Maybe Francis Fukuyama had it wrong at the end of the Cold War when he talked about the “end of history”.
His predictions might have been more accurate if he had taken it one step at a time and first spoken about the end of economics.
Fukuyama thought that by 1990 the Marxist idea of the end of history occurring when the contradictions in capitalism caused it to eat itself was obviously wrong. Instead, with the commies were out of the way, ideological wars would end. Liberal democracy would be the world order. The great lists of trouble spots and wars that pepper the reportage of international relations would be at an end. It would be the end of history – in the sense of history being the story of titanic struggles between ideologies, the contest of ideas, wars and power struggles.
Liberal democracy had won, he thought.
Ho-hum. Fukuyama has not been alone. Even at a national level in Australia leaders have suggested that on their patch there would be a sort of end of history – an end to the great tussle of ideas.
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