Fukuyama’s “The End of History and the Last Man,” has two distinct theses. The “End of History Thesis,” and the “Last Man Thesis.” While the second of these is less often discussed, despite being more relevant to our current era, I’m going to start with just the first thesis. If I cover both, the post will be too long. I will follow up on the Last Man later.

If you’re familiar with the work, you can skip the intro below and go right to part to. Feel free to pick it all apart, or just a part of it.

I. Introduction to Fukuyama and Hegel

For those who are unfamiliar with “The End of History and the Last Man,” below is a decent summary. You can skip on to “The Last Man Thesis,” otherwise. However, for those who have only heard of it second hand, I would caution that Fukuyama's vision is not nearly as utopian as people make it out to be.


Fukuyama is not saying that we are approaching a point where inequality, hardship, and violence will disappear (the "Star Trek" future). Rather, he thought (he is writing in 1989-1992) that no alternative to liberal democracy could emerge that would be widely considered to be a more legitimate alternative.


The thesis does not predict that all states will instantly become liberal democracies. Rather it predicts that no strong international movement advocating for another type of governance will emerge. That is, there will be nothing akin to the movements behind communism or fascism in the 20th century, nor the international reactionary movement in support of monarchy in the 19th.


Additionally, alternative forms of governance will increasingly define themselves using the terms of liberal democracy (because it is the only system widely held to be legitimate). For example, authoritarians go by "president," rather than "emperor," still hold something resembling elections, have legislatures, etc. They tend to deflect criticisms by pointing out that liberal democracies also fail to live up to their own values, thus implicitly suggesting that those values are worth achieving rather than challenging them.

That said, below is a good summary:

Fukuyama’s central thesis in The End of History and the Last Man is that human history is moving towards a state of idealised harmony through the mechanisms of liberal democracy. For Fukuyama, the realization of an ideal political and economic system which has the essential elements of liberal democracy is the purpose behind the march of history. ‘Liberal democracy’ does not necessarily mean the exact type of constitutional democracy found in the United States. It can manifest itself in a number of ways, but its consistent features are freedom of speech, free and fair elections, and the separation of powers. Fukuyama argues that there are no ‘contradictions in human life’ that cannot be resolved within the context of liberalism; or more generally, that there is no longer an alternative political and economic structure that can offer solutions to problems such as the need for freedom, protection, and human rights.


In making his claim about history having a process and a goal, Fukuyama is following in the footsteps of the early Nineteenth Century German philosopher Georg Hegel (1770-1831). This famous philosopher saw a ‘dialectical’ process as the driving force behind human history that will eventually achieve a final goal for humanity. This Hegelian dialectic is a logical process manifest in the events of history and unfolding over time. Hegel maintained that...history will continually produce opposite, and conflicting, ways of thinking, thesis and antithesis: once the thesis has been formulated there will eventually be an antithesis opposing it. The result is a conflict of beliefs that somehow must be resolved. The resolution takes the form of a compromise between the thesis and antithesis. Thus a synthesis provides a temporary solution, until it too becomes the new thesis, or in the historical sense, the new ideological state of society, which in its turn is also opposed; and this dialectical process continues until the development of the ultimate society.

It is worth interjecting here to explain how Hegel’s dialectical is similar to “debate.” Consider Plato’s dialogues where different parties show up to provide opposing views on some issue. Here, the views that come up are entirely contingent, the result of some individual thinking of them. Hegel’s innovation is to see that concepts themselves contain their own negations.

For example, with right, the concept of there being actions that are “right” implies that it is possible that some actions may be wrong. If you have right without wrong, then every action must be “right.” However, if a single concept can be applied to all things equally, then it conveys nothing.

The early semiotician Saussure says something to this effect: 'you cannot have a one-word language, the same term will apply equally to all things' (there is a similar issue in information theory, where an invariant substrate cannot carry information, since any measurement will always be the same, like writing in white font on a white background. This is related to how, in mathematics, a proof for the existence of one type of object acts as a proof for another object.


If we don't like Hegel's metaphysics, I think this can also be interpreted psychologically. When you consider a concept like "right," it becomes necessary to consider its negation for the reasons above. For more detail: Hegel’s Dialectics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

For instance, as Fukuyama agrees with Hegel, human beings are alike in the sense that they have basic needs, such as food, shelter and self-preservation, and that the human spirit also demands a recognition of our worth. We instinctively want to say to others, “I am greater than you, I want you to look up to me and give me respect.” Peoples’ desires taking the form of wanting other people to recognise their superiority creates conflict with their fellow beings. This is, in essence, a struggle for dignity. Because all people desire dignity, no party is initially prepared to give ground, so a struggle for superiority ensures. Hegel refers to this struggle as the [lord-bondsman] dialectic or relationship. There will always be a winner and loser.

The lord-bondsman relationship is unstable because the lord is now dependent on the bondsman for their sense of recognition. Yet the lord cannot receive this recognition from the bondsman precisely because he has made them into an object, and thus not an entity that can give recognition.* Simone de Beauvoir powerfully generalizes this to gender relations.

These and other conflicts are played out through history as dialectical processes. But Hegel believed that at the last stage in history, every human and every country will achieve a final synthesis. Fukuyama similarly believes that all humanity will shortly arrive at the final goal of history – liberal democracy. Fukuyama cites evidence that over time, more and more countries are turning to a liberal democratic system to solve their problems.

This is the "End of History," thesis. And it has generally been what most critics have focused on. You can find the original article here.

The full summary quoted above is here: https://philosophynow.org/issues/106/The_End_of_History_and_the_Last_Man_by_Francis_Fukuyama


II. What is Wrong With The End of History Thesis - the start of the actual analysis!


The problems with Fukuyama’s “End of History” thesis are largely due to his oversimplification of Hegel’s theory of history. Fukuyama sees liberal democracy as having "defeated," nationalism and socialism (with the two being most powerfully exemplified by German Nazism and Soviet communism respectively).


This is not what happened, and it is not what Hegel’s theory predicts. Rather, liberal democracy sublated both, i.e., it negated them only by incorporating elements of them into itself. A whole raft of socialist policies are now standard to all liberal democracies: universal education, bans on child labor, codified rights for unions, government pensions plans, etc. At the same time, nationalism is considered a sacrosanct source of state legitimacy, even for those on the left. For example, contemporary liberals would not say that French rule over Algeria could be justified if the state simply gave equal rights to Algerians. The liberal demand at the time was for “an Algerian state for Algerians.” Likewise, the US wouldn't be justified in occupying Iraq if it simply added Iraq as a state and gave Iraqis full citizenship. Modern legitimacy is intricately bound to nationalism and conceptions of national identity.


Fukuyama’s mistake is to think that modern liberal democracy emerged from the American and French revolutions fully formed. This is not the case; liberal democracy was radically changed by its struggles with the competing ideologies. Moreover, as Hegel predicts, it was liberal democracy’s own internal contradictions that generated these competitors. Long gone is the internationalist liberalism of the French Revolution, where setting up "sister republics," and unilaterally imposing constitutions upon a defeated foe in order to “free their people,” was considered a legitimate affair.


For example, when the US set out on its nation building projects in Iraq and Afghanistan, it was considered extremely important that the citizens of those states took the lead in crafting their constitutions. No “Napoleonic Code,” could be imposed from abroad and remain legitimate. To be sure, skeptics can argue that this was only a matter of appearances, but the point is that such appearances were widely seen as being necessary for legitimacy.


The initial liberal revolutions only answered the “political question,” (i.e. constitutionalism, rule of law, the end of noble privilege, and republicanism). However, the problems of the social question, through which socialism emerged, was implied by the new liberalism. As soon as we have a government run “by the people, for the people,” we must ask how such a government cannot end up dominated by elites and demagogues when the masses are illiterate peasants, relationships between workers and employers are highly unequal, and there is little social mobility.

Socialism, with Marxism being its most successful form, is thus a direct consequence of the emergence of liberalism. Fukuyama seems to have been correct that Soviet-style communism is largely dead, but he ignores how socialist policy became endemic across liberal democracies– that liberal democracy sublated, rather than conquered socialism.


Fukuyama instead explains the adoption of socialist policies across developed states as the results of a process of economic rationalization, one which is primarily the result of technological change. This explanation obviously has some truth to it, but it ignores the political motivations that initiated and sustained calls for socialist reforms.


The case with nationalism is no different. Liberalism initially made common cause with nationalism because nationalism offered a powerful challenge to the “divine right of kings,” to rule over multiethnic empires. However, it is liberal democracy’s later sublation of socialism that makes nationalism as a source of legitimacy so necessary for liberal democracy today. Nationalism is necessary to make people accept the redistributive requirements of socialism. A people has to share an identity– a common mission or struggle– to make them willing to share resources to the degree that socialism requires. Hence, while nationalism and liberalism worked hand in hand in generating the Revolutions of 1848, it was only after socialism began to be digested by liberal democracies, in the 20th century, that colonialism became utterly illegitimate.


III. Why History Hasn’t Ended - Migration and (Global) Inequality


Globalization throws two internal contradictions inherent in liberal democracy into sharp relief. First, mass migration is eroding national identity, and thus state legitimacy and support for socialism. We can see this in the far-right populist movements that have gained significant momentum in Europe and in the rise of Donald Trump and Trumpism in the United States. It is no surprise that wealthy liberal democracies that have experienced much lower rates of migration, e.g. Japan and Korea, have not experienced a surge in right-wing populism to anywhere near the same degree as states that have seen a surge in migration.


Migration has also increased inequality across the developed world. The reason for this is two-fold. First, demand for low skilled labor has been falling due to increasing options for automation. Yet migration has led to a large increase in this segment of the workforce. Thus, supply is increasing at the same time demand is falling, reducing the market price for labor (i.e. wages). At the same time, an influx of new residents who have both net worth and earnings potential below the averages for natives increases inequality, by mathematical definition, since this is a large new population that necessarily holds a small share of wealth.

(As I will explain in the later "Last Man" section, both inequality and stagnant growth in real wages negatively affect citizens ability to find meaning in their lives and develop a positive sense of identity. In any event, they obviously ratchet up political tensions and increase the risk of state capture by elites. )


Further, there is ample evidence that immigrants impose congestion externalities upon each other. Higher rates of overall migration turn public opinion against migrants, imposing costs on individuals. To the extent that migrants tend to be competing in the same sector of the labor market, they also bid down each other’s wages. To the extent that migrants tend to cluster in urban areas with a scarcity of housing, and particularly in “ethnic enclaves,” they bid up each other’s rents. The total number of migrants entering a country over a short span also appears to increase the length of time it takes for migrants “assimilate” to the culture of their new country, simply because they have more options to not engage with the new culture when they live in homogenous enclaves, and such enclaves can only exist when there is critical mass of some particular migrant group. Further, there is also ample evidence that, while migration can be a net positive for national budgets, at least in the short-medium term, it can also be a major drain on locally provided services (e.g. education in the US).

Language barriers and a lack of social supports also undermines foreign-born employees’ ability to gain leverage over employers. For example, we see evidence in both the letters of Gilded Age industrialists and leaked Amazon memos that management sometimes intentionally seeks to diversify its workforce precisely because they think it reduces the risk of unionization.


Now here would be my main point re: migration. It is global inequality, the massive gap in living standards between rich and poor nations, that is what spurs mass migration. The wealthy nations of the world have not used that wealth to adequately address global poverty, and so now face the consequences of having that inequality exported back to their shores. This tacks with the argument that liberal democracies did not so much improve working conditions, as export their worst working conditions abroad.

Thus, we have a problem where socialism is undermined in wealthy nations because socialism is not employed across national boundaries. Further, this is the case, in part, precisely because nationalism has become essential to modern conceptions of state legitimacy and nationalism tends to preclude such intergroup transfers of wealth.


III. Why History Hasn’t Ended - Transnational Problems

Second, global issues, chiefly global warming and ocean acidification, call for global, transnational responses.* All states do better if most states address carbon emissions, but all states also do better if all other states address carbon emissions, while they “cheat” and do not do so. Global organizations have to be able to force nation states to protect the environment in order to resolve this classic “Prisoners’ Dilemma.” Currently, organizations like the United Nations are mostly toothless when it comes to this sort of problem. What is needed are global institutions with powers akin to the EU over its member states, or the US Federal government over local entities. This entails that legitimacy cannot remain based solely on the self-determination of some specific “people,” but rather must be delegated to some higher level of global governance that looks to the good of the species as a whole.

IV. Conclusion

Thus, Fukuyama appears to be looking in the wrong place for a new movement. Perhaps it is not opposition to liberal democracy we should see on the horizon, but its internationalization. What might such a movement look like? It’s hard to say for sure, but one possible shift would be towards greater international redistribution. That is, if migration is the “existential threat,” that the far-right says it is, perhaps they will be open to spending on the level of national defense, several percent of GDP, to help fund development in lower income parts of the world? Liberals could of course embrace such a program for different reasons.

*We could add the growing power of transnational mega-corporations here as well, or the proliferation of modern mercenary groups in the guise of "defense contractors."