The Fascist Alternative, Fukuyama, and the End of History,

The post-historical consciousness represented by "new thinking" is only one possible future for the Soviet Union, however. There has always been a very strong current of great Russian chauvinism in the Soviet Union, which has found freer expression since the advent of glasnost. It may be possible to return to traditional Marxism-Leninism for a while as a simple rallying point for those who want to restore the authority that Gorbachev has dissipated. But as in Poland, Marxism-Leninism is dead as a mobilizing ideology: under its banner people cannot be made to work harder, and its adherents have lost confidence in themselves. Unlike the propagators of traditional Marxism-Leninism, however, ultra nationalists in the USSR believe in their Slavophile cause passionately, and one gets the sense that the fascist alternative is not one that has played itself out entirely there.
The Soviet Union, then, is at a fork in the road: it can start down the path that was staked out by Western Europe forty-five years ago, a path that most of Asia has followed, or it can realize its own uniqueness and remain stuck in history. The choice it makes will be highly important for us, given the Soviet Union's size and military strength, for that power will continue to preoccupy us and slow our realization that we have already emerged on the other side of history.--Francis Fukuyama "The End of History?" The National Interest , Summer 1989, No. 16 (Summer 1989), 17-18.

I realized the other day that I (partially) misremembered Fukuyama's famous essay. I had thought it claimed that (as it does) "Fascism was destroyed as a living ideology by World War II. This was a defeat, of course, on a very material level, but it amounted to a defeat of the idea as well." (p. 9) And by fascism he means (helpfully) "any organized ultra-nationalist movement with universalistic pretensions—not universalistic with regard to its nationalism, of course, since the latter is exclusive by definition, but with regard to the movement's belief in its right to rule other people." This is I think a useful definition because it allows us to recognize fascism even where it presents itself in a suit. 

I always thought the view that fascism was destroyed oddly optimistic not the least in virtue of Fukuyama's emphasis that historical consciousness is the driver of history. Why couldn't this defeat not be (thought) temporary, and facism return in a modernized face? In effect, this possibility haunts the French students and generation after Kojève and it is what gives French intellectual thought (associated not just with names like Aron and Furet, but also Deleuze, Beauvoir Derrida, and Foucault its enduring vitality). And it is peculiar, I assumed, that Fukuyama, who understands himself in terms of Kojève lacks this sensibility.

Fukuyama's argument in the essay draws heavily on Burnham (or beyond Burnham on the elite-theorists like Mosca and Pareto) and also on Leo Strauss. (If you want I can spell that out with evidence  some time, but I assume this would not be original.) And what is characteristic of both Burnham (of the 1940s) and Strauss is that they both rebel against historicism and insists that certain political realities are enduring or at least can make a genuine come-back despite apparent 'progress' in some other direction. And this is, in fact, where Fukuyama ends his essay (with a Nietzschean look at the longtermist future), that eventually "history" can be "started once again." (p. 18)

As an aside, it is worth emphasizing (if only because Fukuyama became associated with triumphant neoliberalism in some quarters) that "The End of History?" is fundamentally a polemic against then contemporary Chicago economics. He describes his main target as follows: "there is on the Right what one might label the Wall Street Journal school of deterministic materialism that discounts the importance of ideology and culture and sees man as essentially a rational, profit-maximizing individual. It is precisely this kind of individual and his pursuit of material incentives that is posited as the basis for economic life as such in economic textbook." (p. 6)

Be that as it may, in re-reading "The End of History?" the passage quoted at the top of the post caught my I attention. Fukuyama did discern that Glassnost could end in (what he calls) fascism, and stay there. He deserves credit for his prescience. But he also seems to think that it could never threaten the ""Common Marketization" of world politics." (16; this has echoes of Schmitt, by the way.)

That is to say, he does not seem to allow that the success of fascism somewhere makes the end of history itself fragile. But what we have learned since is that the fascists stuck in history are a source of inspiration (and perhaps also sources of financial and material assistance) to those who wish to return to it.

Or to be precise, Fukuyama does allow this very possibility on a conceptual level. For he writes, "What destroyed fascism as an idea was not universal moral revulsion against it, since plenty of people were willing to endorse the idea as long as it seemed the wave of the future, but its lack of success." (9. This is, in fact, the very next sentence from the one I quoted in my first paragraph above.) For, what this entails is that when fascism is sufficiently sucessful anywhere, it will inspire others. The end of history was always going to be a temporary affair.

 

Comments

[Paul D. Van Pelt]

Your assessment is, as usual, well-thought and presented. The questions I would pose are: Is Mr.Putin a fascist, and if he may be so characterized, how does that align with ' new thinking'? Perhaps, more importantly,is the term, new thinking, nothing more than a smokescreen for business-as-usual?