Monthly, “Fukuyama’s logic was a bit too reminiscent of the pseudo-Hegelian historical determinism that Marxists and Fascists deployed to disastrous effect earlier in the 20th century. . . .” The events of the last thirty years have not confirmed Fukuyama’s thesis.3
Not only is history not over, but much of the world is still headed away from liberal democracy.
Stanley and Lee remind us that “a new Cold War has broken out [and] China’s ‘Marxist capitalism’ suggests you can have wealth without freedom.”
China may have “wealth without freedom” but they don’t have “wealth without capitalism.” China’s wealth might be described as proportional to the degree of her rejection of socialism. But Stanley and Lee are correct that for whatever capitalism it has embraced, China has not by any analysis accepted liberal democracy.4
Just as Marx incorrectly believed that history was inevitably going to resolve itself in a workers’ paradise, so too was Fukuyama wrong. Fukuyama’s argument that history is inevitably evolving toward liberal democracy, not tyranny, has been defied by the facts. Throughout the Middle East, dictatorships continue. Russia and China cannot be said to be inevitably headed toward liberal democracy.
Though critical of Fukuyama’s thesis, Roger Kimball argues that some criticisms of Fukuyama “were based on a simplistic misreading of his thesis. For in proclaiming that the end of history had arrived in the form of triumphant liberal democracy, Francis Fukuyama did not mean that the world would henceforth be free from tumult, political contention, or intractable social problems. Moreover, he was careful to note ‘the victory of liberalism has occurred primarily in the realm of ideas or consciousness and is as yet incomplete in the real or material world.’”5
The only problem with that defense is that it’s hard to imagine an “end to the history” of ideas that is independent of actual history. Fukuyama himself points to real, historical episodes such as the French and American revolutions as indications that the “end of history” was nigh.
So, if “the longing for recognition” is satisfied and the end of history is paramount, how do we know it unless we look to real-life history or current events? If man has come to the end of his ideological journey and chosen liberal democracy, wouldn’t it be fair to look around and see if current events reflect that? If Fukuyama meant only the “end of the history of ideology,” how would one know it had come to pass without looking at real history to determine if, indeed, people’s ideological conclusions had spilled over into real action?
Fukuyama wrote boldly, “What we are witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or a passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” He was committing the same deterministic errors that Marx did. Kimball responds that “these were the sorts of statements—along with Francis Fukuyama’s professed conviction that ‘the ideal will govern the material world in the long run’—that rang the alarm.”
Making the case that liberal democracy is the best form of government would not have been so controversial. Popper himself agreed that democracy was not perfect but the least evil form of government and therefore preferable. What alarmed people was the mathematical certainty with which Fukuyama proclaimed the new era and his claim that liberal democracy was historically inevitable.6
Like Marx and Hegel, Fukuyama argues that “history [should be] understood as a single, coherent, evolutionary process, . . . taking into account the experience of all peoples in all times.”7 Seems a rather sweeping claim, at once both naive and utopian. Fukuyama’s attempt to marry history and evolution are reminiscent of Marx trying to equate the dialectic with the “science” of evolution.
Fukuyama goes on to argue that history’s “evolutionary process [is] neither random nor unintelligible.” This is quite the assertion: history is not random or unintelligible. What about unknowable? If the future is unknowable, then history is orderly and unfolding according to an intelligible plan only in retrospect and really only in the biased eyes of the beholder.
Fukuyama writes: “Both Hegel and Marx believed that the evolution of human societies was not open-ended, but would end when mankind had achieved a form of society that satisfied its deepest and most fundamental longings. Both thinkers thus posited an ‘end of history’: for Hegel this was the liberal state, while for Marx it was a communist society.”
Even Fukuyama admits that recent history argues against his end-of-history thesis: “[it is] . . . a very old question: Whether, at the end of the twentieth century, it makes sense for us once again to speak of a coherent and directional history of mankind that will eventually lead the greater part of humanity to liberal democracy.”8
Fukuyama admits to an abundance of critics: “The most profound thinkers of the twentieth century have directly attacked the idea that history is a coherent or intelligible process; indeed, they have denied the possibility that any aspect of human life is philosophically intelligible.”
He describes the historians who refute the linearity of history as possessing a “profound pessimism [that] is not accidental, but born of the truly terrible political events of the first half of the twentieth century.”
Nevertheless, Fukuyama asserts that “liberal democracy remains the only coherent political aspiration that spans different regions and cultures around the globe.”
Few would argue against liberal democracy as an aspirational goal. If Fukuyama only expressed hope for history’s direction, the commendable might outweigh the concern. Fukuyama accepts the mathematical certainty and scientism that Dostoyevsky’s Underground Man and Popper, among others, warn us of. History “has proceeded according to certain definite rules laid down not by man, but by nature and nature’s laws.” To Fukuyama, 2 + 2 = 4 applies to the historical actions of men. How very Marxian of him.
If history were inevitable, would such a conclusion dampen the fire that Jefferson thought necessary in each generation? If people accept historical determinism, the danger exists that charlatans, like Hitler and Stalin, appear on the national stage promising the people that history’s march toward progress and national success goes through them. Contrary to a notion that history’s end is desirable would be that history’s end should scare the hell out of any of us who would resist “homogenization.”
Fukuyama tries to convince us that history is headed toward a liberal, democratic utopia. But regimes of the twentieth century inform us that the “end of history” can go either way. While there is an argument that many countries have headed away from the autocracy of the Iron Curtain, there still remain plenty of countries clinging to the model of a single-party, strongman rule.
Dostoyevsky would argue that part of the recognition of self-worth is that “most advantageous advantage” of free will, even the freedom to act simply out of caprice. For Hegel and Fukuyama, though, recognition comes about by war. Fukuyama and Hegel seem blasé about war. Fukuyama writes unemotionally that “war is fundamentally driven by the desire for recognition. . . .”9 Hegel saw war as necessary: “War protects the people from corruption which an everlasting peace would bring upon it.”10
Kimball quotes the German thinker Hans Blumenberg: “If there were an imminent final goal of history, then those who believe they know it and claim to promote its attainment would be legitimized in using all the others who do not know it . . . as a mere means.” Once the “final solution” is believed to be an option, it becomes certain that some totalitarian, a Hitler or a Stalin, will use that “ideology of historical inevitability” to justify whatever means are necessary.
Kimball reminds us that “the twentieth century has acquainted us in terrifyingly exquisite detail with what happens when people are treated as ‘moments’ in an impersonal dialectic.”11
The danger of historical determinism is that it provides philosophical cover for any megalomaniac who seeks to prove that his or her program is historically inevitable.
Both the left and right often succumb to the “end of history” ideal. Stanley and Lee point out that “leaders across the political spectrum have been quick to adopt this form of historical determinism.”
“Hillary Clinton . . . has . . . a similar outlook in the realm of foreign policy,” Stanley and Lee write. “She has subtly distanced herself from Barack Obama’s cautious realism abroad and instead used discrete references to the past to justify aggressively exporting liberal values across the globe as often as possible. Given that history has ‘proved’ how great liberalism was in previous battles against tyranny, the argument goes, liberalism will inevitably win out if we pick enough fights and put enough muscle behind it.”12
Neoliberals like Clinton are virtually indistinguishable from neoconservatives like Bill Kristol in their support for military intervention in Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Mali, Niger, etc. The only difference is the liberal neocons are more honest about their goal of nation building.
If history were, indeed, unfolding toward liberty, we would still need to understand what is meant by liberty. Left and right sometimes do agree that freedom is the goal, only they differ on their definition of freedom. Positive “liberty” is what today’s socialists yearn for. Positive liberty can also be described as the “freedom” to get something concrete, such as health care, a car, a house, or food.
Can man really discover self-worth in the command economy of Venezuela or the autocracy of Cuba? Of course not. The question remains, though, whether there are still enough Americans who put their faith in the individual, and in liberty, to ensure that our nation resists the siren call of “free stuff” that socialism offers. Time will tell.
From my perspective, the cautionary moral of a utopia is: don’t succumb to any end-of-history utopias from the right or the left. Don’t accept any preordained linearity to history. Because simply that acquiescence, that attenuation of free will, may be enough to allow the recurrent strongman in history to justify his or her edicts as science or evolution or simply as the inevitable.