The End of History and the Last Man

Fukuyama returns to the relationship between economic factors and liberal democracy because “there is a strong correlation between advanced industrialization and democracy” (223). Here, he focuses on the relationship between identity, thymos, and work ethic. In turn, the author links the perception of work to culturally specific factors. He provides many examples across the world: from the Japanese salaried individuals working inhuman hours to the famous Protestant work ethic, described by the German sociologist Max Weber and linked to capitalism. Comparisons “to the ‘Protestant ethic’ have been identified in other cultures to explain their economic success” (227). High productivity and long work hours translate into material benefits, especially in highly skilled professions. However, many believe it is not these material benefits that are the most important motivation behind a strong work ethic and a positive attitude toward work in general.

The author links this attitude with thymos and the sense of self-worth. At times, there is a religious or spiritual component to the perception of work and material benefits—for example, this dynamic is found in the Hindu sanctification of the poor. There are different ways in which the cultural differences in the perception of work are expressed at a national level. For example, sometimes this perception translates into protectionist policies. Other times, manufacturers are willing to pay high prices to domestic suppliers, as is the case with the national pride and communal orientation of Japan. The link between community and work is also expressed in different ways. If, in East Asia, it takes on the form of the community at a national level, then, in some northern European countries, the craft guild tradition has historically played a key role in this dynamic.

In late 20th century liberal democracies, psychological factors also affect work ethic. Fukuyama underscores the “elastic nature of human desire and insecurity” (230). He links these concepts to the growth of consumerism. Overall, “religion, nationalism, the ability of craft occupations and the professions to maintain standards and pride in work—continue to influence economic behavior” (233). In other words, Fukuyama merges Hegel’s emphasis on human psychology with Marx’s focus on economics.

The author explores modernization and Westernization in the context of non-Western cultures, whether in late 19th century Meiji-era Japan or 20th century Islamic societies in the Middle East. The author explores the limits of modernization as it is synonymous with the adaptation of Western technologies and techniques and a Western way of life, often at the expense of one’s own culture. Deeply religious Islamic societies “had been most thoroughly threatened by the import of Western values” (236). Islam is more than a religion in some countries; it is a total ideology. However, Fukuyama represents Islamic resurgence in the 20th century in places like Iran not as a coherent society that has thus far successfully resisted being overtaken by Western values but rather as the result of having been wounded by its own failures. He, however, does not explain the reasoning for his thinking. One could make an opposite argument: Iran had been under different stifling U.S. sanctions since the 1979 Islamic Revolution with small periods of respite. Despite this, the country has remained a deeply religious society yet has been able to produce scientists and develop a nuclear program and military drones for international export in a display of significant technological advancement.

Fukuyama also returns to the subject of identity. He does not use the term “identity politics,” which was popularized after the initial publication of this text. However, he describes the way certain groups, such as some African Americans, consider capitalism a strictly European idea. The author believes that Martin Luther King Jr.’s Christian idea of human dignity, in contrast, surpasses culturally specific economic and political concepts. However, the author takes for granted the notion of the West as a superior socio-economic and political entity worth emulating for all others. His universal history is being written from the Western perspective by using European and American thinkers. He does not seem to be concerned with the fact that the very concepts of human dignity and human rights may be perceived differently in non-Western cultures. The lack of consideration for cultural specificity is another example of Fukuyama’s preference for a single grand narrative associated with Modernism, in contrast with the multitude of localized narratives of Postmodernism.

The author understands that identity is “attached not so much to an individual self in whose personal qualities one takes pride, but to the family and other groups” (239). Communal cohesion and respect for the group are especially evident in countries like Japan. However, Fukuyama ultimately considers this cultural trait a negative one that must be tamed. The Japanese pay for harmony with conformity, he argues. Yet these East Asian values have remained resilient to Westernization:

These differences further suggest that the existing state system will not collapse anytime soon into a literally universal and homogenous state. The nation will continue to be a central pole of identification, even if more and more nations come to share common economic and political forms of organization (244).

Through this quote, the author acknowledges the limits of democratization and liberalization around the globe.

The question of democratization is not limited to domestic politics within a country. It also pertains to the realm of international relations and foreign policy. Fukuyama argues that realists have a somewhat Hobbesian view of international relations in which war, or a potential of conflict, has been the rule rather than an exception. He is critical of the pragmatic approach to politics, Realpolitik, which was especially prevalent in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. Realpolitik has periodically appeared since, for instance, in diplomat Henry Kissinger’s work on the Cold War détente between the United States and the USSR. Realpolitik concepts may be found in a broad range of thinkers: from Niccolò Machiavelli’s Renaissance-era The Prince to the U.S. diplomat Henry Morgenthau’s belief that behind ideologies hides raw power.

Fukuyama does not disagree with the fact that a true measure of international relations is a country’s military power rather than its intentions. According to the author, foreign-policy realists believe that allies and opponents are chosen based on actual power rather than ideological similarities. It could be argued, however, that foreign-policy pragmatism goes beyond military power and seeks mutually beneficial relations, for instance, in the realm of trade regardless of ideology and domestic politics. One such realist example is the relationship between the liberal democracy of the United States and the theocratic monarchy of Saudi Arabia. This relationship is focused on geostrategy, energy, and weapons trade.

Fukuyama believes that seeking “accommodation with powerful enemies” does not constitute a good foreign policy because it does not improve national security (250). His example of the détente with the Soviet Union does not consider the fact that national security for the U.S., as a global superpower, did not end at American borders surrounded by two oceans and weaker neighbors Canada and Mexico, but extended around the world. He does not examine the way in which this very arrangement may be inherently problematic, as it exacerbates relations on other countries’ borders which do not present a direct threat to the United States.

Despite his criticism of Realpolitik for its “serious weaknesses” both as “a description of reality and a prescription for policy,” Fukuyama does not provide constructive solutions beyond liberalizing and democratizing the non-Western world based on his assumption that democracies get along well together (252). In Chapter 24, he argues that a state of peace is possible regardless of bipolarity, as in during the Cold War, or multipolarity, in which there are many centers of power. This type of international peace would be less like the Hegelian master in search for recognition (megalothymia) and more like “Rousseau’s man in the state of nature” (255).

One of the contributions to international peace is “the spread of compassion, and a steadily decreasing tolerance for violence, death, and suffering” (260). The author provides a historic example of Britain giving up its overseas colonies because “colonialism was inconsistent with the Atlantic Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights” (257). Yet Fukuyama overlooks Britain’s colonial overextension and significant weakness after World War II, as well as international pressure from the United Nations, as major contributors to the loss of its empire. 

However, the three decades that passed since the publication of this book show that peaceful behavior appears to have been the exception for the world’s powerful. As already mentioned, a quarter of all American military interventions occurred in this period (Kushi, Sidita and Monica Duffy Toft, “Introducing the Military Intervention Project: A New Dataset on US Military Interventions, 1776–2019,” Journal of Conflict Resolution (8 August 2022), accessed 30 August 2022). Some of the examples include the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia with depleted uranium, the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, the 2003 invasion of Iraq with the death toll in the hundreds of thousands, and the 2011 invasion of Libya. These military conflicts involved other liberal-democratic allies from NATO. This aggressive behavior by the most advanced and supposedly humane societies, in Fukuyama’s view, shows that there is a chasm between the domestic and international politics of these countries.

The author also suggests that “the importance of land, population, and natural resources declined sharply as sources of wealth” in contrast to technological innovation (261). However, the OPEC oil embargo of the 1970s and the 21st-century energy wars with Russia have shown that commodities, like affordable and reliable oil and gas, to power technologically innovative production remain essential and, arguably, more important than more abstract measures like the GDP.

Fukuyama characterizes democracies as “fundamentally un-warlike,” manifesting “little distrust or interest in mutual domination” (262). Little attention is paid here to the American military presence in multiple European countries, as a source of hard power to secure a consensus, and the American molding of many European institutions and elites since the 1948 Marshall Plan, as a source of soft power. It remains to be seen, for instance, if Europe were de-occupied by the United States, what type of security arrangements would arise. Fukuyama also believes that “the peaceful behavior of democracies” is inherent and more important than international organizations like the United Nations which exhibited “manifest failure” (280-281). Some scholars argue that if the United Nations were more representative of the entire world in terms of the Security Council membership, and the veto power were to be taken away from the Security Council, that the organization may function better by promoting adherence to international law. (Fitzgerald, Amber. “Security Council Reform: Creating a More Representative Body of the Entire U.N. Membership.” Pace International Law Review. Volume 12, Issue 2. Fall 2000.)

In addition to religion, nationalism poses a problem for a liberal democracy, according to Fukuyama. He refers both to deeper traditional roots and the modern invention of the nation-state roughly along linguistic and ethnic borders. The author highlights many historic examples in which the struggle for national recognition within larger political blocs, such as the Hapsburg and the Ottoman empires, also turned into xenophobia and intolerance toward one’s own minorities after that recognition had been achieved. At the end of the Cold War, similar nationalisms arose in small states like the Baltics as a response to seeking identity recognition. The author also acknowledges the importance of class and offers a more intersectional analysis, in which a “Russian nobleman would have much more in common with a French nobleman than with a peasant living on his own estate” (268).

Since “liberalism vanquished religion in Europe” by removing its political power from it, it is time to do the same with nationalism, the author suggests (270). He believes that nationalism must disappear as a political force. As a result, the “French can continue to savor their wines and the Germans their sausages” in the private sphere alone (271). Fukuyama conflates deep ethno-cultural and historic roots of different people with toxic nationalism, suggesting that benign cuisine embodies the importance of thousands of years of cultural development.