I do not in general pay much attention to trendy political science theses, but I finally got around to reading the ever-topical End of History essay by Francis Fukuyama. It seems that any reference to this theory, like its near relative the “clash of civilizations” theory of Samuel Huntington, must be prefaced by a mandatory disavowal of it. The idea seems to be that on a global level the events of Sep. 11 and all the wars and terrorist attacks in its train proved the notion of a relatively harmonious global capitalist order devoid of any real ideological competitors to be fatally naive. But one could surely at least say that within Western society the collapse (or perhaps merely exposure of the absence) of any such viable alternatives has been one of the major, if somewhat unspoken, political themes of the last 20 years. Especially in America people often talk of the continued impotence and inertia of “the Left” and especially of the various socialist and post-socialist groups of all stripes, but it seems intuitively clear that the disbanding of the Soviet Union, the gigantic country that represented a clear statist alternative to the American system, created a huge void, even if only subconsciously. It is hard to summon much opposition to the status quo and the conservatives who defend it when it means living in by far the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world. The only major alternative candidates, like Europe and China, seem to a greater or lesser degree to be converging with this system, especially in an economic sense.

Fukuyama’s basic thesis that liberalism is going to predominate for the great majority of the world seems like a pretty good description of the dominant trends of today. In what, sense, then, could recent terrorism and chaos in the Islamic world have unsettled the validity of the thesis? The terrorist attacks seem to have plausibly demonstrated a massive democratization of destructive capability. Implicit in Fukuyama’s thesis is that a large majority of the world’s people living in liberal society will greatly pacify the world, since he seems to assume that a rather large number of people, at least enough to govern and run a powerful nation, must subscribe to an aggressive belief system for it to threaten world peace. But if 20 people can kill 3,000 in a day with regular household supplies, it seems that the threshold for keeping the world a dangerous place indefinitely is rather lower. The statement probably most embarassing to Fukuyama in hindsight is the claim that:

“In the contemporary world only Islam has offered a theocratic state as a political alternative to both liberalism and communism. But the doctrine has little appeal for non-Muslims, and it is hard to believe that the movement will take on any universal significance. Other less organized religious impulses have been successfully satisfied within the sphere of personal life that is permitted in liberal societies.”

Since Islam, unlike say race, is an ostensibly universalist category, i.e. anyone could potentially join it, the statement that “[Islamic theocracy] has little appeal for non-Muslims” doesn’t actually prove anything. All the non-Muslims of the world could convert! And should the policy of “conversion by the sword,” possibly the primary source of Islam’s original growth, ever arise again as a popular policy, conversion and violence could go hand in hand. And even if not a single non-Muslim were to convert to Islam and the birthrate in the Muslim world, currently much higher than the world average, were not to significantly increase the Muslim share of the world’s population, over 1 billion, or about 1/6 of the world’s people, would still be Muslim. Given that Fukuyama is willing to consider fascism a legitimate historical competitor with liberalism despite the fact that Germany and Italy had less than 150 million people between them at the time (granted, the world as a whole was a lot smaller then), it seems a little strange that Islam cannot be considered a major political force when only seven times as many people follow it. Of course, they are not as centralized within such relatively powerful nations, but that goes back to the first point. Of course had Fukuyama simply confined himself to political analysis and disburthened himelf of the pointless Hegelian metaphysical nonsense he would have alleviated himself of the primary source of criticism, the misunderstanding-inducing phrases “the end of history” and “the last man” themselves. Because it is not like he believes that the Rapture would descend on us all if universal free trade were instituted; he makes pretty clear that ideological conflict could re-emerge at any time should a non-discredited ideology arise against liberalism, or even in a fit of boredom. Come, crazed bourgeois-loathing theorists of the world! The humanities professors of the world pine for you!