Skip to main content

Francis Fukuyama is right: Socialism is the only alternative to liberalism

In Liberalism and Its Discontents, Francis Fukuyama diagnoses the political and psychological malaise caused by capitalism. His analysis makes one thing clear: liberalism is incapable of addressing the social, economic, and ecological crises it faces.
  
by Samuel McIlhagga 

Part 3 - The End of History — From Nietzsche to Freud
 
In The End of History, Fukuyama argued that, over the long term, the whole world will converge on variations of the liberal democratic capitalist model. This was because there were, in his mind, no other existing models that could rationally organize modern societies. Rivals, such as Islamic and Christian theocracy, were culturally and geographically restricted — only liberalism, after the end of socialism, could bestride the world as a global system.

In his first book, Fukuyama was keen to stress the fact that history’s ending would not occur synchronously across geographical regions; instead, active outliers in the Global South would eventually catch up after a century or so. The enclaves of non-liberalism that existed in the developing world were not models for an alternative world order. Writing in The End of History, he could proclaim that “it matters very little what strange thoughts occur to people in Albania or Burkina Faso.” For Fukuyama, liberalism would win out, not because it was historically inevitable but because it represented an ideal form of rational social organization that, when compared to its competitors, had the fewest internal contradictions.

Yet the little-remembered last chapter of Fukuyama’s The End of History — “The Last Man” — takes its name from Nietzsche’s letztermensch, the passive, secure, and materialistic opposite of the übermensch (superman). Fukuyama uses the image of the Last Man to acknowledge the contradictions inherent in the liberal democratic system and the frustration felt by affluent liberal democratic subjects. As he wrote in 1992, “The passion for equal recognition — isothymia — does not necessarily diminish with the achievement of greater de facto equality and material abundance, but may actually be stimulated by it.

Fukuyama understood, in 1992, that liberal democracy would be in the most danger not from competing outside forces but from boredom and its effects on a restless population willing to experiment and reach for Platonic thymos, or spirited recognition. In The End of History, Fukuyama, influenced by Kojève’s readings of Hegel and Leo Strauss’s close analysis of Platonic conceptions of the human psyche in The Republic, argued that perennial aspects of human nature like thymos would endanger the coldly rational and technocratic world of advanced liberal democracy. Yet, at the same time, liberal democracy in The End of History is understood to be the only system with the potential to provide adequate recognition to humanity’s thymos.

While the clashes between human nature and the liberal democratic system were an important postscript to The End of History, they have moved center stage in Liberalism and Its Discontents. What remains constant is Fukuyama’s reliance on transhistorical psychological models of immutable human nature, rather than an analysis of material and economic relations, to explain the current fragility of liberal democracy.

His latest publication moves from the metaphysical frameworks of Plato and Nietzsche to the psychological perspective of Sigmund Freud — Liberalism and Its Discontents echoes the title of the Austrian psychoanalyst’s 1930 Civilization and Its Discontents. A deep-seated pessimism about modernity runs through much of Freud’s work. But Civilization and Its Discontents is not simply a rejection of rational society. Freud ironically points out that civilization is the cause of, and balm for, human misery.

                         Our civilization is largely responsible for our misery . . . we should be much happier if we gave it up and returned to primitive conditions. . . . In whatever way we may define the concept of civilization, it is a certain fact, that all the things with which we seek to protect ourselves against the threats that emanate from the sources of suffering are part of that very civilization.

Freud’s theories about the relationship of humans to civilization — that discontent with civilization is generated within the system and used against it — are, to Fukuyama, equally applicable to liberal democracy.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Trump's tariffs: A unique opportunity for BRICS and the Global South to fully escape from dollar tyranny

globinfo freexchange   Does Trump know what he is doing? Well, yes and no. While many interpretate his latest move, mostly as an attempt to halt China, his main goal is to give the final blow to the neoliberal order on behalf of his oligarchs .  From this perspective, Trump's unprecedented decision to decide mass tariffs against almost everyone, was an act of strategic hit against the global free market neoliberalism, with the financial capital  at its top. And that's because this dominant-for-almost-half-century system, identifies restrictions and protectionism as major threats against its own existence. In other words, Trump acted as a commander of the capitalist faction that wants to beat its neoliberal rivals and put itself in charge, through a new transformation of capitalism into a 21st century corporate feudalism.   Concerning China, Trump's move may have some negative impact on its economy for a while, since China has chosen to partially play by the rule...

Deranged euroclowns want to revive a nazi-origin project!

globinfo freexchange   Behind the ridiculously cartoonish latest spot of the EU that gives "instructions" to the European citizens on how to deal with a major crisis during the first hours, lies a secret desire.    The deranged euroclowns of the crypto-fascist extreme center , are trying to build up a condition of consent inside the minds of Europeans, which is related to their biggest wet dream: an autonomous imperialist European army. The idea was not born suddenly because of Trump's hostile attitude against his own allies. From the early 50s, pan-European networks of neo-Nazis were created. In May 1951, the European Social Movement (MSE) was founded in Malmö, Sweden. Essentially, it was about projecting the ideology of the German SRP on a pan-European level. The MSE, which would remain active until the 1980s, proclaimed the need for Europe to emancipate itself from the divisive tutelage of the USA and the USSR, called for the defense of the “European race” against th...

Neoliberalism Needs To Go

Second Thought  

Netanyahu BRAGS About Genocide - And Our Media COVERS IT UP

Owen Jones  

Google Imports Ex Israeli Spies, The Genocide Resumes, Cruel Britannia

by Nate Bear   Part 3 - Cruel Britannia   The UK is moving ahead with large welfare cuts for disabled people, including those with cancer. On TV the other day, the UK’s health secretary Wes Streeting said that people with cancer should be in work, not at home resting. Alongside this, the government has said that to cut youth employment it will push young people to join the army. This, of course, is in the context of a massive expenditure on military weapons in the face of the Russian bogeyman.   What’s happening in the UK under a nominally centre-left Labour government is a good reminder that there is never a lesser evil if your leaders are neoliberals. Balancing the books on the backs of the poorest and most vulnerable in society is the north star of all neoliberals, whether they call themselves centrists, left wing or right wing. Cruelty is the policy and the point.    Yet the last few years have also been a good reminder that everything is a choice. Cov...

Trump Speeds Up FALL OF THE WEST With Tariff War

Owen Jones     Related:   Trump's tariffs: A unique opportunity for BRICS and the Global South to fully escape from dollar tyranny

UN rapporteur Francesca Albanese: World is watching a live genocide in Gaza and doing nothing

The New Arab   As Israel’s war on Gaza enters its 19th month, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese is sounding the alarm louder than ever: the world is watching a live genocide — and doing nothing to stop it. In an exclusive interview with The New Arab , Albanese describes the devastation in Gaza as unparalleled since WWII. Entire neighbourhoods lie in ruins, tens of thousands are dead, and 91% of Gaza’s population is at risk of malnutrition. Over 60,000 children show signs of cognitive impairment due to starvation.  “This is not just war. This is genocide in real time,” she says. “What we are seeing now is the destruction of a people who refuse to leave.” Despite UN mandates and international law, Albanese says the global system is paralysed, and governments, corporations, and even universities are complicit. “If Palestine were a crime scene, it would bear all our fingerprints.”

US Official EXPOSES Truth About Gaza From The Inside

Owen Jones  

Google Imports Ex Israeli Spies, The Genocide Resumes, Cruel Britannia

by Nate Bear   Part 2 - The genocide resumes   The day before the Wiz deal, Israel resumed its genocide of Gaza with an unhinged bloodthirsty rampage, the deadliest twenty-four hours in the last nearly eighteen months of genocide. A high bar had been set, and it was cleared. They attacked at night, itself an act of utter cowardice and sadism, and slaughtered hundreds as they slept in tents. In tents. Close to one hundred babies and young children were killed. The overall death toll exceeds 400 and is rising. As expected, there is not a flicker of condemnation from world leaders, many of whom are arming Israel with the weapons and intelligence it needs for genocide. The British air force spent the ceasefire period gathering intelligence on Palestinians and feeding it to Israel so they could restart the mass murder efficiently.  The genocide is the end of the west. It destroys any claim to moral superiority over Russia, China, Iran or any of the officially designated bad g...