The End of Ideology Debate

[monkeydust]

In a thread a few weeks ago I promised JudeObscure that I'd start a thread to debate an issue that got mentioned - the so called "end of ideology" thesis.

These kind of ideas have been put forward quite regularly since the post-WW2 era, but the most influential in recent times was from Francis Fukuyama.

Not only does this man have a humurous name, but he used a Hegelian inspired interpretation of history to contend that Liberal-Democracy is the zenith of political thought. It's the direction all countries are heading to, all other ideas are falling into its ambit and scope. Turning Marx on his head, Fuuyama claimed that Liberal-democracy is the "end of history", and is where everywhere will end up eventually. He used the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and its adoption of the Liberal-democratic paradigm as an example.

Do Jude or any others have any arguments to put forward in favour of it? Or any others to reject the idea? I have my own ideas, but I'm saving them until some other people start off or until I otherwise realize that I have no responses to this pedantic thread and get bored.

[YKTMX]

Well, to be honest, this isn't as interesting as it used to be, simply because HISTORY has proven Fukuyama to be completely wrong. Liberal democracy (see: exploitation without end) is being challenged all over the world, from a variety of positions and perspectives. You see the leftist South American movements from Chavez to the Zapatistas, we see the growing Islamisist movement Middle East, the massive anti-capitalist/globalist movement.

Fukuyama's ideas really (like everything) represent the ideas of a certain class at a certain time. For the western ruling classes, it did seem for a while that resistance of their orthodoxy had ended. Fukuyama merely, and rather poorly, represented this hope in his book. His theory is way more popular than it deserves to be because it is both unoriginal and wrong. As the original poster intimated, bourgeois apologists AND liberals have been announcing the "end of idelogy" for decades.

For genuine socialists, the collapse of Stalinism was neither here nor there. Obviously, it sent other it absolute turmoil and most became reactioneries or cynics (I don't which is worse). The socialist movement has been stronger, but it has also been weaker than it is now. There are real possibilites for the future.

[Severian]

The "end of history" idea always reminded me of Professor Pangloss in "Candide" by Voltaire. Whatever awful things happened to the characters, Pangloss always said everything was for the best in the best of all possible worlds - God had ordered things perfectly and everything bad was a necessary consequence of something good.

Fukuyama says everything is for the best under the best of all possible social systems.

[JudeObscure84]

Actually I didnt agree with his conclusion that liberal democracy was the best social system without flaws. I dont think a system like that exists or ever will. I just think Liberal Democracy is the best of what we've got. The ideas of a liberal democracy, or better a representative republic, just co-incide the best with the fundamentals of logic and reason.

[monkeydust]

I think that's basically what he argued. Not that Liberal-Democracy's some utopia, some heaven on earth, but that's it's the best we can get and the best we will ever get.

Irrespective of how good or bad it is, however, what arguments would you advance to claim that it's the "end of history"?

[Publius]

Just because we haven't thought anything up yet doesn't mean this is it.

Though there is a decent chance.

[TC]

I think in replying you have to kindof evaluate what claims are being made exactly because, though i haven't read Fukuyama's book so i don't know how he presents it, theres a lot of catagory confusion in this thread.

Liberal Democracy cooresponds to both a system of government (meant to support an economic system) and a way of thinking about and talking about politics, an ideology (but unlike Marxism it doesn't have a systematic theory to describe politics). So you could ask:

1. Is liberal democracy the end of the academic history of political science? Does the *ideology* of democratic liberalism most accurately describe what really happens in politics and society. In other words, is liberal thinking the last word in political science as a social science dicipline.

2. Is liberal democracy the end of the academic and social discourse concerning 'ideal governments'? Are Liberal Democratic *governments* the most desirable, the nicest to live under. Are the implied values of liberal democratic *ideology* the most just, the easiest to defend ethically. Do liberal democratic governments in practice provide the best living conditions and the highest quality of life?

3. Is liberal democracy the end of real life political history? Is liberal democracy the final form of government that will dominate the globe indefinately. Is liberal democracy unopposable practically speaking, that no revolution or state will ever be able to stop it from eventually and perminantly becoming the only system of government?


As for the first question, the answer is obviously 'no.' Liberal democracy really provides no way to analyse society, explain why power dynamics exist the way they do, explain how classes and nations interact and how and why societies change over time, let alone have any ability to predict future developments or describe trends. A lot of liberal democratic leaders and psudo-intellectuals will make claims about there being a 'drive towards freedom' or a 'movement towards freedom', basically claiming that all people the world over basically want to live in a liberal capitalist democracy and they will make one happen if provided with the oprotunity. This is the implied 'theoretical position' whereby the Bush administration can claim that if they 'democratize' Iraq, people in the other Arab states will have a push towards democracy. This is just empirically incorrect and has never happened and attempting to describe the length of human history in such a theory would be nonsense.

Dialectical materialism on the other hand does analyse society, is systematic and predictive, its the 'last word' in political science. In fact, regardless of political affiliation, everyone whose honust about applying a real political analysis uses dialectical materialism, the entire Neo-Conservative policy uses it, because it works, not just for Communists but for anyone who wants to know whats really going on in politics. However dialectical materialism is so associated with marxism and the left that people will go to great lengths to mask that thats what they're using, or at least those are the principles behind their basic assumptions.



For the second question, i think the answer is also certaintly 'no' if you look beyond the perspective of the privileged classes in the first world. The United States and Western Europe and Japan might be favorite examples of the "prosperity" that liberal democracy brings, but there are plenty of liberal democracies with the great majority of their populace living in absolute poverty, like India, Brazil, most of sub-Saharan Africa and South East Asia (except the socialist and junta states), and most of the rest of the 'developing world.' Even more obvious is in the former socialist states in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, every single one of them, even the former east Germany, has had a lower standard of living on every major measurment under liberal democracy then they did under socialist democracy (or for you sectarian trotskyists, anarchists, maoists, 'stalinists', and left communists, whatever it is that you called the system of government and economy present in the former Soviet bloc countries). Or use Cuba compared to any liberal democratic state of a similar population and GDP and its obvious that liberal democracy provides a lower standard of living with the same resources available.

Both socialism and liberal democracy theoretically accept nearly the same set of personal rights distinct from more reactionary ideologies like fascism, and both are imperfect in the degree that real governments preserve them when they come in conflict with state interests...but Liberal democracy has a unique entitlement that liberal democratic states characteristically protect as the most fundemental right, the right to buy or sell anything, whether its labor for starvation level wages, basic health care, water, electricity, transportation, education, stakes in companies with factories on the other side of the world. To the extent to which these things are state owned and provided free to citizens as rights, as their collective property, as not a single one of them is under most circumstances in the most archtypical liberal democratic states like the United States, they're no longer described as liberal democracies but social democracies, states that have made concessions towards socialist institutions while still writing the laws to allowing capitalism to dominate the economy. When it comes to what people really need and want, i think most people with a sense of their own interests would prefer to be entitled to work, education, to having their basic needs provided for without fear of being deprived of them; the only people who would rather be entitled to buy and sell real estate and corporate assets are the ones who feel that their basic needs are already guaranteed by virtue of their money. So i think liberal democracy is also clearly not the most desireable government and not the most ethical ideology.



On the third question, whether or not liberal democracy will always dominate the societies of the world, i think thats much more debatable. I don't think that li beral democracy can be said to be truely globally dominate at this point. There are still 1.3 billion Chinese, 300 million arabs, 80 million vietnamese, 70 million Iranians, 40 million burmese, 25 million venezuelans, 20 million north koreans, 10 million cubans, 10 million zimbabweans and 10 million belarussians, who i think are clearly not living under liberal democracy. So treating that list as the only non-liberal democracies, which it might be close to, there would be nearly 4.5 billion people in liberal democracies and nearly 2 billion people not in liberal democracies. Clearly resistance to liberal democracy (by a varity of ideological positions) represents a sizable, not insignificant minority. During the 80s and the 90s the momentum clearly favored liberal democracy the same way that i think in the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s it clearly favored socialism. For this decade i'm not really sure, there are multiple ways to look at it.

But i think there is a real possibility that liberal democracy is in fact going to cover the world and do so sustainably. I think when Khrushchev said "whether you like it or not, history is on our side, we will bury you" he meant it with good reason, beause given the succession of socialist revolutions and third world governments turning towards socialism, liberal democracy was losing ground quickly...but its not so much anymore. It could be that in fact history is on the imperialist's side. Really its not a matter of 'historical inevitability', that kindof dogmatism ignores what marxism is actually about, but whether the capitalists globally are powerful enough to prevent any real challange to the current world order, whether its a stable system or one that is either inherently self destructive or can be destabilized over time or as the result of certain events. Capitalist change tactics too and adapt and they really might have found was to counter the ways that orthodox marxists predict will be their downfall, like welfare states and consumer products counter worker unrest, overwhelming counter-intellegence counters political insurrection, overwhelming military force counters state level resistance, ect.

In any case, i think that you have to assume that all groups are motivated by self preservation and capitalists aren't stupid enough for liberal democracy to simply impload without organized opposition, so liberal democracy *will be* the end of history if it isn't adequately resisted actively.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 4 2005, 12:31 AM
I just think Liberal Democracy is the best of what we've got.
Right. Everything is for the best under the best of all possible systems.