The end of the end of history

[lapsedmodernist]

Dr. Fukuyama or How I jumped the Gun on the End of History,

Famous academic Francis Fukuyama, one of the founding fathers of the neo-conservative movement that underlies the policies of US President George W. Bush's administration, said on July 13 that he would not vote for the incumbent in the November 2 US Presidential election.
In addition to distancing himself from the current administration, Fukuyama told TIME magazine that his old friend, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, should resign.

Fukuyama's brain: Wait a minute...when I was talking about the end of history I meant it in a Hegelian perpetual-plateau, nice & non-eschatological way...They took it literally...Oh no, What have I created?! I am Dr. Frankenstein of the post-Kissinger realpolitik! Noooooo! I will not die a monster! I will not die a monster! (sorry, I just dropped $10 on Spiderman 2, and while I am disappinted because the vague intimations of The Press led me to expect something progressive, and instead I got Spideman-as-Jesus, paint-by-Benetton-numbers "diversity," a setback to all waves and particles of feminism, I insisted on, like, extracting some sort of progressive message for my $10, a pulled-teeth reading of the villain arc as a commentary of the "real terrorism can be homegrown and comes from the hubris of the nuclear proliferation project" variety).

Is this going to be, like, one of those major reversals by the paradigm-shapers that barely makes a blip on the radar of History, you know, the one that was supposed to End? Like, when Marx, towards the end of his life, witnessed the French and Prussian peasants totally failing to conform to his scientifically divined prognisis of history (a.k.a. class trumps nationalism) and totally fail to unite under the red flag of dialectical materialsm, and thus the Franco-Prussian Wars commenced and Marx died a disillusioned Marxist. Fukuyama, you should have studied your history better before declaring its passing. Nyeh-nyeh.

Comments

FT's opinion

[chelvis.livejournal.com]

yeah, i remember something in the FT about them, the FT, the editors themselves, blaming him for his "end of history" prognosis fueling the dotcom boom. They were like, "Surely, someone must be to blame for the hubris of the last few years of wild speculation of unfettered growth, where the market was believed to have evolved beyond cyclical recession and boom, where metaphors of bull and bear gave way to a belief in ever upward and expanding growth in a market built on unreliable business structures of internet companies, as if adam smith didn't foresee that with the tulip markets in amsterdam, or in the south sea bubble of the 18th century. If there is a single person to blame, we at the FT are blaming Francis Fukuyama and his vision of "the end of history"."

however, this is not as bad as when George Soros, i think in 1997, predicted the "imminent collapse of worldwide capitalism". what a yahoo. he even wrote a book about it: "the crisis of global capitalism"

Re: FT's opinion

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

I am very confused about blaming Fukuyama for the dotcom implosion...and Soros fronting as a benevolent Marx lite never fails to amuse me. Sure, the dude is giving lots of dough to MoveOn, but that's because Halliburton kicked Carlyle in the teeth.

riddled with spelling errors, i know.

[chelvis.livejournal.com]

I'd like to learn more about the Carlyle group, but I don't want to read a bunch of web pages by robert anton wilson-lite conspiracy theorists. Do you know of any reliable, rational, non-crack-pot places for info?

i think the FT thing was "if we had to blame one person" for propogating a vision that lead the market makers into their fallacious 90's beliefs of perpetual growth and the end-of-cyclical markets, we blame Francis. Cyclical markets were seen, then, erroneously, as a relic of less efficient and less advanced market systems, trading floors, personal stock deals, etc., whereas now, at the end of history, because markets can respond so fast because of technology, we never have to suffer a recession - computers make the markets, worldwide, react instantly. Fukuyama's end-of-history hypo tied in: markets work so fast, are so reflexive, all the participants are instantaneously aware of market info that the Efficient Market Hypothesis is a reality, and rational market participants are not affected by anything too remote in time, and rational market participants, of course, will make decisions that will drive the market upward, even if they act selflessly. the end of history is perpetual and safe growth in all the sectors, through technology and globalization.

however, adam smith saw the same pie-eyed mania throughout history, and called these periods "bubbles" that would burst as soon as people realized that everything was vastly overvalued. once the first pessimist sells, the bubble bursts, the market crashes. It was believed that the dotcom boom, through its technology, would work ways around that, in hedging risky investments and regulating growth to a sustainable pace. People like Blodgett further propogated Fukuyama's hypo that now, the rules were changed, permanently, because of the internet and supercomputing and 24 hour global markets, people in omaha at night, on the internet, trading on the DAX in germany. People thought the Nasdaq would reach 50,000. Cynics like Warren Buffet and Soros knew that traditional market forces would eventually burst the bubble, and were shunned, until they were eventually proven right, and retroactivelly praised as gurus.

let me know if you either knew all of that, I explained it wrong, or whatever. I'm no expert on Fukuyama, maybe I've only read a few things about him, and heard what he's about tangentially. I got the gyst that the FTs point was that Fukuyama is culpable for supplying the theory to back up the mania of perpetual growth.

Re: riddled with spelling errors, i know.

[theodora.livejournal.com]

I'd like to learn more about the Carlyle group, but I don't want to read a bunch of web pages by robert anton wilson-lite conspiracy theorists. Do you know of any reliable, rational, non-crack-pot places for info?

I second this request.

Re: riddled with spelling errors, i know.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

The disinfopedia has a pretty good succinct article; they are a good source because of the hyperlinks and a wide range of links to relevant literature from sources across the spectrum:
http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Carlyle_Group

I also wrote about them last November w/r/t their connections in Russia and their unraveling relationship with the current administration

http://www.livejournal.com/users/anthrochica/115959.html

Re: riddled with spelling errors, i know.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

I'd like to learn more about the Carlyle group, but I don't want to read a bunch of web pages by robert anton wilson-lite conspiracy theorists. Do you know of any reliable, rational, non-crack-pot places for info?

As I wrote in response to theodora below, I think disinfopedia is good because it is succinct, hyperlinked to everything it references as offers a diverse range of bibliographical material, to which it offers links:
http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Carlyle_Group

[emblemparade.livejournal.com]

I would prefer to say that Marx died disappointed, not disillusioned. 1848 was the great disillusionment for him, after which he regrouped and further elaborated his philosophy. Some would even say that he reversed it in important ways. He died believing he was right, but definitely unhappy that things didn't progress as much as he had hoped. As he saw it (and me, too) it was a case of underestimating the enemy. He never made a statement as dramatic as Fukuyama's. As for Fukuyama, I'm sure it's a similar case, though I would pay good money to see him do what you are implying that he is doing. The pompous Fukuyama admitting error? That would make my day!

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

I don't know, from where I was looking, the Franco-Prussian wars kind of blew Marx's thesis (and antithesis and synthesis) out of the water. If you can point me to where he says "this is going to take longer than I previously thought" I'd be grateful. It's true he didn't make a statement as dramatic as Fukiyama's, but PR was different back then. I think Fukuyama still believes in his neo-Hegelian end of history, too, he just realized that the Four Horsemen of PNAC are much more likely to bring about a different end of history than the one he was prophesizing/advocating. Fukuyama is like Morpheus who mistook Agent Smith for Neo.

I would pay good money to see, like, the head of Professor Fukuyama monologuing. There was this famous Soviet science fiction book called "the Head of Professor Doyle" where the head was preserved after the death of the body of the professor, and he was a captive of his own monstrous experiment.

[emblemparade.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid there's no evidence for my theory, either, and I'm not sure our views are mutually exclusive. Some evidence seems to suggest that he focused on his family life, which seems to have been loving and fulfilling. So maybe he just didn't give a flying fuck anymore.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

Ah, love trumped Marxism! That's just the way I like it...

[emblemparade.livejournal.com]

Marx was emphatically not a Marxist, something he repeated again and again many times throughout his life...

[ex-redcalx.livejournal.com]

ach...theorists would never have feet in their mouths if they just weren't so goddamn arrogant...

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

Non-arrogant theorists? Oxymoron...does not comute...BRAIN CRASH.

[contrasoma.livejournal.com]

His own thoughts.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

Oh, goody, thanks!
Man, Fukuyama is still an ass, like, what does this means?
The question of pre-war Iraq-al-Qa'ida links has become intensely politicised in the US since the war. My reading of the evidence is that these linkages existed but that their significance was limited.

I love how all the neo-cons & Co skirt the issue of the fact that Bin Laden's followers are extremist fundamentalist religious fanatics, and Saddam Husein was a secular dictator who ran his country according to a Stalinist model of state socialism. Cooperation between the two? Unlikely. Just look at those tapes where Bin Laden is inciting the people of Iraq to overthrow their infidel leader and kill him. Whoops, those parts were censored in the US, because it would have blown the "connection" right out of the water. I also love how they "proved" the connection after the invasion of Baghdad, with that insane, conveniently "found" memo that not only established a SH/BL connection, it also neatly tied up the loose ends in the Niger shipment story. I

[contrasoma.livejournal.com]

Lethal Buddies

The whole Saddam-Osama connection hoopla just seems to be playing to the worst elements of North Americans' cultural myopia. We've got a vague understanding that middle eastern cultures are vastly different from our own, but the idea that some of those cultures might differ from one another introduces far too many factors. At best, it's ignorant or a bit lazy (for example, not many westerners, myself included, have anything resembling a coherent grasp on the cultural/religious conflicts between different groups in India), at worst it's flat-out racist: "they're all brown, they all hate us, none of 'em speak English, of course they're working together!"

[revdj.livejournal.com]

I think this is the situation:

CONSERVATIVES: Even though taking from the poor and giving to the rich seems an odd way to combat poverty, and being really irrational and warlike seems an odd way to create peace, trust us, it works. Give us our way.
USA: Well, we are dumb. Here is most of what you want.
[Things get worse]
CONSERVATIVES: No, no, no. You have to give us MORE of what we want. See? Things are worse? Now more than ever we need you to give us everything we want.
USA: Well, we are dumb. Here is even more of what you want.
[Things get worse]
CONSERVATIVES: I know it looks like we were wrong, but you didn't give us everything we want, so we are not responsible. Clinton is.
USA: No, no, no. Here is everything you want.
[Things get worse]
CONSERVATIVES: Ah.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

Hahahaha, that is totally true. And the Media is the Greek chorus. Do you care to write a next act?

[revdj.livejournal.com]

As a liberal, I will require a Grant before I do that.