Francis Fukuyan1a THE: ENI) OF HISTORY ANL) l�HE I�AST MAN Tai Lieu Chat Luong $24.95 As the tumultuous twentieth century shudders toward its close - with the collapse of commu nism leading to a transformation of world politics - Francis Fukuyama asks us to return with him to a question that has been asked by the great philosophers of centuries past: is there a direction to the history of mankind? And if it is directional, to what end is it moving? And where are we now in relation to that "end of history"? In this exciting and profound inquiry, which goes far beyond the issues raised in his world famous essay "The End of History?" in the summer 1989 National Interest, Fukuyama presents evidence to suggest that there are two powerful forces at work in human history. He calls one "the logic of modem science" and the other "the struggle for recognition:' The first drives men to fulfill an ever-expanding horizon of desires through a rational economic process; the second, "the struggle for recognition:' is, in Fukuyama 's (and Hegel's) view, nothing less than the very "motor of history'.' It is Fukuyama's brilliantly argued theme that , over time , the economic logic of modem science together with the "struggle for recogni tion" lead to the eventual collapse of tyrannies, as we have witnessed on both the left and right. These forces drive even culturally disparate societies toward establishing capitalist liberal democracies as the end state of the historical process. The great question then becomes: can liberty and equality, both political and eco nomic - the state of affairs at the presumed "end of history" - produce a stable society in which man may be said to be , at last , com pletely satisfied? Or will the spiritual condition of this "last man" in history, deprived of outlets for his striving for mastery, inevitably lead him to plunge himself and the world back into the chaos and bloodshed of history? (Continued on backjlap) (Continuedfrom frontflap) Fukuyama's contemporary consideration of this ultimate question is both a fascinating education in the philosophy of history and a thought provoking inquiry into the deepest issues of human society and destiny.
FRANCIS FUKUYAMA is a former deputy director of the U. State Department's Policy Planning Staff. He is currently a resident consultant at the RAND Corporation in Wash ington, DC. 1�1 THE FREE PRESS A Division of Macmillan, Inc.
NEW YORK © 1992 Macmillan, Inc. (New York) jacket design© REM Studio, Inc. author photo © Dan Bonis/Outline Praise for Francis Fukuyama's The End Of History and the Last Man "Bold, lucid, scandalously brilliant. Until now the triumph of the West was merely a fact.
Fukuyama has given it a deep and highly original meaning:• -Charles Krauthammer "With one now-famous essay, Frank Fukuyama did what had hitherto seemed almost impossible: he made Washington think. His subject was, and in this far more sweeping book is, the place of America, and the American idea, in the stream of history. His conclusion is at once exhilarating and sobering. We have won the struggle for the heart of humanity.
However, that will not necessarily be good for humanity's soul. Fukuyama is in, and is worthy of, a grand tradition. He takes up where de Tocqueville left off, wondering whether liberal democratic culture raises humanity only from its barbarism to banality, and whether banality breeds instability, atavism and other old sorrows of historY:' -George F Will "Fukuyama provides a fascinating historical and philosophical setting for the twenty-first century. His discussion of the idea of thymos may prove to be even more important than his theory of the end of history:' -Tom Wolfe "A bold and brilliant work.
Very, very impressive:' -Irving Kristol "Fukuyama tells us where we were, where we are, and most important, speculates about where we will likely be-with clarity and an astonishing sweep of reflection and imag ination. His command of political philosophy and political facts takes us beyond the daily newspapers to a grasp of the meaning of our situation:' -Allan Bloom "For me, [Fukuyama's thought] is an attempt to arm Western political thought with new fundamental theoretical arguments to reinforce its practical actions. Moreover, it is not an unsuccessful attempt. " -Eduard Shevardnadze ISBN 0-02-910975-2 90000> 9 780029 1 09755 THE END OF HISTORY AND THE LAST MAN THE END OF HISTORY AND THE LAST MAN Francis Fukuyama THE FREE PRESS A Division of Macmillan, Inc.
NEW YORK Maxwell Macmillan Canada TORONTO Maxwell Macmillan International NEW YORK OXFORD SINGAPORE SIDNEY Copyright © 1992 by Francis Fukuyama All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher. The Free Press A Division of Macmillan, Inc. 866 Third Avenue, New York, N.
10022 Maxwell Macmillan Canada, Inc. 1200 Eglinton Avenue East Suite 200 Don Mills, Ontario M3C 3N1 Macmillan, Inc. is part of the Maxwell Communication Group of Companies. Printed in the United States of America printing number 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fukuyama, Francis.
The end of history and the last man I Francis Fukuyama. Includes bibliographical references and index.F85 1992 901--dc20 91-29677 CIP To Julia and David CONTENTS Acknowledgments IX By Way of an Introduction XI Part I AN OLD QuESTION AsKED ANEW 1 Our Pessimism 3 2 The Weakness of Strong States I 13 3 The Weakness of Strong States I I , or, Eating Pineapples on the Moon 23 4 The Worldwide Liberal Revolution 39 Part II THE OLD AGE OF MANKIND 5 An Idea for a Universal History 55 6 The Mechanism of Desire 71 7 No Barbarians at the Gates 82 8 Accumulation without End 89 9 The Victory of the VCR 98 10 In the Land of Education 109 11 The Former Question Answered 126 12 No Democracy without Democrats 131 Part III THE STRUGGLE FOR RECOGNITION 13 In the Beginning, a Battle to the Death for Pure Prestige 143 14 The First Man 153 15 A Vacation in Bulgaria 162 16 The Beast with Red Cheeks 171 17 The Rise and Fall of Thymos 181 18 Lordship and Bondage 192 19 The Universal and Homogeneous State 199 Vll Vlll CoNTENTS Part IV LEAPING OvER RHODES 20 The Coldest of All Cold Monsters 211 21 The Thymotic Origins of Work 223 22 Empires of Resentment, Empires of Deference 235 23 The Unreality of "Realism" 245 24 The Power of the Powerless 254 25 National Interests 266 26 Toward a Pacific Union 276 Part V THE LAST MAN 27 In the Realm of Freedom 287 28 Men without Chests 300 29 Free and Unequal 313 30 Perfect Rights and Defective Duties 322 31 Immense Wars of the Spirit 328 Notes 341 B ibliogra ph y 391 Index 403 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The "End of History" would never have existed, either as an article or as this present book, without the invitation to deliver a lecture by that title during the 1 988-89 academic year, extended by Professors Nathan Tarcov and Allan Bloom of the John M. Olin Center for Inquiry into the Theory and Practice of Democ racy at the University of Chicago. Both have been long-time teach ers and friends from whom I have learned an enormous amount over the years-starting with, but by no means limited to, political philosophy.
That original lecture became a well-known article due, in no small measure, to the efforts of Owen Harries, editor of the journal The National Interest, and to the work of that jour nal's small staff. Erwin Glikes of the Free Press and Andrew Franklin of Hamish Hamilton provided crucial encouragement and advice in moving from the article to the book, and in the editing of the final manuscript. The present volume has profited enormously from conversa tions and readings by any number of friends and colleagues. Most important of these has been Abram Shulsky, who will find many of his ideas and insights recorded here.
I would like to pay special thanks to Irving Kristol, David Epstein, Alvin Bernstein, Henry Higuera, Y o�hihisa Komori, Yoshio Fukuyama, and George Holmgren, all of whom took the time to read and comment on the manuscript. In addition, I would like to thank the many people some of them known to me and many others not-who commented usefully on various aspects of the present thesis as it was presented in a variety of seminars and lectures in this country and abroad. James Thomson, president of the RAN D Corporation, was kind enough to provide me office space while drafting this book. Gary and Linda Armstrong took time out from writing their dis sertations to help me in the collection of research materials, and provided valuable advice on a number of topics in the course of writing.
Rosalie Fonoroff helped in the proofreading. In lieu of conventional thanks to a typist for helping to prepare the manu script, I should perhaps acknowledge the work of the designers of the Intel 80386 microprocessor. IX X ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Last but most important, it was my wife, Laura, who encour aged me to write both the original article and the present book, and who has stood by me through all of the subsequent criticism and controversy. She has been a careful reader of the manuscript, and has contributed in innumerable ways to its final form and content.
My daughter Julia and my son David, the latter of whom chose to be born as the book was being written, helped too, simply by being there. BY WAY OF AN INTRODUCTION The distant origins of the present volume lie in an article entitled "The End of History?" which I wrote for the journal The National Interest in the summer of 1989. 1 In it, I argued that a remarkable consensus concerning the legitimacy of liberal democracy as a system of government had emerged throughout the world over the past few years, as it conquered rival ideologies like hereditary monarchy, fascism, and most recently communism. More than that, however, I argued that liberal democracy may constitute the "end point of mankind's ideological evolution" and the "final form of human government," and as such constituted the "end of his tory." That is, while earlier forms of government were character ized by grave defects and irrationalities that led to their eventual collapse, liberal democracy was arguably free from such funda mental internal contradictions.
This was not to say that today's stable democracies, like the United States, France, or Switzerland , were not without injustice o r serious social problems. But these problems were ones of incomplete implementation of the twin principles of liberty and equality on which modern democracy is founded, rather than of flaws in the principles themselves. While some present-day countries might fail to achieve stable liberal democracy, and others might lapse back into other, more primi tive forms of rule like theocracy or military dictatorship, the ideal of liberal democracy could not be improved on. The original article excited an extraordinary amount of com mentary and controversy, first in the United States, and then in a series of countries as different as England, France, Italy, the So viet Union, Brazil, South Africa, Japan, and South Korea.
Criti cism took every conceivable form, some of it based on simple misunderstanding of my original intent, and others penetrating more perceptively to the core of my argument. 2 Many people were confused in the first instance by my use of the word "his tory." Understanding history in a conventional sense as the oc currence of events, people pointed to the fall of the Berlin Wall, XI Xll BY WAY OF AN INTRODUCTION the Chinese communist crackdown in Tiananmen Square, and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait as evidence that "history was con tinuing," and that I was ipso facto proven wrong.