Worldwide Liberal Revolution

(Editor’s Note: This is the fourth in the Aerie’s series on Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man[1].  The last entry in the series, Weak Strong States, was posted on February 07.  Nearly two months have now elapsed and this entry here will mark the final installment of the series.  Too much time has elapsed and not enough will to continue brings the end to what was originally planned to be a full series on Fukuyama’s complete work.

The author of this series still fully supports the theory postulated in the reviewed work and highly recommends it to all readers for an alternate theory of political evolution.  Apologies are due to those who might have been waiting all this time for the next installment and for those who might have hoped to see a full exposition.  My apologies are thus given.  My suggestion for those who might have been disappointed is this-buy the book, in that you won’t be disappointed.

For those who wish to read or review the first three installments in the series, individual links to them may be found on the Series page.

You may also find them individually linked here;

1.     The End of History and the Last Man,

2.     Pessimism of the West, and

3.     Weak Strong States.

And we thank you for your support.

End Editor’s Note)

We stand at the gates of an important epoch, a time of ferment, when spirit moves forward in a leap, transcends its previous shape and takes on a new one.  All the mass of previous representations, concepts, and bonds linking our world together are dissolving and collapsing like a dream picture.  A new phase of the spirit is preparing itself.  Philosophy especially has to welcome its appearance and acknowledge it, while others, who oppose it impotently, cling to the past.[2]

G. W. F. Hegel, in a lecture on September 18, 1806

If you have been following the series to this point or if you have read the book, then you know that the theme being developed is the lack of sufficient legitimacy inherent in Authoritarian Right and Totalitarian Left governments.  For various reasons when one of these “Strong” states falters they are less able to right themselves due to this lack of legitimacy.

“Legitimacy” may be compared to having money in an emergency bank account.  All governments, Communist, Fascist, or Liberal Democracy have their ups and downs to lesser and greater degrees.  It is during the times of crisis when a government needs to be able to draw on it “legitimacy reserve” to sustain itself through the crisis.

On the Authoritarian Right, control of social norms is weaker than on the Left.  When a Rightest dictator comes into power promising reforms and finds themselves just as unsuccessful as their predecessors they have no legitimate claim to remain in power other than what was promised (and failed).  If they are successful then they become impaled by the weight of the society which they have now lifted above themselves.  Strongly governed by military rule in order to weather the old crisis they begin to prosper, become middle-class, and better educated.  Soon, they are no longer willing to tolerate a military dictatorship as legitimate rulers in the face of the absence of crisis and rising standards of living and education.

On the Totalitarian Left, total control of society from the beginning prevents this previous scenario, but they are nonetheless bankrupt when it comes to popular legitimacy.  They struggle to prevent any rise to middle-class (Bourgeoisie) and all education is strictly controlled by the state.  They establish a two-tier political system of those who are in power (in the party) and those who are not.  They, therefore may be better able to handle ultimate crises of legitimacy in the short run, but eventually come to an end when even that is no longer supportable.  The problem on the left comes from failure of leader succession.  On the Right there are strict lines of succession be they of hereditary or of rank.  On the Left, there are contenders, pretenders, and enemies on every side.

When a sufficient crisis occurs on the Left that indicates that current leadership is in need of immediate replacement, then the party Apparatchik go into full gear.  These former relatively minor functionaries of the Central Committee seek to oust those at the top by means of promising reforms to the people, thus threatening revolution, or they simply conspire to wage a coup and institute Right-Wing Authoritarianism.  Thus we saw Khrushchev play the reform card against Stalin, Brezhnev play the reform card against Krushchev, and Gorbachev play the reform card against the Brezhnev era Party Secretaries of his day.  By this time the Totalitarian nature of the USSR had been so weakened that a coup was attempted and brought about in its failure the “democratized” nature of  Russia with its Yeltsin contingent.  Now we see Russia moving obliquely toward a Nationalistic Right Wing Authoritarianism.

Right Wing Authoritarianisms on the other hand move more directly to Liberal Democracies based on their already relatively liberal social policies from the beginning.  Note the word “relatively.”  We can assume that once national fascism fails in Russia from its still dearth of legitimacy that it will eventually move much closer to liberal democracy.

The same thing happened and is still happening in the East.

There has been a much quieter revolution occurring over the past twenty or thirty odd years.  This may be seen in the phenomenal economic growth in East Asia since WWII.  Japan was the first show economic muscle after the Second World War, but they were considerably aided by the fact that modernization of economic process was enforced on them.   The terminal flaw in Communist East Asia was discovered when China realized that they were being left behind, economically, by the rest of capitalist Asia.  Far-left central planning was causing China to experience relative backwardness and national poverty.  China began to liberalize their economy in the terms of market principles.  As a result, grain production doubled in five years.

The same failures were becoming evident and being reformed in Latin America.  It was argued, worldwide, that the cause for the poverty in communist and/or third-world countries was the result of the rise in Western prosperity and the West was therefore able to dictate the rules of the game, which left the rrest of the world subservient to them for raw materials and as dependent states.  Slowly they (China and Latin America) began to rethink their positions and to retool economic practices more in line with the Western liberal economies.  Instead of crying “foul” and taking the roles of victims, they began to move away from socialist central planning.  They began to then experience a uprising wave of economic prosperity based on liberal principles.

As these factors both in Totalitarian and Authoritarian states began to bring them down one by one, it could be seen that there was only one successful actor left on the world stage–Liberal Democracies.  Universally, liberal government became the only valid formula by which a state could prosper and thus continue not only to compete but just survive.

So we see that liberal economic practices are not a necessary formula for establishment of liberal democratic practice–in the SHORT run–but it order to maintain viability and prevent a relapse into far left or far right ideologies, that they are required in the long run.  Central Social Economics are practiced by the most liberal democracies in the world today, including the United States.  Complete laissez-faire economics was abandoned in the U.S. over a century ago.  It is therefore not so much a matter of “whether” but “to what degree.”  Major moves in the U.S. economy toward Central Planning can be listed most notably in the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt, the Great Society of Lyndon B. Johnson, and in the current social spending and economic control plans of the Obama administration.  We don’t know as of yet if the current planning has yet been named, but we are willing to bet heavily that the future of U.S. social spending and control of the private sector will be radically different than what has been seen heretofore.

You may or may not agree with the definition given here but for the sake of discussion we need an agreed upon set of definitions.  These definitions are not being pulled from a hat but are already considered by most in the field to be the standard descriptions for the terms we are introducing.  [3]

Let’s speak a moment about Liberalism and Democracy.  They are closely related but are not synonymous.  Let us establish a baseline for communication before we continue.

Political Liberalism can be defined simply as a rule of law that recognizes certain individual rights or freedoms from government control. . . . Fundamental rights [are those] contained in Lord Bryce’s classic work on democracy, which limits them to three: civil rights . . . religious rights . . . [and] political rights.[4]

Lately socialist countries are pressing to include economic rights in this list, i.e. housing, welfare, and employment to name just three.  They are not without precedence even in the U.S. where they are given the group name of Entitlement.  “Entitlement” being but another way of saying “Rights.”  The problem of this expansion of the list of rights is that it comes in conflict with other rights such as property or unhindered economic exchange.

Democracy, however, is the right held universally by all citizens of a state to have a share of political power.

A country is democratic if it grants its people the right to choose their own government through periodic, secret-ballot, multi-party elections, on the basis of universal and equal adult suffrage.[5]

These are ideal definitions and should not be taken as meaning to be applied to any current state actor.  Once again, we are talking in matters of degree.  If we hold this definition too strictly we may say that the U.S. was not a democracy until it gave suffrage to women in the early twentieth century.  We may say that even now it is not democratic if we consider that the difference between the two major parties are so insignificant as to make them indistinguishable, and that therefore we do not have a multi-party system.  So, while it is true that the U.S. was less democratic before it gave women the vote, it can not be said that it was not a democracy.

We were (and are) working on i,t folks.  And while this author finds great exceptions with the current “multi-party” system he still finds it imperative to class the U.S. actor as a democratic one. res ipso loquitor.

To show how these concepts of Liberalism and Democracy can be separated take Great Britain in the 18th century for an example.  It was liberal, but not exactly democratic.  The United States today is liberal, but still having trouble with democracy, but considerably less so than the U.K. in the 1700s.

While there may be setbacks in the democratic process and while there may be abuses to liberal rights and while not every market-based economy may experience continual growth (as we are seeing in this current Depression), we are, however, seeing the overall tendency over the course of the past two+ hundred years toward liberal democratization on a worldwide scale.

Islamic countries over the past 30 years have experienced a drastic revitalization and it is well accepted that Islamic government holds little or no resemblance to liberal democracy.  As far as actual cultural conquests, however, Islam is at a terminal stop.  Previous followers may be won back, but Islamic government holds no attraction for young people in Berlin, New York, Tokyo, London, or Moscow.  Part of (if not in total) the reason for resurgent Islam can be seen as it REacting to the perceived threat from the West.  Traditional Islamic societies may well indeed feel threatened by western values and political systems, but the reaction cannot be judged that it is posing a serious challenge to Liberal Democratic government.  Countries and states may be challenged and “Terrorized” but as an ideology, Liberal Democracy is not only here to stay but is evidenced by its worldwide acceptance.

We who live in stable, long-lasting liberal democracies face an unusual situation.  In our grandparents’ time, many reasonable people could forsee a radiant socialist future in which private property and capitalism had been abolished, and in which politics itself was somehow overcome.  Today, by contrast, we have trouble imagining a world that is radically better than our own, or a future that is mot essentially democratic and capitalist.  Within that framework, of course, many things could be improved: we could house the homeless, guarantee opportunity for minorities and women, improve competitiveness, and create new jobs.  We can also imagine future worlds that are significantly worse than what we now know, in which national, racial, or religious intolerance makes a comeback, or in which we are overwhelmed by war or environmental collapse.  But we CANNOT picture to ourselves a world that is essentially different than the present one, and at the same time better.  Other, less reflective ages also thought of themselves as the “best,” but we arrive at this conclusion exhausted, as it were, from the pursuit of alternatives we felt had to be better than liberal democracy.[6]

c.e.s.

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[1] Frances Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992).  Second paperback edition.

[2] ibid.  39

[3] cf Establishing a Baseline.  C. E. Spots.  gryphonscry.wordpress.com

[4] op. cit. Fukuyama.  42

[5] ibid 43.

[6] ibid. 46.