Democracy, especially American democracy, looks like it's falling apart. You hear, you know, that white people are the persecuted minority in the United States. And so they're in a way borrowing that same language of victimization from the left. He has attacked the most basic American institutions and there doesn't seem to be an institution that he doesn't want to somehow undermine. You know, he really does want to rule the United States like a king.
I am here with Francis Fukuyama. Frank, thanks for joining me on the podcast.
Oh, thanks very much for having me.
I think you and I have only met in person once. I don't know if you recall this, but I think we met in Mexico ages ago at the Ciudad de Mexico conference.
Yeah. Yeah, that was a strangely well-produced event. It was impressive. It was like the Mexican version of TED but with some obvious narco-trafficker sitting in the front row.
You know, octogenarians with 20-year-old girlfriends or something like that.
Yeah. Funded by one of the richest men in Mexico.
Well, it's good to see you. We've got a lot to talk about. So I'm just going to take it from the top here. You've never been on the podcast, which seems like a glaring omission on my part. So, apologies to both to you and the audience that it took so long to get you here, but I just want to tap your political wisdom and get your view of the present. But let's start with the beginning that most people will know you first from your article and then book, The End of History. As a writer of books, I'm exquisitely sensitive to a title serving to mislead most of one's audience and most of the world who will never read the book. And I think you're the ultimate example of this. The End of History as a phrase seems to have convinced many people that you were claiming something that you were not in fact claiming. So what was your thesis there and what is the common misunderstanding of it?
Well, I think it revolves around two words. End does not mean the cessation of history. It meant what is the objective or goal towards which history seems to be moving. And history, you know, in my sense was that of the philosopher Hegel, which was a progressive evolution of human society. So the end of history meant where is the whole modernization development process tending? And my argument was that it looked like it was tending towards a market economy linked to a liberal democratic political system. So that was the origin of the, I think, the misunderstanding because a lot of people just read the title and said he thinks that stuff is going to stop happening, and that was never the idea. The other thing is that I turned the original article into a book with the title The End of History and the Last Man.
The End of History part comes from the philosopher Hegel. The Last Man part comes from the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who said that the last man is the ambitionless, passionless creature that emerges at the end of history when all of his material comforts and security had been taken care of and he no longer has any great aspirations or ambitions. And that this was one of the problems of the end of history, that people aren't going to want to be in that position and they're going to try to rebel against it. And I actually spent the last five chapters of the book version explaining how democracy could break down in ways that I think are actually being acted out as we speak.
So, do you still feel that liberal democracy, you know, liberal democracy running on the rails of capitalism has more or less won the argument and there's no real durable contender to it, even if in fact there are enemies of it and processes by which it can erode? Or do you think, and I mean, so one data point recently, as recently as I think yesterday, in favor of that is, you know, we saw Viktor Orbán lose the election. But I think many people view the kind of capitalist, quasi-capitalist authoritarianism that we're seeing in China now as a more durable contender. How do you view that, the sense that we know the punchline of history and it is liberal democracy if we can only hold on to it?
Well, honestly, I don't know the answer to that. I think that the Chinese have created a pretty impressive system. It is authoritarian. It's quasi-market-based and they are very successful at marshaling new technology. They're capable of innovating a lot of things we thought they weren't able to do. And conversely, a democracy, especially American democracy, looks like it's falling apart. If I were somebody trying to move from a poor, misgoverned country somewhere else, I would have chosen the United States without question for most of the last several decades. But, you know, these days I'm not sure that it's such an attractive model for many people. And I would say if the Chinese keep their development machine going, you know, it may turn out that they have a real alternative. I think, however, that it's a little premature to come to that conclusion because there are a lot of problems in China which are related to the fact that there's no feedback, there's no responsiveness to public opinion. And that is going to get them into trouble, I think, in the long run.
Well, we'll talk about the problems of American democracy, I think, at some length here, but before we do, I think we'll invoke the concept of liberalism a fair amount. In your most recent book, I think it's your most recent book, Liberalism and Its Discontents, goes deep into the concept of liberalism and the way in which it can be self-defeating under certain conditions, and I want to talk about that. But before we jump in, what is liberalism? And this word seems to shapeshift for people and it can mean many different things in different contexts. What should we mean by liberalism and what are its core commitments?
