/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.16475162]

Has anyone actually successfully refuted this?
Most of the criticism I see is "war still exists, therefore wrong", even though Fukuyama never said that there would never be conflict (if anything the unity of the world against Iraq in 1991 seems to prove him correct). Even anti-Western countries like Iran and Russia don't propose an alternate system to western capitalism.

[Anonymous No.16475263]

>>16475162
Keep this thread up for 15 more hours and I'll refute it for you. G'night

[Anonymous No.16475280]

>>16475162
Fukuyama himself has stated that it's dated and no longer accurate.

[Anonymous No.16475283]

>>16475162
they said china was the counterargument, authoritarian capitalism
but we'll see if it lasts. too soon to say

[Anonymous No.16475290]

>>16475283
You mean one century is not enough?

[Anonymous No.16475326]

>>16475280
That's overstating Fukuyama's position. He admitted that he didn't foresee it being possible for democracy to recede as it has subsequently done in certain places. He has fears for liberal democracy that he didn't hold in 1989. But I have never seen a total recanting of his views.

[Anonymous No.16475460]

>>16475162
>tfw wrote an essay about how history had ended in grade 6
fukuyama btfo

[Anonymous No.16475492]

History ended just before the bronze age collapse

[Anonymous No.16475496]

lmao remember like a year ago about how all the cringe online leftoids believed a bernie """revolution""" will lead to worldwide communism and smugly talked shit about fukuyama
where are these losers now

[Anonymous No.16475510]

>>16475162
Chi-na

[Anonymous No.16476147]

>>16475162
In a way he is almost impossible to refute because he dovetails onto the end of his book that there may be "reversals" in history. So even if you raise points about democratic backsliding or islamic fundamentalism or state-capitalism or dysfunctions emerging in existing western democracies, fukuyama or his supporters can just turn around and say its a reversal of history not progression, and the REAL end of history is still liberal democracy. I don't want to go into a Popperian "pseudo-science because it is unfalsifiable" point, but it does weaken a position when your response is only convincing if you already assume the truth of the position
One can also pick at parts of Fukuyama's argument as being inconsistent. For example, he claims that liberalism is the end state of human ideological development, that it has been triumphant "in the realm of ideas" i.e. it presents the most desirable system of government that people free from coercion would choose to live under. This and the material world i.e the actual distribution of governmental systems can differ, which he uses to explain why the above reversal of history is possible without the end of history thesis being debunked. As evidence for this triumph, he presents the competition between liberal democracies and opposing ideologies during the twentieth century. Yet it is altogether unclear why this supports the original premise. The fall of fascism and communism were largely a product of material triumph (military and economic)—it wasn't a "war of ideas", it was just a war. Nazi Germany ended because it lost the war; The USSR ended because it was bankrupted by the arms race (of course, there was of course far more at play in both of these cases). This could be construed as a measure of superiority, as being the system best equipped to wage a war (both economic and military), but considering his comments on democratic peace theory it isn't the superiority that Fukuyama meant. Neither of these cases were choices "free from coercion"
And if you turn to the core, which is the notion that liberal capitalistic democracy fulfills the master-slave dialectic—what is there to say? it already has fallen far from the tree of Hegel's original meaning. Even if we follow Fukuyama's interpretation, what is the kind of recognition that exists under capitalist economic systems? Realistically the recognition isn't between property-owning persons (in the classical sense), but between producers and consumers; coca-cola doesn't recognise me as an essentially human equal capable of ownership and hence freedom, but as a data point indicating a potential source of revenue to be extracted. It is an instrumental recognition, not a categorical recognition. Reminiscences of Marx's commodity fetishism and Kant's second formulation of the CI
I'm a liberal myself, but there is nothing inevitable about liberalism. I further see the reticence born out of the idea of liberalism's inevitability as quite dangerous

[Anonymous No.16476481]

>>16475162
>the end of history
Literally no one believes in History ending anymore, reading a book past the 90's.

[Anonymous No.16476489]

>>16475162
Just look for anything that shits on Hegelian theology.


>>16475326
Fukuyama was a neocon but he doesn't think you can impose democracy anymore.

[Anonymous No.16476495]

>>16475460
Based.

[Anonymous No.16476621]

Chantal Mouffe did the best criticism of Fukuyama imo, read Oakshotte and Lasch too

[Anonymous No.16477261]

>>16475263
bumping for this

[Anonymous No.16477478]

>>16475162
Didn't Zizek write about this?

[Anonymous No.16477936]

>>16475162
His book is full of errors like citing wrong hegel passages, so it refutes itself. It's not even worth reading desu

[Anonymous No.16478023]

>>16475492
I never knew that Virgil was writing post-apocalyptic fiction.

[Anonymous No.16478069]

>>16475162
His idea is that liberal democracy is the final stage of social development. It's the end of history in the sense of "progress"; one of the grand meta-narratives. Fukuyama thinks that it's the best system we could ever come up with. It's not supposed to be the end of history in the sense that things will stop happening, or that it couldn't be destroyed, degenerate, or be overtaken by something else.
Pretty much no-one seems to get this. It's like people don't read the book. This isn't to say he's write or wrong of course, but that a lot of the detractors are just dealing with a straw man.

[Anonymous No.16479097]

Spiiiiiiin

[Anonymous No.16479789]

>>16476147
I completely agree, momentarily and for the time being the state, even in china, do recognise pepole as essentially humans capable of ownership and freedom, still every day we are more and more data and potential source of revenue to be extracted. This I believe is becuase they are deamons, state's and corp's, made of and from the stuff of dreams and languege, lording over humanity similar to the way of the Ophiocordyceps unilateralis and ants.

[Anonymous No.16479973]

>>16475162
Look the fuck around you, man. Siberia is on fire with record-breaking heatwaves. The future is medieval.

[Anonymous No.16479984]

>>16477478
https://twitter.com/writersdoing/status/1311348135101435908

[Anonymous No.16480013]

>>16475263
>>16477261
Let's start with where he's right. His diagnosis of the feminizing trend in society and of liberal democracy as the most feminine form of governance thus far is spot on. however, he fails to foresee the scale and consequences of the continued forced feminization of global society.
Sperm counts are down and femboys are up. "The future is female' takes on a whole new meaning as plastics become the dominate material in our environment it emasculates on a biological level destroying your sons T levels before his testicles even have a chance to drop. Plastic society emphasizes and promotes and glorifies the flexible, moldable, reformable (feminine) aspects; people are forced to jump from job to job, never settling in =, always in a state of constant training at the whims of greater forces. Jobs continue to rely more on social skills than physical strength as the service industry expands looking to employ the pretty and personable. The technological sector is exceptionally feminine as well, taking place sedentarily indoors things like programming are far more akin to garment weaving than hunting and war making. Even when war is made today it is done at an impersonal distance through computer screens and drone strikes. State violence takes on an ever-increasing manipulative role with the increasing psychological warfare embarked on with narrative control through social media. Even the most masculine actors in society the conservative male cucks himself by vigorously defending his obligation to protect his family and property over to the increasingly feminine powers of the liberal state.
Fukuyama mistakenly assumes that these trends wont advance us further into something exceeding liberal democracy in femininity. Various forms of socialism come to mind, seeing as all previous renditions have been dominated with masculine energies. The past communist imagery of guns stars, manual labor, divinely justified violence, brotherhood and discipline were banished only to return with the addition of uwu's, knee socks, and cock cages. An impotent and unthreatening synthesis to anyone foolish enough to think they're after a a violent overturning and not a long game of corruption. Who knows what shape the change will take but women don't share men's fetish for ownership of land, property, wealth or partners, so to imagine that the most feminine system created by men is where this trend is going to end is beyond comical. Though perhaps Fukuyama's plea to keep women out of international politics in his essay "what if women ran the world?" is his vague acknowledgment of this societal destiny which we are increasingly unlikely to escape.

[Anonymous No.16480529]

>>16480013
i regret bumping for this.

[Anonymous No.16480702]

>>16480013
>>16480529
It's like the reverse of those feminist women that filter everything through the lens of phallic symbolism

[Anonymous No.16480788]

>>16480013
Shit does he really say that? I've been mulling over pic related a lot recently, where he says that democracy is doomed to Caesarism because a democratic public opinion is by nature feminine and passive. The leveling process of democracy creates mass groupthink which encourages feminine characteristics in the public i.e. judgement based on emotionalism and sentimentalism, and allowing itself to be led into anything as long as the leader is charismatic.

[Anonymous No.16480984]

>>16480013
>m-muh glorious past
>m-muh appalling future
Pathetic. Autistic analyses of what things were, and how they will, be are useless. What you should be doing is exploiting the decadence for what it's worth, in the present moment. No matter how hard you sperg out on a Taiwanese cricket breeding forum, the wheels of time won't spin backwards.

[Anonymous No.16481384]

>>16480013
you've never read a word of Fukuyama have you

[Anonymous No.16481396]

>>16481384
fuk yu mama

[Anonymous No.16481942]

>>16476147
> The fall of fascism and communism were largely a product of material triumph (military and economic)—it wasn't a "war of ideas", it was just a war. Nazi Germany ended because it lost the war; The USSR ended because it was bankrupted by the arms race (of course, there was of course far more at play in both of these cases)

I like a lot of what you wrote but I think your underselling the role of ideas in both cases. Fascism required imperialistic expansion to justify the superiority of it's people/ideology, it's no coincidence that Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and Italy all initiated wars. International communism as practiced by the Soviet Union attempted to compete with liberal capitalism ideologically on economics, that communism could both produce goods more efficiently/innovate then capitalism with centrally controlled planning. This proved false and the contradictions and inadequacies collapsed the system. No communist country competes with capitalism on these grounds anymore, their all nationalistic and now make the argument that they produce more equal results then liberal capitalism does (China's state capitalism is something different and the 21st centuries greatest threat to traditional liberalism).

Couldn't agree more however with you on the danger of thinking of liberal democratic capitalism as inevitable or as the end goal for everyone. There is similarly to marxism a liberal eschatology, markets will eventually dissolve nation states, ethnicities and religion or anything else that posits an absolute truth.

[Anonymous No.16482225]

>>16481942
>Fascism required imperialistic expansion to justify the superiority of it's people/ideology, it's no coincidence that Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and Italy all initiated wars
This is actually wrong though italian fascism was indeed imperialistic but mostly because they needed ressources to achieve their autarky plan. Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were not fascist.

[Anonymous No.16482310]

>>16482225
I abhor that fascist is used ubiquitously now a days but if Nazi Germany wasn't fascist then I don't know what is. Its hard to nail down a definition for it and even the association of fascist = genocidal isn't true since Italy wasn't. But both Italy and Nazi Germany were totalitarian states trying control as many aspects of life as possible with charismatic leaders of a populist bent that tried to unite all the people within the state and call anyone else an enemy. And that's uniquely fascistic.

[Anonymous No.16482379]

>>16482310
>totalitarian states trying control as many aspects of life as possible with charismatic leaders of a populist bent that tried to unite all the people within the state and call anyone else an enemy
That applies to Stalin and Mao too but I doubt you'd want to call them Fascist.

[Anonymous No.16482402]

Not really uniquely fascist when you can find these in various forms in socialist regimes as well, such as post-maoist china for instance

[Anonymous No.16482425]

>>16482379
>>16482402
Populist bent is the key to my definition. Fascists didn't have an explicit problem with capitalism or business as long as it advanced the interests of the state. The post Mao China is an interesting case but China atm is far less totalizing then Germany/Italy were.

[Anonymous No.16482438]

>>16482425
How are you uniting populism with capitalism and business? Populism is democracy and communism, it's pandering to the will of the masses.

[Anonymous No.16482477]

>>16482425
How so? They have complete control over their economy and far more social control than italy or germany had, there's no denying it's inherently populist too, it's a totalistic regime if not outwardly a complete totalitarian one, they also share a conception of the individual that is similar to italian fascists' actual idealism

[Anonymous No.16482485]

>>16481942
I was alluding to that point when i said it could be construed as a measure of superiority regarding being best able to engage in martial and economic competition. But even points about Fascism's/National Socialism's ideological commitment to militarism was only fatal due to their material circumstances. Had it been that a country with the size, location, and industry of the US flipped fascist instead of Germany, they may have been able to persecute their expansionist tendencies successfully. Yet i wouldn't consider this evidence of Fascism being the final progression of humanities ideological progression. I also don't recall there is anything inherent in marxism that demands economic competition. In fact, i remember Marx recommending only working as much as needed to sustain a certain lifestyle. That is, matching production with labour costs. Perhaps this kind of competition is present in marxist-leninism, but i've only read Imperialism and State and Revolution so i'm not sure. If we suppose it does, a repeat of the last point can just be made again: had it been that the USSR had been larger, or America smaller, the outcome could have been different. And if it had been, i still wouldn't consider it to have proven much on behalf of marxism.
So while we can say their conflicts and eventual downfalls were ideologically motivated, they still weren't the product of the idealised battle of ideas completely separate from the material world like fukuyama wants us to think about it.

[Anonymous No.16482581]

https://www.amazon.com/Evolutionary-Limits-Liberalism-Democratic-Satisfaction/dp/3030314952

[Anonymous No.16482614]

>>16482438
There's less of a class element to fascism compared to socialism. The emphasis is on the leader representing the state who speaks for the people, a Rousseauean general will in a way. The businesses are then pressured into doing good for the state/people to be allowed to exist but they aren't centrally planned.

>>16482477
Local politicians are actually very powerful in China and have a lot of day on what gets done. Also prior to Xi Jinping (post Mao) the emphasis on the charismatic leader wasn't as great and there was an assumption of a transfer of power and the party itself was powerful with a vast network. I would agree that societal control aspects are comparable. Actually I havent thought much about it before but if Xi continues to centralize his power I think you could make an argument that it is closer to a fascist state.

>>16482485
I see your point but fascism didn't fail simply due to the material stuff. There's a reason it burned itself out so quickly in each country it was tried and that developing countries now don't look to them as models.

>I also don't recall there is anything inherent in marxism that demands economic competition

There's a utopian and scientific Marx, just like there's a long tradition of both tendencies in general socialism. The scientific marxists have argued that socialism was the best way to organize economics and the Soviet Union attempted to prove that.

[Anonymous No.16482674]

>>16482614
>if Xi continues to centralize his power I think you could make an argument that it is closer to a fascist state.
if you look at their situation compared to italy prior to 1920, you'll see that there is an eery similarity between china and mussolini's fascism (industrialization aside), the latter recognized it himself thought it was really with deng xiaoping that china started to politically align itself with elements of fascism.

[Anonymous No.16483113]

>>16482425
Wasn't Fascist Italy Corporatist?

[Anonymous No.16483328]

>>16481942
>International communism as practiced by the Soviet Union attempted to compete with liberal capitalism ideologically on economics, that communism could both produce goods more efficiently/innovate then capitalism with centrally controlled planning. This proved false and the contradictions and inadequacies collapsed the system. No communist country competes with capitalism on these grounds anymore, their all nationalistic and now make the argument that they produce more equal results then liberal capitalism does (China's state capitalism is something different and the 21st centuries greatest threat to traditional liberalism).
Utter nonsense. Violence, plain and simple, was the difference. USSR fell because it was literally infiltrated and forcibly torn apart, which utterly ruined its economy with superior 'liberalism' and ex-USSR countries have yet to recover.

[Anonymous No.16484154]

>>16483328
delusional tankie

[Anonymous No.16485703]

>>16481384
I fail to see how that is relevant.

[Anonymous No.16486617]

>>16475290
Absolutely not

[Anonymous No.16487318]

bump

[Anonymous No.16487418]

>>16480013
>plastic just magically emasculates
>improvisation is feminine
>being indoors is feminine
>war is feminine if conducted at a distance
How does this shit make sense? Try not thinking with a dildo up your ass next time, anon.

[Anonymous No.16487620]

>>16480984
>What you should be doing is exploiting the decadence for what it's worth, in the present moment.
>dude just look out for you bro fuck teh world!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Anonymous No.16487943]

>>16480013
what the fuck?

[Anonymous No.16488455]

>>16487620
>dude just look out for you bro fuck teh world!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Exactly. It's you against millions and millions of people, who do you think it's going to win?

[Anonymous No.16490018]

>>16486617
that's about as long as the neoliberal order

[Anonymous No.16490144]

>>16475162
What he considers Western Capitalism today will be vastly different from what our grandkids consider Western Capitalism, assuming its still around by then. Ideologies are far from static.

[Anonymous No.16490152]

>>16475162
I think we are seeing this be refuted in real time. Populists are rising, America is going crazy. Neoliberalism will not exist forever

[Anonymous No.16490166]

>>16475162
9/11 refuted it

[Anonymous No.16490172]

>>16490152
Those are just temporary setbacks. Look at history on a larger scale.

[Anonymous No.16490366]

>>16475162
It refutes itself. Fukuyama has already distanced himself from the conclusions drawn.
>H-HE JUST SAID IT'S DELAYED!
LMAO

[Anonymous No.16490532]

>>16490366
how so?

[Anonymous No.16491136]

>>16490152
That's just a return to history.

[Anonymous No.16491149]

>>16480013
Horia you need to either read some real philosophy or fucking give up

[Anonymous No.16491209]

>>16490532
Not him, but Fukuyama has moved towards a model of institutions succeeding through robust leadership, mission, and autonomy, and then decaying through bureaucratic norms. He also echos Why Nations Fail about inclusive versus exclusive institutions.

In short, he no longer is interested in macroscale assessment.

[Anonymous No.16491237]

>>16480013
-men live to sustain women and society while viewing themselves as alpha men who don't compete for women.
-women live to have a cushy life and casual sex and kids form casual sex

dwt simp in denial

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » No.16491942]

>all women one way
>all women one way

[Anonymous No.16492013]

>>16491942
Yes, there's no such thing as real feminine behavior. It's all constructed. I thought you of all people would see what I was doing, but alas only >>16480702 got what I was going for.

[Anonymous No.16492515]

>>16482225
>>16482310
>>16482379
>>16482402
>>16482425
>>16482438
>>16482477
Read Lenin. Read state and revolution

[Anonymous No.16492609]

>>16492515
why?