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    The End of History Notes (By Ali Hameed Khan)

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    Mazhar Fareed
    1) In 1989, Francis Fukuyama published an article titled "The End of History?" arguing that liberal democracy and capitalism had triumphed over other ideologies with the end of the Cold War. 2) The book further elaborates that history has a goal and meaning, which has been fulfilled in liberal democratic capitalism. It is the culmination of all previous human history. 3) Fukuyama bases his argument on the ideas of Hegel and Marx, who saw history as directional. He argues that Hegel correctly saw liberal democracy as history's end point, not Marx's vision of communism.

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    The End of History Notes (By Ali Hameed Khan)

    Uploaded by

    Mazhar Fareed
    103 views1 page
    1) In 1989, Francis Fukuyama published an article titled "The End of History?" arguing that liberal democracy and capitalism had triumphed over other ideologies with the end of the Cold War. 2) The book further elaborates that history has a goal and meaning, which has been fulfilled in liberal democratic capitalism. It is the culmination of all previous human history. 3) Fukuyama bases his argument on the ideas of Hegel and Marx, who saw history as directional. He argues that Hegel correctly saw liberal democracy as history's end point, not Marx's vision of communism.

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    THE END OF HISTORY

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    1) In 1989, Francis Fukuyama published an article titled "The End of History?" arguing that liberal democracy and capitalism had triumphed over other ideologies with the end of the Cold War. 2) The book further elaborates that history has a goal and meaning, which has been fulfilled in liberal democratic capitalism. It is the culmination of all previous human history. 3) Fukuyama bases his argument on the ideas of Hegel and Marx, who saw history as directional. He argues that Hegel correctly saw liberal democracy as history's end point, not Marx's vision of communism.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    103 views1 page

    The End of History Notes (By Ali Hameed Khan)

    Uploaded by

    Mazhar Fareed
    1) In 1989, Francis Fukuyama published an article titled "The End of History?" arguing that liberal democracy and capitalism had triumphed over other ideologies with the end of the Cold War. 2) The book further elaborates that history has a goal and meaning, which has been fulfilled in liberal democratic capitalism. It is the culmination of all previous human history. 3) Fukuyama bases his argument on the ideas of Hegel and Marx, who saw history as directional. He argues that Hegel correctly saw liberal democracy as history's end point, not Marx's vision of communism.

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    The End of History Notes (By Ali Hameed Khan)

    The End of History and the Last Man by Fukuyama Summary

    In 1989, a year that saw the fall of the Berlin Wall and other events signifying the end of the
    Cold War, Francis Fukuyama published a sixteen-page article titled, “The End of History?” in The
    National Interest, a journal with a circulation of about six thousand. Surprisingly, he and his article
    quickly became widely known and very controversial. Policymakers and politicians both within the
    United States and elsewhere debated his assertion. University academics and ordinary readers of
    popular news magazines discussed the question Fukuyama asked. The End of History and the Last Man is
    both a response to his many critics and an elaboration of the ideas found in his original article. Arguing
    that the end of the Cold War and the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe
    left the West in sole command of the political and economic landscape, Fukuyama claims that liberal
    democracy and capitalism have triumphed, that there are no alternatives or remaining ideological
    challengers, and that history, defined as the evolving competition between political, social, and
    economic ideologies, has come to an end.

    Most critics vehemently disagreed with Fukuyama’s original article. History cannot simply end;
    billions of human beings are living their lives, struggling for their existences, and reproducing
    themselves. Wars are still taking place, political battles are being fought, and even capitalistic economies
    can suffer depressions. The brutality of the Chinese communists in crushing the democratic student
    demonstrations at Tiananmen Square and Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait showed that history
    obviously was not over. Fukuyama states, however, that he was not suggesting that wars would not be
    fought, that major events could no longer take place that all controversies have ended. As he notes in
    The End of History and the Last Man, he was not referring to the ending of events but rather of history
    as a single, coherent, and evolutionary process. Fukuyama believes that history is teleological; it has a
    goal and a meaning, and these have been fulfilled in the victory of liberal democratic capitalism over all
    of previous human history, and not just over authoritarian communism. Western society in the late
    twentieth century is the culmination of all that has come before.

    The End of History and the Last Man is a work of large ideas and broad interpretations, and
    Fukuyama tackles them with considerable ingenuity, if not always with complete success. He begins his
    argument with the ideas of two nineteenth century historical philosophers, Georg Wilhelm Hegel and
    Karl Marx, both products of the Enlightenment. They agreed that universal history was directional and
    purposeful and that recent history evolved from, or was a reaction to, earlier stages of human society.
    For Marx, the end of history was to be the victory of pure communism, which would consequently see
    the withering away of institutions, such as the state and governments, that had been the product of and
    the means by which the economic haves controlled the economic have-nots. Hegel saw the final
    synthesis of history as the development of the liberal state, and Fukuyama argues that it was Hegel, and
    not Marx, who had the accurate vision of human historical development.

    There are a number of factors that led to the victory of liberal democratic capitalism. The
    scientific method and the Industrial Revolution are crucial among these. With modern science, history
    could no longer be either merely random or cyclical. Now it could only be Fukuyama claims, cumulative
    and directional. Luddites might resist the inevitability of technology and Rousseauists might long for a
    state of uncorrupted nature, but nothing could reverse the scientific-industrial-technological process
    once it began. Science and industry effectively modernized society in a forward direction, and in order
    for any human society to survive, much less progress, there is no alternative.

    The economic system that best responds to the scientific and industrial implications of history’s
    evolving direction is free-market capitalism. Fukuyama argues that the history of the twentieth century
    proves the triumphant efficiency of capitalism over socialism or communism as economic systems. Only
    capitalism can provide the greatest economic satisfaction to the greatest number.

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