/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.22098152]

For years I've been torn on this book and its thesis. On one hand it's evident that liberal democracy faces obvious challenges from competing powers and a myriad of internal issues causing decay in these societies -- incompetent ruling classes, aging populations, dreadful fertility rates, economic stagnation, a mentally ill and lonely youth population, low faith in democracy, and a collapse in gender relations.

And yet, it's clear that despite these contradictions in Liberalism it's still the dominant system of the world. America is still the greatest power. There is a singular cosmopolitan lifestyle of labor, liberal beliefs and consumerism that has spread in most corners of the earth with even poorer countries becoming absorbed into this hegemony because of the Internet.

The West is suffering but everyone still wants to be Western. Everyone hates liberalism but still suggest that the only solution is more liberalism. What do we make of this? Is this truly what Fukuyama meant by "end of history?"

[Anonymous No.22098162]

liberal democracy doesn't exist

[Anonymous No.22098276]

>>22098152
Liberal democracy doesn't exist. The only differences are those that pretend to be liberal democracies and those that don't pretend. Everything else is just resources, policies and investments.

[Anonymous No.22098322]

>>22098276
You have it the opposite. Countries don't pretend to be liberal democracies. Liberalism as a system and ideology is pretending. It's nothing but dissimulation, but it's still a real force in the world.

[Anonymous No.22098383]

>>22098152
>The West is suffering but everyone still wants to be Western.
I'd argue that it's possible that this has more to do with the West's enormous wealth and relative stability than our liberal principles. From there, another question is to what extent did our liberal principles causually affect our accumulating that wealth and achieving that stability? For Fukuyama it's an easy question to answer but I'm not really convinced.

>Everyone hates liberalism but still suggest that the only solution is more liberalism.
>The metaphysical image that a definite epoch forges of the world has the same structure as what the world immediately understands to be appropriate as a form of its political organization.

>What do we make of this? Is this truly what Fukuyama meant by "end of history?"
Not even close, Fukuyama's end of history is essentially Marx's "communism," just instead of the decay of the state and common ownership of the means of production, we have liberal democracies. It's global and involves there being no more war, no more states that are not explicitly liberal democracies, etc.

I haven't read any of the Fukuyama stuff after End of History and I understand he's updated his ideas, but there is the very real question that he deals with more than a little bit about whether or not his End of History constitutes something that'll be desirable and stable in the long-term. I think that's still a pretty open question.

[Anonymous No.22098388]

There was a time when I would vehemently discard this take out of a misconsideration of liberal democracy as inherently weak and flawed. The dogma wich it is based on is pure individual freedom paired with his political participation in the state and the freedom of every individual; there seem to be too much contradictions between these three points to consider liberal democracy as stable enough to sustain itself for periods of time as say, monarchy. The individuals too individualistic in the classical sense will rarely feel a strong inclination to participate in a state that they consider too opposed to their own libertarian interests because of this very circular reason. However, these lone wolves seem to become rarer and rarer every day. The rest of the population seems pleasant with the status quo, but they are divided into three very very similar fractions, one that is conservative but conformist, one that is progressive but conformist, and a third one that seeks the complete transformation of the state towards some sort of authoritarian rule that brings equality of all people by enforcement of the law. If they manage to get the upper hand, liberalism will continue to exist under a slightly different form but become increasingly unpopular with the passing of the years and finish with a glorious collapse. However, if the status quo continues as it is, I see no visible end to the rulership of international banks and the state and the capitalistic enterprises, despite the increasing confusion of the population, despite the internet, despite mass media, despite all the massive flaws that exist within liberal democracy.

[Anonymous No.22098433]

>>22098152
The Liberal West will implode on its contradictions and will bring the entire world order down with it. It may stall out in a cybernetic totalitarian period for a bit, but it won’t last before demographic and environmental issues causes that whole world to descend into further chaos and disorder, resulting in the end of this several thousand year epoch of history of not humanity itself. It’s obvious the malevolent elites who rule things will not allow reform to fix the contradictions and problems facing us, and consequently SHTF will be all their fault. Otherwise I’d agree with Fukuyama, but I’m feeling a strong pull to blackpilled political nihilism at this point. Only other path forward is Chinese hegemony and neocon bloodsuckers will sooner have a nuclear war than allow that.

[Anonymous No.22098451]

>>22098152
He’s right. Russia and China are doomed unless they work closely with the West in a friendly manner. Everyone is better off in the West or working with it. Even our worst Presidents are better than their autocrats.

[Anonymous No.22098573]

it's true that none of the challengers to liberal western democracy have come up with a workable alternative to it. russia can counter western influence on tis doorstep with force and china can steamroll other economies with their size but both systems are plagued with inefficiency and neither have institutitions or systems that anyone else actually wants to adopt. ofc AI is actually going to end history for real so none of this matters

[Anonymous No.22098939]

>>22098383
In Fukuyama's view, there will always be countries which aren't liberal democracies but they're part of of the historic, rather than post-historic, world. It's only between those liberal democratic countries that he thinks no wars will occur, but between historic states he says they're possible.

[Anonymous No.22098978]

>>22098383
>Fukuyama's end of history is essentially Marx's "communism," just instead of the decay of the state and common ownership of the means of production, we have liberal democracies.
This is the important point and how to think of Fukuyama (and Kojeve). Hegelianism and its offshoots are religions in the truest sense of the word. Fukuyama's confidence in "the fact that history is being driven in a coherent direction by rational desire and rational recognition" represents a dogma with no more basis in reality than the medieval peasant's (or St. Thomas Aquinas') certainty of the existence of the Christian God. Whereas Marx took the new contemporary hot topic of the burgeoning subjection of the worker in the Industrial Revolution, and then elevated that to the status of the fundamental fact of human history, Fukuyama does the same with the new contemporary hot topic of the apparent victory of liberalism over communism during the decline and fall of the Soviet Union. Just as Marx's argument appeared compelling throughout most of the middle and late 19th century, Fukuyama's does today.
The last chapter in the book is the most important, not because Fukuyama pigeonholes an unsettling phenomenon into the terms and framework of his argument, but because (unlike the greater part of his book) that phenomenon actually describes something real. If there is an end to history, it will be because technology has enabled a group to dominate or control the rest of mankind, or because we kill ourselves.

[Anonymous No.22099000]

>>22098939
I'll need to check the book again, but are you sure?
I recall somewhere in the last chapter, during a discussion on the apparent inability of contemporary thought to move beyond relativism, he muses that it might resolve itself as the world becomes increasingly liberal and illiberal positions become increasingly rare. Ironic, being itself an exercise in relativism (unless you share his position), but he presents it seriously.

[Anonymous No.22099248]

>>22098451
>Even our worst Presidents are better than their autocrats.
I dunno, Donald Trump and a demented geezer?

[Anonymous No.22099265]

>>22098152
History is subject to material conditions. Neoliberalism is the end of industrial material conditions, but those same conditions are also destroying themselves, the planet, and humanity. Fukuyama is narrow-minded.
>>22098383
>>22098978
Very good posts.

[Anonymous No.22099315]

>>22099000
I had another look and found the specific quote I was thinking of. It's the 1st page of Chapter 26 - Toward a Pacific Union.

>For the foreseeable future, the world will still be divided between a post-historical part, and a part this is still stuck in history. Within the post-historical world, the chief axis of interaction between states would be economic, and the old rules of power politics would have decreasing relevance. That is, once could imagine a democratic Europe that was multipolar and dominated by German economic power, in which Germany's neighbors nonetheless felt relatively little sense of military threat and did not take any special efforts to increase their level of military preparedness. There would be considerable economic but little military competition. The post-historical world would still be divided into nation-states, but its separate nationalisms would have made peace with liberalism and would express themselves increasingly in the sphere of private life alone. Economic rationality, in the meantime, will erode many traditional features of sovereignty as it unifies markets and production.
>On the other hand, the historical world would still be riven with a variety of religious, national, and ideological conflicts depending on the stage of development of the particular countries concerned, in which the old rules of power politics continue to apply.

[Anonymous No.22099319]

>>22099315
Forgot to mention, but he was under the impression that liberal democracy would become more popular, although in his more recent lectures and books he acknowledges that it's not a given and that there's even been a turn from liberal democracy in some places.

[Anonymous No.22099322]

>everyone still wants to be western

yeah, thats why russia, china, india, turkey are all run by anti western autocrats and dictators.


face it faggot, the empire is over, we enter the multi polar world and america is no longer top dog

[Anonymous No.22099357]

first 20 years of the twentieth century
>biggest war in history until that point, killing millions and changing warfare beyond recognition
>complete collapse of the global system set up by congress of vienna
>three major revolutions
>first marxist state in history, a new form of government never even tried before
>collapse of four major empires
>dozens of new states created
>massive technology growth in tangible products such as cars, planes, tanks, etc
>only 1/5 of the way in the century.

meanwhile 23 years in the 21st century…
>most peaceful century ever
>no new ideologies/movements that can challenge liberal hegemony (maybe except islam)
>russia and china are more held together by anti-muttism than any coherent set of ideas
>no massive war or conflict that destroys the current global homo order yet

he was right all long and it’s depressing as hell

[Anonymous No.22099383]

>>22099315
>>22099319
I see, yeah if you're Fukuyama then the "foreseeable" future isn't so important because you're convinced that it's trending in a certain direction anyway. But I think when you get down to it that's what the whole book is about: that trend towards a sort of utopian triumphant global liberal-democratic hegemony. I think of the train metaphor at the end of the book, where he says something like, "it will become clear that there was only one destination the whole time."
You note in his recent lectures he acknowledges that that trend may not be as clear-cut as it looked when he wrote the book, but isn't even that much sort of a death blow to his theory? Again the comparisons to orthodox Marxism beg to be made. How's he try to reconcile it?

[Anonymous No.22099461]

>>22099383
Yeah I see what you mean. I might have misread parts, but from what I understand Fukuyama's main thesis wasn't that every country would be a liberal democracy, but that liberal democracy would prove to be the best way of governing society and that its principles (at least ostensibly) would be accepted by almost everyone (he often says universally but I assume that's either hyperbole or he's referring to the public consciousness, since he dedicates the end of the book to permanent discontent with liberal democracy). From my reading, that countries might "regress" from liberal democracy towards other systems isn't the be-all-end-all of his theory, provided that the idea of liberalism and the liberal hegemony maintain their dominance.

It's interesting because when he discusses countries that pose a threat to liberal democracy, he still maintains that Russia and China will eventually become liberal democracies, or that at least the legitimacy of their governments' can't sustain itself. Most of his concern is about current liberal democratic countries (basically Europe and the US) that are threatened by populism from the left and right. It's essentially just The Last Man part of his book taking place. As for reconciling it, I haven't read his Identity book where he discusses all of it yet, but in his talks and articles he seems to talk less about the Hegelian (etc) part of his theory, and place more importance on governments and people taking action, so I think he has backed down a little bit on parts of his theory.

[Anonymous No.22099566]

>>22099461
Fukuyama still believes in his thesis entirely, but he has backtracked on the material viability of it. He acknowledges that liberalism faces many challenges from other countries and from within, so he doesn’t think every country will become a liberal democracy any time soon. However he still affirms that liberalism is naturally appealing to most people and that it will always be the most powerful system in modern history.

[Anonymous No.22099571]

I'm curious, does Fukuyama spend much time talking about religion in his text?

Because having encountered his thesis without reading the book, it has always struck me as a weakness in the concept. His analysis of liberalism and capitalism, and their triumph over other systems of organization, strikes me as very materialist, which makes sense given that he is the heir to a system of thought that started with Hegel and Marx. But how does such a worldview process people for whom non-material things are of great importance?

I supppose if he addressed Islam after 9/11 he must have written something along those lines.

[Anonymous No.22099584]

>>22098433
The West faces too many demographic issues (low IQ replacement, native dysgenic fertility etc.) and must collapse, save technology saves it in time.
However China faces no such issues. The West's intelligence will continue to fall, whilst China's will only rise. And they too are a highly intelligent and capable race (albeit in different ways), who I believe will carry the torch of civilization once it is extinguished in Europe and America.

[Anonymous No.22099649]

>>22099584
>And they too are a highly intelligent and capable race
All those Liveleak videos would beg to differ

[Anonymous No.22099783]

>>22098152
I can tell you as an Eastern European people here want the material wealth of the West but without the encompassing liberalism. Every time people start talking about how the rest of the world wants to be like the West, they leave that part out. That's why you have enclaves of foreigners that live in western cities but try to behave as if they were in their home nation. It's obvious that they are just economic immigrants, the equivalent if a mercenary with no allegiance to any philosophical ideal. People don't want to be liberal humanists, they want financial security. The moment liberalism becomes economically ineffective people will abandon it in a heartbeat.

[Anonymous No.22099791]

>>22099783
To reiterate, people here want EU subsidies, but the moment EU officials start talking about extremely liberal ideals like gay rights people will respond with a "Keep fags out of the public eye". Personally I dont like the current system of liberal democracies dictating how the rest of the world has to behave.

[Anonymous No.22100003]

>>22099783
>I can tell you as an Eastern European people here want the material wealth of the West but without the encompassing liberalism
You do not have the right to choose one without the other. Do you not understand that? You will take both or none.

[Anonymous No.22100053]

>>22100003
>You do not have the right to choose one without the other.
Says you

[Anonymous No.22100173]

>>22098152
There is hope.

[Anonymous No.22100377]

>>22098152
Liberalism is the dominant system through force and force only. America keeps it that way. Once American hegemony collapses, liberalism will dissipate noticeably.

[Anonymous No.22100603]

>>22098152
Theses like this are always so painfully, absurdly retarded.

The Greeks, Persians, Romans, Carthaginians, Egyptians, French, Japanese and everybody else all said “we’re the best ever this is the end of history [my group] forever.” Then a disaster happens, their culture is shattered, and a new one develops.

Rome under Trajan was in the same spot. You think any of them could imagine a group of fucking Rhineland savages sacking Rome and causing the imperial standard to be permanently moved east? No, because retardation and arrogance is constant in all times and places of human history.

How do otherwise literate people refuse to read ANY history?

[Anonymous No.22100952]

>>22100603
A good thread on /lit/? Bump. Anyone read his later books? How does he adjust his thesis?

[Anonymous No.22101071]

>>22099322
>b-b-but they use western technology and cultural practices
This is how all cultural exchange goes. Society A takes technology and culture from Society B then uses it against it, creating its one techno cultural synthesis in the process. This is exactly what China has done with market capitalism + the benefit of a one party authoritarian state where eminent domain and political persecution allows it to do whatever it wants to best suit its people.

[Anonymous No.22101075]

>>22099357
Let’s not forget the first 20 years of the 20th century we’re during perhaps the greatest technological upheaval in all of history, which, for the first time, had consequences pretty much everywhere in the globe.
We still have a few years for AI to do this to us.

[Anonymous No.22101174]

>>22100952
>How does he adjust his thesis?
>>22099319

[Anonymous No.22101188]

The future is private city states

[Anonymous No.22102053]

>>22101188
Sus

[Anonymous No.22102337]

>>22099357
>most peaceful century ever
>no new ideologies/movements that can challenge liberal hegemony (maybe except islam)
>russia and china are more held together by anti-muttism than any coherent set of ideas
>no massive war or conflict that destroys the current global homo order yet

>and yet despite how good everything is far-right and far-left populist movements continue to grow, for seemingly no reason, in spite of international efforts to stop and discredit them

[Anonymous No.22102495]

>>22100053
says reality. look at ukraine.

[Anonymous No.22102499]

>>22100603
>Greeks, Persians, Romans, Carthaginians, Egyptians, French, Japanese
those are all empires/states. if the us collapsed, liberalism would still remain dominant.

[Anonymous No.22102506]

>>22102337
>and yet despite how good everything is far-right and far-left populist movements continue to grow,
They all get defanged and neutered by the system and the extreme remnant gets sidelined. Trumptards and twitter commies are not far-right or far-left.

[Anonymous No.22102828]

>>22102337
Fukuyama wrote a whole book addressing the current polarization in liberal societies, basically he claims that both sides are taking aspects of liberalism to extremes and this can be resolved by synthesizing liberal democracy with civic nationalism

[Anonymous No.22102854]

>>22099571
he addresses it much more in his later books such as the origins of political order where he acknowledges the role of Catholicism in making western politics such as the investiture conflict.

>>22099584
>china faces no demographic issues
lol retard. China is much stronger economically and politically due to its modernization process but it has plenty of issues. The main threat to liberalism wont come from russia nor china nor some third world monkeys. It will come from disenchantment within. Hopefully, angry chuds establish a leninist dictatorship soon…

[Anonymous No.22102892]

>>22102828
>this can be resolved by synthesizing liberal democracy with civic nationalism
Sounds like Christopher Lasch. Did he say how this was supposed to be achieved? I remember somewhere in The End of History or elsewhere he ends a book or chapter talking about how we need to revive the value of moderation (also like Lasch). Really don't see how that will be doable considering the necessities of and imperatives imposed upon us by our current economic organization, not to mention its effect on politics. I think it was also Fukuyama (after Adorno/Horkheimer) that characterized us as feeding off our last precapitalist traditions, and that's not a renewable resource.

[Anonymous No.22102967]

>>22102828
>and this can be resolved by synthesizing liberal democracy with civic nationalism
this feels more like some half-assed attempt to reform the defects of the current order, similar to the late Roman emperors who tried to fix the empire or late Qing/Romanov reformers who wanted to find some way to believe they are in control of the situation when in reality, theyre not.

>he claims that both sides are taking aspects of liberalism to extremes.
I also think his argument is out of date considering he was replying to the reigning neoliberals at the time. The 2010s killed any popular support of free trade/neoliberal policies in the west and the only supporters are reaganite boomers, a dying breed. I hope that zoomers reject political and (most) economic liberalism in favor of a new political solution adaptive to the 21st century. millennials are basically boomer-lite so a lost cause.

[Anonymous No.22102987]

>>22102967
Zoomers and millennials wholeheartedly adore political liberalism so that's not gonna happen. Their political holy month just began in fact

[Anonymous No.22103003]

>>22098152
>In its liberal idealism, the nineteenth century was honestly convinced that it was on the direct and infallible road to the best of all possible roads. The people of that time scornfully looked down on earlier epochs with their wars, famines and revolutions as periods when mankind had not yet come of age and was insufficiently enlightened. Now, however, it was a mere matter of decades before they saw an end to evil and violence, and in those days this faith of uninterrupted, inexorable 'progress' truly had the force of a religion. People believed in 'progress' more than in the Bible, and its gospel message seemed incontestably proven by the new miracles of science that were revealed daily.
- Stefan Zweig, 1942

It has happened before, and it will happen again.

[Anonymous No.22103019]

>>22103003
That was written during WW2 when liberalism was suffering. Now it has spread across the globe. Everyone still believes in progress, even the commies. Nothing has really changed.

[Anonymous No.22103044]

>>22103019
The point is that everybody always says it and it always reveals itself to be horseshit. Carlyle parodied this in 1829.

[Anonymous No.22103171]

>>22102828
Isn't that just Singapore?

[Anonymous No.22103326]

>>22103171
Singapore isn’t really politically liberal

[Anonymous No.22103654]

>>22098152
He was right about literally everything, and continues to be right. Last few years in particular have vindicated him. There were a few troublesome years in last decade when political loons from both extremes (rightwingers with Brexit, migrant crisis and Trump, leftwingers with Sanders, Melenchon and Corbyn) were acting triumphant and claiming liberalism is falling apart only to be quickly humiliated as their imagined political victories turned into humiliations and liberalism carried on, stronger than ever. And that was before the recent Russian blunder that ensured permanent Western ideological dominance, even.

[Anonymous No.22103749]

>>22098276
Democracy quite obviously exists. That oligarchic money powers subvert and control democracies does not undermine the basic fact that they exist. Whether liberalism exists is a different question? It’s obvious it does exist as a political theory, but does it exist in practice? I mean, the “liberalism” of modern America, with its social engineering projects and total mobilization economy, is not all that similar to the liberalism of Locke and Jefferson imo but the cause is not so much an ideological separation imo. It’s not like Barack Obama read liberal political theory and said “I don’t think that’s quite right” and then acted on that basis.

[Anonymous No.22103753]

>>22098433
This is the thing though. Liberalism is the political ideal of enlightenment-influenced professionals, merchants, thinkers, and socialites. It’s an altogether thing than the political ideal of industrialists and technocrats, which we’ve had since the late 19th century and which would midwife a totalitarian cybernetic state. To say that they’re contradictions implies they correspond to the same thing, but they probably don’t. Why is not possible that industrialization just changed everything? The child of the enlightenment probably turned out to be helpless in the face of machine guns and atomic bombs, so he scurried away with a whimper.

[Anonymous No.22103757]

>>22103654
The problem here is that you just call whatever from the status quo that wins or remains “liberalism”. I have a feeling that Fukuyamites would only ever admit “liberalism” lost if the entire Western world just disappeared off the face of the earth along with every country that it ever affected, like Russia or China. This is obviously an impossibility. So he’s right only in so far as everything is made to fit.

[Anonymous No.22104030]

>>22099357
>most peaceful century ever
>no new ideologies/movements that can challenge liberal hegemony (maybe except islam)
>russia and china are more held together by anti-muttism than any coherent set of ideas
>no massive war or conflict that destroys the current global homo order yet
The year is 1914, and Archduke Franz Ferdinand has just taken a routine trip to Bosnia to observe a military parade with his wife and pose for pictures.

[Anonymous No.22104295]

>>22103753
I believe liberalism’s greatest strength is its adaptability. liberalism started as conclusive political/economic ideology in the 16/17th centuries for a completely different world but has managed to not only survive but thrive and expand since then. the original tenets of liberalism have long since transformed into something that would be unrecognizable to guys like Locke and Rousseau. meanwhile competing ideologies like fascism and communism burned themselves out in only a few decades. the only other movement that could surpass that longevity is religion or some new ideology that hasnt been made yet.

[Anonymous No.22104328]

>>22098152
People need to separate "dominance" from "prosperity". Any illusion of liberal dominance and quality of life being related in any conceivable way was just an illusion, a historical accident (and the result of the faulty idea of liberalism leading to prosperity when rather it is prospering societies which adopt liberalism exactly because of their prospering, upward trajectory, as an expression of the increasing power of their mercantile middle classes).

Liberalism will continue to remain dominant because the liberal elite is still more powerful than any competing elite, it's just that the subjects of the liberal elite are going to endure/are enduring a quality of life drop haven't seen since the fall of the western roman empire.

The elites never cared for anyone but themselves and the danger of competing elites, this is practically a constant in human history. They are here to stay. But for everyone else? God knows what will happen to them, but from the perspective of the elites, that isn't a relevant problem.

[Anonymous No.22104337]

>>22104295
Liberalism was born in a europe that was going through an unprecedented rise of power, practically never before seen in any other civilization in recorded history, and in less than four hundred years left it the grotesque and impotent monstrosity that it is today. That's not something I'd flex with.

[Anonymous No.22104349]

>>22100603
History is the inexorable march of Progress from a benigted, bigoted, and ignorant past towards Liberty and Enlightenment. In other words, liberalism.

[Anonymous No.22104396]

How is it that /lit/ is actually better at history than /his/? whenever history/historical theory is discussed here its always something intellectually stimulating while discussing someone like Fukuyama or Spengler. But whenever I go to /his/, its always bottom of the barrel shit like haploautism, holocaust denial, poorly argued religion threads, etc.

[Anonymous No.22104443]

>>22104396
/lit/ is not as much of an obvious battlefield for internet warriors when it comes to history as /his/ is.

[Anonymous No.22104829]

>>22098152
Liberal democracy is going to end with Nuclear Bombs being dropped by nihilistic British Leadership deciding they will control their end if nothing else

[Anonymous No.22104853]

>>22104396
Because /his/ is full of obvious /int/ redditors who spend their entire day raging about /pol/ or christains instead of having an actual study of history?

[Anonymous No.22105166]

>>22103749
Is democracy just voting?

[Anonymous No.22105238]

>>22104295
Liberalism is everything but by any means not longevous. The oldest society that can somewhat be called liberal during that time is the USA, founded in 1776. The oldest European liberal society is France, founded in 1791. That's a duration of 232 years. Most European liberal democracies were founded around 1848. That's a duration of barely 175 years. Feudalism lasted a humongous period of more than 900 years. Before liberalism didn't reach that time stamp, by no means can it be called longevous.

[Anonymous No.22106390]

>>22104396
/his/ is /pol//lite, which is the same as saying it’s diluted diarrhea

[Anonymous No.22106442]

The success of El Salvador may inspire other Latin American countries to throw off the chains of liberalism.

[Anonymous No.22106642]

unless this country collapses, he is completely wrong

[Anonymous No.22106647]

>>22104396
/his/ is a board about a topic that can only be mastered through reading books, exclusively for people who don't read books. It's a quarantine board and a living monument to the fact that board splitting never works.

[Anonymous No.22106666]

*stunlocks any ideology that tries to go against neo-liberalism*

[Anonymous No.22106670]

>>22106666
kek, accurate

[Anonymous No.22106975]

>>22104349
I see you, soulless Whig

[Anonymous No.22106979]

>>22102499
India is heading towards far-right populism. Europe bans Nazism and wants to ban Islam, echoing Chinese control over right-wing elements. Australia thinks it’s the US with a better accent, so as the US goes full Nazi, so does AUS.

When the US falls, I think you’ll see a realignment around Chinese exceptionalism.

[Anonymous No.22106993]

>>22104349
This is literally Fukuyama's position, that's how insane it is

[Anonymous No.22107012]

>>22103654
You’re presuming that “Western ideology” is some objective constant when you live in a world where Trump got more votes in his second election than he did in his first, and only lost because a few percent more people saw his utter disaster of a first term and joined in on the other side.

The west banding together against Russia’s far right “anti-western” imperialism (whatever “western” would happen to be, from outright Nazism to hippie communes) doesn’t imply a cohesive internal identification of “Western.”

When there’s a guy with a gun saying, “I’m here to kill the Jews in the name of my supremacism, and you’re a Jew,” you can be against that without having any idea of what this “Jewishness” of yours is even supposed to be.

[Anonymous No.22107072]

>>22098383
No, it's an easy question.

>>22099265
>Neoliberalism is the end of industrial material conditions,
Wut?
>>22101071
The benefits of market competition are not possible while maintaining a static political power base. Xi's rise to power was fueled by doubt about the liberal economy during 2008 but the west and particularly America has maintained growth since 2008 and Chinese growth has faltered under Xi's rule. If china were able to achieve it's true potential it would be twice as powerful as the US but instead it's ability to close the gap is slowing.
>>22102337
>Liberalism has become a victim of it's own success
This is actually the best argument presented. Liberalism can clearly withstand war but may not be able to survive peace. When people believe that the world is safe they undertake increasingly risky decisions. This dynamic precludes any end of history
>>22100377
Even if this is true you need to explain the ability of the US to exert force. Why isn't china able to excert more force? Why not India, Indonesia?
>>22106642
Or the US could accept radically more immigrants so we have a population that can actually compete. At the start of WW2 the west was roughly a quarter of the global population. It's amazing we have held on to power so long with such a dwindling population.
>>22106666
Sure, but that's a good thing both for the US and for foreign peoples

[Anonymous No.22107122]

>>22107072
>Even if this is true you need to explain the ability of the US to exert force. Why isn't china able to excert more force? Why not India, Indonesia?
To seriously answer these questions with "because liberalism good," despite all the material, historical, and geographical factors at work is like asking a medieval soldier how his side won a battle with every possible advantage and having him reply, dead serious, "because God favored our side, no other reason."

[Anonymous No.22107153]

>>22105238
>Most European liberal democracies were founded around 1848
Oh no no no, you don't get to play that card. That's when some democracies were founded, and almost all of them collapsed multiple times since then and had to be reconstituted. The current French republic dates to the 70s. The 1970s. To say nothing of Germany, Spain, or other European continental governments. It's the same problem of democracy from the time of Aristotle: it lasts about a generation then collapses into oligarchy or tyranny.

Only an International Relations major could so thoroughly misunderstand history as Fukuyama does. IR is a cancer on academia and a plague on the humanities.

[Anonymous No.22107154]

>>22107072
>Even if this is true you need to explain the ability of the US to exert force. Why isn't china able to excert more force? Why not India, Indonesia?
If this question isn't merely rhetorical, read Zeihan.

[Anonymous No.22107159]

>>22107072
>Even if this is true you need to explain the ability of the US to exert force.
The US does not maintain the largest military in the world for fun. They have 12 supercarriers and their supporting fleets, of which at least one is assigned to each ocean in the world. The liberal world order is Pax Americana.

[Anonymous No.22107169]

>>22098152
Didn't everyone think that WWI was impossible and that all of western europe was basically set for perma-peace due to all of the alliances, etc? Consistent theme throughout history is that we can't predict shit and all of the narratives we construct are applied backwards and extremely limited. Going off that alone I'd say the book is probably dead wrong but I'll have to give it a closer read.

[Anonymous No.22107214]

>>22106979
Who said the US is going "full nazi"? What does that even mean?

[Anonymous No.22107396]

>>22102828
>civic nationalism

[Anonymous No.22107399]

>>22102967
>I hope that zoomers reject political and (most) economic liberalism in favor of a new political solution adaptive to the 21st century. millennials are basically boomer-lite so a lost cause.
Millennials will save the West. Zoomers can't tie their own shoes. The % of millennials LARPing as two-vacation-a-year boomers is not very high.

[Anonymous No.22107456]

i really don't understand who this book is for - fukuyama makes multiple contradictions within his own theory, acknowledges them and never provides any sort of counter-argument and just leaves it at that

another anon in this thread already pointed out one of those obvious contradictions >>22099783
i know multiple people who are willing to leave the country within the next 6 years and move to non-"liberal" countries because the social and economic climate is more stable
i have to read the rest of his books because this is just fucking ridiculous but judging by what other anons have said, he doesn't seem to budge much on his views so what's the point, really

[Anonymous No.22107490]

>>22098152
The Jews

[Anonymous No.22107586]

>>22107122
Britain didn't rule the world because of geographic or material advantages.
>>22107154
Maybe I'll give that a go, any specific book?
>>22107159
Yes but our economy doesn't run on spoils. You need a strong economy in order to have a strong military not the other way around.

[Anonymous No.22108270]

>>22107586
You can probably start with Absent Superpower. It recaps enough of Accidental Superpower that you won't miss much by skipping it, and Disunited Nations is basically just a rehash of Absent Superpower.

Specific to your question, China can't project power because it's surrounded by various island chains that it doesn't control, so any blue water shipping is highly vulnerable as soon as it gets beyond the range of Chinese aircraft. And China is also not energy independent, so it DOES need to ship in lots and lots of oil, all the time. So beyond not being able to project power, China is highly vulnerable to attacks on its oil imports and so has to be a lot more circumspect than it would like. Anyone with an actual global navy (most of western Europe, USA) and anyone between Iran and China can basically cripple China at will, with no risk of serious counterattack.

India is in a slightly better position to project power, at least into the Indian ocean, but it doesn't have the power to project anyway, and more pressing concerns with nuclear Pakistan.

Indonesia simply doesn't have the power to project, period. I think they've barely managed to establish a monopoly on the just use of force, if they even have.

[Anonymous No.22108463]

>>22108270
Very interesting analysis but no, it's because China isn't liberal

[Anonymous No.22108473]

>>22098388
I agree with you anon because let's think about it --- let's think of a situation where liberalism gets everything it wants and is fully realized. The world functions the same as it is now but all the kinks are ironed out. There is no conservative threat, progressive politicians are fully in power, everyone around the world engages with the same liberal ideologies and mass media, America still holds military dominance, everyone is educated and works in a career. What's the drawback? Do you think the masses would want anything else once they become that neutered, sterilized, placated? We're basically already at this point

[Anonymous No.22108702]

>>22108463
Damn, what was I thinking? How could I...

[Anonymous No.22108735]

>>22108270
>>22108463
That sounds interesting but it doesn't really refute my point. China doesn't have a global navy because their economy hasn't been able to support one largely as a result of not adopting liberal property rights. To the degree that this is changing it is the result of china's liberalizing economic reforms. China has distanced itself from these policies in the last 15 years and low and behold their growth has faltered. You have the ability to project power when you can furnish a powerful military. You can furnish a powerful military when you have an economy that uses private property to incentivise growth and you have political structures that are not threatened by economically successful individuals within your nation.

[Anonymous No.22108749]

>>22098152
>And yet, it's clear that despite these contradictions in Liberalism it's still the dominant system of the world.
No its not, liberalism implies a certain level of freedom granted from the state to oppose it. Today there is no way to live life on your own terms, you are always forced to participate in state institutions one way or another, you are forced to register your place of living to the bureaucracy and you are forced to always be identifiable to to its executive forces. You have to build your house according to their regulations, drive a car according to their regulations and consume goods according to their regulations. You have to work according to the law and run your business in accordance to it. In Europe you are even forced to get insurance and pay into some retirement fund, even if you dont want that.
ffs in some places you cant even defend yourself form an attacker, the ability to exert violence for your own protection is a foundation of liberty and the "liberal west" doesnt grant you that right. And thats not even mentioning state enforced ideologies like buttsex among men, a true cornerstone of liberty. A liberal society doesnt force you live among shitskin barbarians which hate, harass and attack you like European countries do. Read the declaration of independence if you want a basic insight in how bad it really is.

Liberalism failed a long time ago, we are not living in a liberal society anymore and there are a lot of reasons for that which go beyond liberalism being some pipe dream destined to fail.
Fuck this gook faggot man, easy for him to say we are all free from his think tank ivory tower. This book is a mockery, its one of the oppressors declaring victory from oppression.

[Anonymous No.22108752]

>>22102828
>civic nationalism
lol

[Anonymous No.22108763]

>>22105166
No, but democracy implies voting.

[Anonymous No.22108779]

>>22104295
I just don’t see any reason to conclude that what we received after the industrial age and what we have now is also liberalism. It was preceded by liberalism as a matter of fact, but is it the same thing? I don’t see any reason to say it is. To say it adapted, is to say it still exists. But does it? There are so many aspects of our politics and society which are frankly anti-liberal. In fact, liberalism has been slowly eroding since the Industrial Revolution if you ask me and what we have no can’t possibly be said to be liberal so much as it is progressive. On one hand, political regimes in the West wanted the legalization of gay marriage while at the same time restricting freedom of movement with passports, visas, this sort of thing. Whether this is all “liberal” is not clear. It’s only clear that it’s progressive.

[Anonymous No.22108784]

>>22104396
Probably because history is collected as a series of facts in books and /lit/ actually reads books

[Anonymous No.22108793]

>>22104829
If the failures of communism were a tragedy then in the end the failures of liberalism might be a catastrophe.

In both cases, technology is the common denominator. Whether the titanic is built by free liberal individuals or a communist proletariat does not really matter when it sinks with over 1,500 lives on board. Neither can be said to have caused the wreck. In the end, maybe liberalism just built a bigger ship to sink.

[Anonymous No.22108797]

>>22108735
Dude, the United States has the military it does because it sits on resource-rich self-sufficient land totally isolated from any other military powers by vast oceans. While it was reaping the benefits of the industrial revolution the European powers were blowing each other up and mobilizing their economy for war on two separate occasions. Japan never embraced a liberal government and had comparatively insane constraints on population and resources and it blew up into a major power. Had they occupied the continental United States I don't think it unlikely they would've enjoyed an even greater ascent, and it would have nothing to do with liberalism. You're blinded.

[Anonymous No.22108798]

>>22108793
Yeah the death of millions, the erosion of their culture and destruction of their economies was not a catastrophe, but a tragedy.
Stupid fucking tankie tard

[Anonymous No.22108807]

Politics ideology is obsolete quite frankly. I think anyone talking about political -isms is missing the bigger picture regarding what happened over the last 2 centuries. The enlightenment gave birth to atomic bombs and then the bombs killed the enlightenment. No regime is properly liberal anymore. Fukuyama just seems like he’s willing to call all things modern liberal, and so he can always claim that liberalism is winning simply because modernity hasn’t ended in nuclear Armageddon yet.

[Anonymous No.22108809]

>>22108798
You don’t think it’s a tragedy what people had to suffer through during the times and collapse of the Soviet Union? That seems a bit heartless.

[Anonymous No.22108818]

>>22108809
A tragedy is about a good spirit being overcome by failure and evil.
Communism wasnt tragic, it was inhumane savagery that destroyed everything it every touched and the scars imprinted on the human psyche by it may never heal.
Fuck off faggot.

[Anonymous No.22108820]

>>22108818
It’s naive to believe that communist idealists didn’t think it was good.

[Anonymous No.22108831]

>>22108820
Believing you are good when you are not isnt good its the hallmark of a villain. Besides that people like Lenin, Trotsky, Pol Pot or Guevara were hateful, bitter people who used communism as a means to take revenge on those they thought wronged them, there was nothing innocently idealistic about it it was always a tool to gain power and oppress the masses.
No begone, demon.

[Anonymous No.22108929]

Here's what doomers don't understand: the world right now is in an interregnum period. The political polarization that we see today is a result of the fact that our ruling class of post-war boomers are redundant and decadent. In the West most of the population is aging and no one is having kids. The criticism that you see directed towards the tides of liberalism almost exclusively comes from these older populations. It does not come from the youth, who across the globe are raised with the same homogenous cosmopolitan culture of progressive values, self-deprecating narcissism, consumerist obsession, bodily worship and Internet addiction. They were born in a time that considered itself to be “the end of history” and as such the younger generations will not innovate, aspire towards higher values or alter any institution. They're all just spiritual liberals who want to take it even further than it can right now because of the elderly/conservative backlash.

But it will happen eventually just as it always happened in modernity. In periods of tension progress always marches onward. This is why Fukuyama still affirms his thesis because he knows that it's all a matter of time despite some setbacks today. When boomers are all dead by 2040 and today's youth run the world, that’s when the real chaos begins. The 21st century won't really begin until then, when the weakest generation in world history becomes in charge of the most complex system in history.

[Anonymous No.22108933]

>>22102337
Those movements are relitive blips of no real fundemental consequence. Compare America from 2003 and 2023, and the differences can be seen in slightly different billboards that parrot similar sentiments in slightly different ways.
>>22102828
>that both sides are taking aspects of liberalism to extremes
pretty much this.
At this point it pretty much all word games about specifics, still focusing on permutations of freedoms, social nets, nation. using different words but meaning the same core things.

[Anonymous No.22108975]

>>22108797
This isn't going to be solved on this message board. Liberal countries seem to do suspiciously well globally and for the whole of liberalisms history. My major influence here is "Why nations fail"

[Anonymous No.22109027]

>>22108831
I think you don’t understand the difference between tragedy and catastrophe. The Soviet experiment ended in tragedy and not catastrophe almost as a matter of fact. Millions starved. In the West, we talk about nuclear armageddon, for example, which would be a catastrophe.

[Anonymous No.22109181]

>>22108975
>Liberal countries seem to do suspiciously well globally and for the whole of liberalisms history.
What liberal governments have ever done well historically aside from the only two that were isolated from their competitors by sea? They absolutely do not do suspiciously well in general lol

[Anonymous No.22109210]

>>22108975
Correlation is not necessarily causation. If the United States was a dictatorship you can bet they'd be just as powerful today, if not more so. China is an oppressive authoritarian country that is currently the second most powerful in the world, and they don't seem to be in danger of collapse (Though that remains to be seen when Xi kicks the bucket). The problem with Fukuyama is assigning the state of the modern world to the predominant system in it, instead of considering the vast and complex historical, political, and geographical factors that have created this very situation.

[Anonymous No.22109615]

>>22108975
>France from 1789
>revolutions of 1848
>Weimar republic
>Arab Spring
Ah... Liberalism has always done so well

[Anonymous No.22109793]

>>22098433
>West will implode
two more weeks.
you pansies always spout the most wishful things and act like they're meant to come true.

[Anonymous No.22109900]

>>22108749
Japs are just aesthetic niggers, and the likes of Fukuyama prove it.

[Anonymous No.22110638]

Bump

[Anonymous No.22111008]

>>22099248
>two people who essentially did nothing, neither positive nor negative, while in office are better than demented schizos who have new terrible ideas daily?
unironically yes

[Anonymous No.22111090]

>>22102506
this. if you don't recognize the impossibility of modern liberal reaction in the present day, you got filtered hard