evolution of political organisation, is directional and spurred on
by modern natural science and technological innovation. These
changes lead to uniform social and political changes across the
world, making societies as diverse as Rwanda and Japan
gradually more politically and economically liberal. Fukuyama
resurrects a form of modernisation theory, which holds that
economic modernisation exists as an aim for almost all societies
regardless of cultural specificities and natural science has
homogenising and liberalising tendencies. Key facets include the
increasingly free flow of information, higher rates of education
and the spread of democratic norms. In his more recent work
from 2014, Political Order and Political Decay, he outlines the
key institutions that arise to sustain this political and economic
liberalism, and lead to open democratic societies. These are
namely: a strong executive, accountability and the rule of law.Like Fukuyama, the works of Karl Marx are
derived from Hegel’s theories of History
(Hulton Archive/Getty)In tracing economic and social evolution to reach an end state of
human evolution, Fukuyama is self-consciously reminiscent of
famous Hegelian Karl Marx. He similarly used the Hegelian
dialectic and the notion of directional history to theorise that an
enlightened, egalitarian society would arise from the
contradictions of inequality stemming from class exploitation
and unequal ownership of property. Like Fukuyama, Marx
understands stages of development for historic humans, which
progress and break capitalist structures until the point of a state
of “communism”, an end state in which humans have complete
freedom over their choices and society regulates production,
meaning one could “hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon,
rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner”.
Fukuyama, however, posits two key differences between his
historicism and that of Marx, besides the obvious discrepancy in
endpoint. According to Fukuyama, Marx limited his analytical
tools to purely “materialist” factors and rejected the
“autonomous power of ideas” that Fukuyama took from Kojève
and Hegel. Fukuyama wrote: “Marx reversed the priority of the
real and the ideal completely, relegating the entire realm of
consciousness – religion, art, culture, philosophy itself – to a
‘superstructure’ that was determined entirely by the prevailing
material mode of production.” Ideas, for Marx, derive their
importance from existing power structures. For Hegel and
Fukuyama, ideas can exist outside of power relations. The other
point on which Fukuyama believes he differs from Marx is on
the nature of their universal histories. The latter appears to
espouse a “strong” universal history, with inevitable travel
between stages, whereas Fukuyama emphasises that his
universality is “weak”. That is to say that the progression of
history is not necessarily “linear, rigid, or deterministic”, there
is merely a “predisposition towards liberal democracy”