Liberal Democracies Essay example

Summary
In the past decades there have been rapid changes politically and economically. Every country is trying to develop to become the best that it can, but what if countries never developed? What if they never grew? What if they never abolished certain injustices to mankind? This is what the article “The End of History” written by Francis Fukuyama discusses; it looks at the rise and the fall of major “ism” ideologies such as absolutism, fascism and communism. He goes further to say that human history should be seen as the battle of ideologies that have reached an end in the attempt to universalize the Western idea of liberal democracy. He goes on to debate that realization is in process in the material world, and that the Western idea of liberalism is above all as it is depicted in the West.

Fukuyama also explores the concept that was proposed by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and in more recent interpretation by Alexandre Kojève, and says that history has a beginning, middle and end. Hegel and Kojève both agree that “The End of History” was when the French Revolution of 1806 happened, and triumphed the liberal and democratic system. Karl Marx was is known as the propagator who quotes “believed that the direction of historical development was a purposeful one determined by the interplay of material forces and would come to an end only with the achievement of a communists utopia that would finally resolve all prior contradictions” (Fukyama, 1989).

Fukuyama also goes forward and looks at how Hegel described these ideas as “ideology” and also takes religion, culture and moral values of a society as well. These ideologies would have an affect on the future and how it will go about but it will not be able to change the material world. Hegel says that ideology is the “cause” in the long run in the real world’s direction. What this means is to in order to properly view current events one must look and evaluate the history of ideology. Modern economic policy views the world only in terms of needs and wants and it rationally maximizes behavior that cannot fully explain lifestyle choices. Fukuyama shows in this argument that it is important look and say that economic liberalism does not produce liberal political, or vice versa, but instead both are the result of previous consciousness.

In order to see if history had really ended Fukuyama looks at core conflicts of human life that could only be resolved by political-economic structure other than the modern liberal state. It also says how all countries should achieve the liberal democracy, but there have been many challenges to liberalism and there have been two alternatives fascism and communism. This self-destructive nature of fascism which was depicted in World War II, as well its failure had broken into further fascist movements.

We have seen that communist case against liberalism it had become weaker in the rise of equality in legal and social structures of the West, as well the support for communism in the West and in other places. As read in the article Hegel’s view on the worldwide embracing of consumer culture is seen as the movement towards economic liberalism and political liberalism. Fukuyama’s expectation is this will conclude in tons of pressure for changes as leading to alternatives to Western liberalism.

Lastly, Fukuyama looks at what the end of history would mean in terms of international relations. The ideology has come from the future of the world, as it will continue to have conflict. Fukuyama expresses with materialism and economics, international relations are also the result of preconceived ideologies. For example in World War II fascism’s defeated in all, and resulted in expansionism which had lead to the establishment of defense against others and various expansionist ideologies. But soon after the liberalization of market and economy had led to the disappearance of the expansionist idea.

One can also see after reading the article is

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