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Books
The End?
Mike Fuller reviews Fukuyama’s controversial book The End of History and the Last Man.
Here are three propositions about the world today: “The Cold War is over and America has won” (liberal democracy and capitalism having won the day); “the Cold War is over and nobody has won” (the Postmodernist thesis that the major ideologies and ‘grand narratives’ have all broken down); “the Cold War is over and Japan has won” (Japan streaking ahead to world economic supremacy while America and Russia were engaged in a long and expensive contest for the heavyweight crown).
Judging from the author’s name alone, you might expect Francis Fukuyama to support the third proposition; in fact, he supports the first. Because of the aura of Bush-style New World Orderliness that has already attached itself to the book’s reputation, Fukuyama is perhaps in danger of becoming one of those ‘politically incorrect’ authors whom most people have heard of and few have actually read. I think this would be a pity. While The End of History… may not represent quite the major milestone in political philosophy that its author hopes, it does illuminate the reader about the nature and problems of the contemporary world and it does make you think.
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