I have been thinking about The End of History again recently. While Francis Fukuyama has been criticized quite a lot for many reasons, I think he spoke to the feeling that a lot of people had in the ’90s or the early 2000s: we have figured it all out, and it is very obvious that liberal democracy is the winner. To a certain extent, I would even tend to agree with that statement a little bit, but to another extent, I disagree with it. This is not due to many of the typical “factual” analyses, but rather from a perspective that people do not talk about very often, which, interestingly enough, is somewhat in favor of the idea of liberalism being the end of history.

Basically, one of his core arguments was that if you look at the world’s governments today, it is extremely rare to see any country explicitly maintain a form of government that is obviously non-liberal: virtually all countries, even those considered autocracies like Russia, are still a parliamentary democracy on paper. In theory, they are supposed to have three separate branches of government that maintain checks and balances. China is another example: while on paper it remains a communist country, after market reforms it acts largely like a liberal state, with people being able to own private property, engage in trade, and enjoy constitutional rights to private ownership. Furthermore, its government is meant to be a civil state representing citizens rather than any particular king or queen. So, the argument goes, even deeply anti-liberal states are LARPing as liberal states, which in turn proves that liberalism has won.

While that argument seems convincing at a glance, I think most people still have a very instinctive gut feeling that this is a poor argument. I personally have felt that way for the longest time, but I had never thought about it deeply. So today, I am going to provide my quasi-liberal argument against the end of history.

The left often argues that Fukuyama failed to identify the class struggle and the relationship to the means of production that will inevitably result in the downfall of liberalism. They contend that this is why we still see increasing wage gaps, worsening living standards, and the rise of leftist movements across the globe, because liberalism has failed at answering the equality question. In my opinion, this analysis is incomplete and largely a straw man argument against liberalism. This is due to the simple fact that anyone who is serious about politics should know that liberalism objectively provides better living standards, and besides, that is not even Fukuyama’s core argument.

The right’s argument against it is that liberalism has failed to address the intrinsic cultural differences between people. They argue that mass migration toward many countries has weakened their cultures significantly, demographic replacement is deeply unpopular, and many people have had enough of foreigners taking their jobs and destroying their cultures. The rise of right-wing populism and nationalism globally is presented as proof that people desire distinct nations and prefer those who are similar to themselves. While that argument is not entirely without merit—particularly regarding the unexpected popularity of political parties running explicitly on ethnonationalism—I still do not think it serves as a valid argument against the end of history: most right-wing individuals who simply want people deported still respect the democratic process and the rule of law. In other words, they are arguing that the liberal state failed to provide what a liberal state ought to provide. Extremely few people actually want a monarchy or a dictatorship, even though that is largely what their ideologies entail.

No, I think the real and arguably more interesting issue with the claim about the end of history is what exactly liberalism even is.

Let me explain.

The claim that autocracies are pretending to be liberal states in order to justify their existence is fundamentally quite a silly idea: they are not liberal, and for countries like China and North Korea, the governments to this day remain explicitly non-liberal and officially anti-liberal. Countries like China are still constantly trying to argue that market reform is actually socialist, NOT capitalist. In other words, they are justifying their own state not through liberalism, but through socialism. If liberalism really had won, they would do the opposite.

Fukuyama clearly wants to have his cake and eat it too: countries pretending to be liberal are counted as a win for liberalism, and countries pretending to be less liberal are also counted as a win. Either way, it is framed as a victory for liberalism, which is simply such a poor argument when you think about it.

It is so poor that it reminds me of another kind of argumentation: Christian apologetics. Figures like Jordan Peterson constantly argue that everything is actually secretly Christian and that everything that resulted in the good of the West is Christian, even when those influences are at best only a partial reason and at worst literally unfalsifiable.

By Fukuyama’s definition, China is a liberal-LARPing state with the argument essentially being that the government allows for trade, which really is extremely weak. It is like the argument in The Air We Breathe, which talks about how feminism and equality are actually super Christian, even though only some branches believe in that and many Christians do not even believe in female priesthood.

I think the reason why Fukuyama’s argument feels somewhat correct instead of like absolute garbage is that when you are a liberal, your liberal bias will seep through. Just like Christians see anything good as Christian, liberals see anything good as liberal. From the perspective of an outsider, it is extremely clear why both are poor arguments for their respective success.

I am sympathetic to both: I think if there is a true religion, Christianity has its best shot; if there is a best political system, liberalism has a very strong case. However, that case is not made through the arguments that apologists like to use, but rather from the “fruit” of what each of them entails.

Therefore, it is important to keep your own personal bias in check. Just because something works well does not really mean the theories people propose about why it works well are equally good.