The end of endism

Abstract

When history ends, that will be the end of everything; but of course we are talking about a different sort of end. In the late 1980s, several cycles of history came to an end, although the events of that time were the culmination of changes that had been gathering for some time. The paradoxical feature of the debate at the time was that the potential for genuine change and the capacity for critical reflection on the epochal developments taking place at the time were derailed by the publication of Francis Fukuyama’s ‘The End of History’ in The National Interest in the summer of 1989. The debate thereafter focused on the rather hollow philosophical debate on the possibility of alternatives to liberal capitalism rather than on what could potentially have been a much richer discussion on the quality of the relationship between markets and democracy and the balance to be drawn between state intervention and market autonomy. No less significant, the quality of the peace order that could be built as the Cold War came to an end should have been centre stage. Instead, discussion of these two fundamental issues was muted as a sterile historicism once again predominated. Just as Marxist historicism was being chased out through the front door, a rather vulgar and conformist neoHegelian interpretation about the meaning and purpose of history slunk in through the back door.