Fukuyama Was Correct: Liberalism Is the Telos of History

Abstract

Liberalism, as Fukuyama assured in 1989, is the end the telos of history. “Liberalism” is to be understood as a society of adult non-slaves, liberi in Latin. It arose for sufficient reasons in northwestern Europe in the 18th century, and uniquely denied the hierarchy of agricultural societies hitherto. It inspired ordinary people to extraordinary acts of innovation, called the Great Enrichment. How “great:” a stunning 3,000 percent increase in real GDP for the poorest people, from 1800 to the present, and now spreading to China, India and the rest of the world. It was equalizing. For it to happen, there had to be an ideological liberalization à la Walter Lippmann. And yet it was opposed by a rising ideology of statism, from the New Liberals in Britain to the right and left populists today. We need to defend a liberalism that causes humans to flourish, and resist its proliferating enemies on the left, right, and center.