THE END OF HISTORY Francis Fukuyama (1952- ), a State Department functionary, published "The End of History?" in 1989, advancing the thesis that all events of any historical consequence already have come and gone. Western liberal capi- talism has triumphed over all other possible ways of organizing human society, and nothing remains to be done except the chores of maintenance. The triumph of the West, of the Western idea, is evident first of all in the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to Western liberalism. In the past decade, there have been unmistakable changes in the intellectual climate of the world's rwo largest communist countries, and the beginnings of significant reform movements in both. But this phenomenon extends beyond high politics and it can be seen also in the ineluctable spread of consumerist Western culture in such diverse contexts as the peasants' markets and color television sets now omnipresent throughout China, the cooperative restaurants and clothing stores opened in the past year in Moscow, the Beethoven piped into Japanese depart- ment stores, and the rock music enjoyed alike in Prague, Rangoon, and Tehran. What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the pass- ing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government. This is not to say that there will no longer be events to fill the pages of Foreign Affairs's yearly summaries of international relations, for the victory of liberalism has occurred primarily in the realm of ideas or consciousness and is as yet incom- plete in the real or material world. But there are powerful reasons for believing that it is the ideal that will govern the material world in the long run. The passing of Marxism-Leninism first from China and then from the Soviet Union will mean its death as a living ideology of world historical signif- icance. For while there may be some isolated true believers left in places like Managua, Pyongyang, or Cambridge, Massachusetts, the fact that there is not a single large state in which it is a going concern undermines completely its pre- STASIS 273 tensions to being in the vanguard of human history. And the death of this ide- ology means the growing "Common-Marketization" of international relations, and the diminution of the likelihood of large-scale conflict between states. This does not by any means imply the end of international conflict per se. For the world at that point would be divided between a part that was histori- cal and a part that was post-historical. Conflict between states still in history, and between those states and those at the end of history, would still be possi- ble. There would still be a high and perhaps rising level of ethnic and national- ist violence, since those are impulses incompletely played out, even in parts of the post-historical world. Palestinians and Kurds, Sikhs and Tamils, Irish Catholics and Walloons, Armenians and Azeris, will continue to have their unresolved grievances. This implies that terrorism and wars of national libera- tion will continue to be an important item on the international agenda. But large-scale conflict must involve large states still caught in the grip of history, and they are what appear to be passing from the scene. The end of history will be a very sad time. The struggle for recognition, the willingness to risk one's life for a purely abstract goal, the worldwide ideologi- cal struggle that called forth daring, courage, imagination, and idealism, will be replaced by economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems, environmental concerns, and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands. In the post-historical period there will be neither art nor philosophy, inst the perpetual caretaking of the museum of human history. I can feel in myself, and see in others around me, a powerful nostalgia for the time when history existed. Such nostalgia, in fact, will continue to fuel competition and conflict even in the post-historical world for some time to come. Even though I recognize its inevitability, I have the most ambivalent feelings for the civiliza- tion that has been created in Europe since 1945, with its north Atlantic and Asian offshoots. Perhaps this very prospect of centuries of boredom at the end of history will serve to get history started once again.

THE END OF HISTORY Francis Fukuyama (1952- ), a State Department functionary, published "The End of History?" in 1989, advancing the thesis that all events of any historical consequence already have come and gone. Western liberal capi- talism has triumphed over all other possible ways of organizing human society, and nothing remains to be done except the chores of maintenance. The triumph of the West, of the Western idea, is evident first of all in the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to Western liberalism. In the past decade, there have been unmistakable changes in the intellectual climate of the world's rwo largest communist countries, and the beginnings of significant reform movements in both. But this phenomenon extends beyond high politics and it can be seen also in the ineluctable spread of consumerist Western culture in such diverse contexts as the peasants' markets and color television sets now omnipresent throughout China, the cooperative restaurants and clothing stores opened in the past year in Moscow, the Beethoven piped into Japanese depart- ment stores, and the rock music enjoyed alike in Prague, Rangoon, and Tehran. What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the pass- ing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government. This is not to say that there will no longer be events to fill the pages of Foreign Affairs's yearly summaries of international relations, for the victory of liberalism has occurred primarily in the realm of ideas or consciousness and is as yet incom- plete in the real or material world. But there are powerful reasons for believing that it is the ideal that will govern the material world in the long run. The passing of Marxism-Leninism first from China and then from the Soviet Union will mean its death as a living ideology of world historical signif- icance. For while there may be some isolated true believers left in places like Managua, Pyongyang, or Cambridge, Massachusetts, the fact that there is not a single large state in which it is a going concern undermines completely its pre- STASIS 273 tensions to being in the vanguard of human history. And the death of this ide- ology means the growing "Common-Marketization" of international relations, and the diminution of the likelihood of large-scale conflict between states. This does not by any means imply the end of international conflict per se. For the world at that point would be divided between a part that was histori- cal and a part that was post-historical. Conflict between states still in history, and between those states and those at the end of history, would still be possi- ble. There would still be a high and perhaps rising level of ethnic and national- ist violence, since those are impulses incompletely played out, even in parts of the post-historical world. Palestinians and Kurds, Sikhs and Tamils, Irish Catholics and Walloons, Armenians and Azeris, will continue to have their unresolved grievances. This implies that terrorism and wars of national libera- tion will continue to be an important item on the international agenda. But large-scale conflict must involve large states still caught in the grip of history, and they are what appear to be passing from the scene. The end of history will be a very sad time. The struggle for recognition, the willingness to risk one's life for a purely abstract goal, the worldwide ideologi- cal struggle that called forth daring, courage, imagination, and idealism, will be replaced by economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems, environmental concerns, and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands. In the post-historical period there will be neither art nor philosophy, inst the perpetual caretaking of the museum of human history. I can feel in myself, and see in others around me, a powerful nostalgia for the time when history existed. Such nostalgia, in fact, will continue to fuel competition and conflict even in the post-historical world for some time to come. Even though I recognize its inevitability, I have the most ambivalent feelings for the civiliza- tion that has been created in Europe since 1945, with its north Atlantic and Asian offshoots. Perhaps this very prospect of centuries of boredom at the end of history will serve to get history started once again.