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POST SOVIET UNION TO CLINTON and BUSH (1 of 3)

Francis Fukuyama's End of History

In 1989, two years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Francis Fukuyama wrote an essay titled "The End of History?" (Note the question mark.) In it he detailed the decline in appeal of the Soviet Union's socialist economy. And he wrote of the decline of collectivism in China. He wrote of China's Communist Party in 1978 deciding to decollectivize agriculture, reducing the role of the state in agriculture "to that of a tax collector." China had been taking what Mao derisively called the "capitalist road," and China began collaborating with international capitalism in trade and accepting investments within its borders – a major shift in the Communist Party's view of the world.

Fukuyama wrote that "ideological grounds for major conflict between nations" were passing away. Fukuyama had in mind the ideology of Karl Marx, which embodied a history of struggle between economic classes culminating in a classless society – an end of history of sorts. Fukuyama saw a different end of this kind of history described by Marx. Fukuyama saw the historical ideological struggle ending in the triumph of economic liberalism, in other words, the triumph of capitalism – welfare states being essentially capitalist. Of this he wrote:

The willingness to risk one's life for a purely abstract goal, the worldwide ideological struggle that called forth daring, courage, imagination, and idealism will be replaced by economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems, environmental concerns, and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands.

In 1992 he had a book was published with the title The End of History and the Last Man, which created a lot of attention. It brought criticism from people who did not understand what he meant by end of history. He was accused of trying to bury Marxism.

Samuel P. Huntington, in his essay and book, "The Clash of Civilizations," argued that conflict between ideologies was being replaced by the ancient conflict between civilizations.

According to Wikipedia, Fukuyama has addressed misconceptions about his thesis, saying that "there can be no end of history without an end of modern natural science and technology."

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