SSA final draft

Communism is done

Yimkum
2013A2TS008P
3.11.2016
The End of History?

It was in a course of The Main Currents of Modern History in

the last semester that I was made aware of Franc Fukuyamas
book The End of History and the Last Man. The author
makes no secret of the fact that there was a lot of criticism
following the publication of the aforementioned work
especially because in general everyone feels that history can
and will never end- that things will keep happening, both
ordinary and revolutionary but Fukuyama does explain himself
by saying that the kind of history he is talking about is the
story of the evolution of man from a savage beast to a dignified
individual who possesses a sense of self-worth. We understand
that history is made up of areas and stages and this end is
merely of a particular kind so to speak and as logic will help us
understand, this end is the culmination of a process of
improvement hitherto progressing in a linear fashion with a
definite destination. And this final destination is purported to
be the opportunity presented by a liberal democratic system- a
system that rewards hard work with wealth, that ensures
rights to its citizens and the one system that recognises the
dignity of being human. Fukuyama bases this definition of
history on Marx and Hegel who popularized the theory of
evolutionary history. Fukuyama says

1It was made part of our daily intellectual atmosphere by Karl

Marx, who borrowed
 this concept of history from Hegel and is implicit in our use
of the words like primitive or advanced, traditional or
modern

This end of history is in parts against military authoritarian

regimes ( 2
the Weakness of Strong States I) and communist
regimes ( 3the Weakness of Strong States II). Fukuyama talks
about the end because at least it is quite apparent after the
collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening of the Chinese
economy that we have reached a certain point of final
happiness. But why would he or anyone for that matter
reach that conclusion or in other words, simply attribute the
End of History to the failure of communism? He explains this
in two parts:

1. Such regimes stifle economic progress but Fukuyama

puts forth a caveat. He says
4the experience of the Soviet Union, China and other
socialist countries indicate that while highly centralized
economies are sufficient to reach the level of
industrialization represented by Europe in the 1950s,
they are woefully inadequate in creating post industrial
economies in which information and technological
innovation play a much larger role.

And this is probably true because a poor state could not have
in the right frame of mind played war games with the United
States of America during the Cold War.
 2. The second is the desire for recognition told by 5Plato
himself. Men are not merely economic animals. It does
not require much thought to know that during the
totalitarian regimes of Stalin in the Soviet Union, there
was no way this could be appreciated.

There are a lot more examples of Communist Russia and China

opening up provided in the Weakness of Strong States II in
The End of History and the Last Man. For instance, concerning
China when Deng Xiaoping set the country on the course of
economic reform in 1978, many Chinese still had a vivid
memory of markets from the 1950s.Other real world examples
would include the failure of communism in East Germany as
well as in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Problem of Legitimacy:

Of course people believe in owning property commensurate

with their ability and of course people hope that their ability
will enable them to live with dignity and with fundamental
rights. But there is one more thing that plagues extreme right
authoritarian and left communist regimes, that is of legitimacy.
The crises that the communist world faced in the 1970s and
1980s had their roots in the paradox of Marxs idea of the
dictatorship of the proletariat. In both China and the Soviet
Union, the government claimed to represent the workers of
the world, yet these were two of the most repressive regimes
of their era: engaged in state-sponsored censorship, they
functioned as police states, and were designed to prevent
public expressions against government actions. So then the
fundamental question is what is the consent in all this? The
consent that is so fundamental to the theory of social contract
upon which democracy is based and which had its first
manifestations in the ideals of the French Revolution.

I also believe the problem of legitimacy is not so much a case

of the present as it is of the future. Illegitimate governments,
sure why cannot they function when even in a liberal
democracy, rigged elections happen?

However, controversy explodes in the matter of continuity

when the government has to elect new leaders. Leaders no
matter how powerful they are grow old and die. We are all
human and it is in this stage that their governments will be
overtaken by a better and more legitimate government. In
the conclusion to The Weakness of Strong States II, Fukuyama
says about the various military dictators in Latin America that
they will eventually have to confront the fact that they have no
long term source of legitimacy and no good formula for solving
the long term economic and political problems that they will
face. As an illustration, we have seen the power struggle after
Stalin between Georgi Malenkov (Stalins heir apparent) and
Nikita Kruschev.

Perhaps this question of legitimacy is even more powerful than

the twin questions of economic progress and desire for
recognition because ultimately the former is a pre-requisite for
the later. We talk about fundamental rights for citizens but the
only way to secure such is to have a powerful upper entity that
oversees the offer of such entitlements and to have this
powerful upper entity formed by common consent to uphold
the common good. Hobbes talked of it although his
government was a necessary authoritarian one but Rousseau
speaks of the social contract, the consent of the people and
that ultimately sovereignty is granted by the people.

Eric Lis TED talk titled 6

A Tale of Two Political Systems
seemed like good reasoning for the success of communism at
first. The irony is when he talks about democratisation of the
Chinese Communist Party(CCP). Does it not seem that
democracy has won over communism when the very speaker
who tries to use reason and data to sort of legitimise the
Chinese Communist system does so using democratic
principles? Its even more absurd when the CCP proponent
himself is a venture capitalist.

Fukuyama speaks of the failure of authoritarian governments

in failing to consider the affairs of civil society in The
Weakness of Strong States I and II. I believe civil society
should be in the distinct middle separate from the people and
the party. What Eric Li says though is that the Chinese are
alien to such a notion but he does say that they have their own
kind within the party. I fail to understand the significance of
this. Nobody can be their own judge.

The bottom line is that things have changed so much from

early 20th century Russia and China that there probably is no
country seems to be communist a hundred percent.

Yasheng Huang concludes in his counter-point argument to

Eric Lis TED talk:

7The idea of democracy is not that it leads to a nirvana but

that it can help prevent a living hell. Democracy has many,
many problems. This insurance function of democracy of
mitigating against disasters is often forgotten or taken for
granted, but it is the single most important reason why
democracy is superior to every other political system so far
invented by human beings. Maybe one day there will be a
better system than democracy, but the Chinese political
system, in Lis rendition, is not one of them.

From what I have read on Fukuyama concerning The End of

History and the Last Man I do believe that this is the end, at
least in terms of a sustainable political system. And of course
like Yasheng Huang, democracy is not perfect. There will be
corruption and failed governments and it is good that liberal
democracy provides us with a tool out of it through elections.

Still though the hypothesis that communism is dead remains

unfulfilled. It is 2016 and there is still communist China in
existence. So how do we proceed further?

Death of a symbol:

iBut the symbolic level of the state is different from political

truth. This strong symbol can perfectly be, at the political
level, empty or even negative. The decision will be, finally, not
in the hands of Obama, but in the subjective determination of
the symbol. Could you accept the advice from an old
philosopher, from an old country? I just can say to you,
separate the levels. Do not confuse them. Enjoy the symbolic.
Do not trust the state. And concerning politics rely only on
yourself, on the collective action.
These words have been taken from a lecture that the French
philosopher and Marxist Alan Badiou titled Is the Word
Communism Forever Doomed? Now it is apparent that
communist has been regarded as such a disgusting word,
especially by people of the West (Americans). McCarthyism is
a disgusting testament to that. However coming back to
Badious paragraph, I believe he wants to ingrain in the people
a sort of analytic inclination before actually judging the
system. In the earlier parts of the lecture, he defined truth
as 8an organization or consequences of an event and an event
as a rupture in the normal disposition of bodies and normal
ways of a particular situation. I liken his definition of an event
to that of the paradigm given by the theoretical scientist
Thomas Kuhn in his book 9The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions. Thomas Kuhn defined paradigms as universally
recognized scientific achievements that, for a time, provide
model problems and solutions for a community of
researchers,"

Now in so far as political systems are concerned, it is common

knowledge that there have been and even now to some extent
two paradigms- free market capitalist liberalism and a closed
collective communism and going by Badious terminology
these two are separate political events or possibilities or
alternatives but what is most important and what he intends to
deliver to the audience is not to confuse the symbol with the
event. For instance, here he talks of Obama as a symbol of a
democratic event. It is when we fail to distinguish between
these two levels that we begin to make unfair judgments.
Communism began as a remedy to combat the inequality
against workers. This is quite obvious and perhaps this is why
it does not deserve such blame and derision as do perhaps the
perverse dictatorship of Stalin- a symbol of the truth of the
event of communism.

Thus this is the problem I believe for communism. It suffered

because of its symbols (Stalin, Mao,etc) and again in the words
of Badiou

10
the most important contemporary problem is that the
political form of the party does not equate with the certain
organization and the creative transformation of the communist
hypothesis.

So, having said all these the answer should be that the
problem with communism has only been our failure to
disassociate the authoritarian symbols of communism with the
event of communism? The bigger questions then are what
would be the scenario if authoritarian symbols such as Stalin
had not existed. Going by Badious philosophy, communism
might be doing well right now had it not been for such
individuals but still there is the argument from Fukuyamas
perspective of the inherent handicaps in this system that stifle
rights, recognition and to a certain extent economic progress.
Let us just wait and see what happens to China.

Citations:
i
1,2
Fukuyama, Francis. Introduction to The End of History and the
Last Man. The Free Press,1992
3
Fukuyama, Francis. Contents of The End of History and the Last
Man. The Free Press, 1992
4
Fukiyama, Francis. Part I AN OLD QUESTION ASKED ANEW, the
Weakness of Strong States II. The End of History and The Last
Man. The Free Press.1992
5
Fukuyama, Francis. Introduction to The End of History and the
Last Man. The Free Press,1992
6
Li, Eric (2013,July). Eric Li: A Tale of Two Political Systems.
Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0YjL9rZyR0
7
Yasheng Huang July 1, 2013 (12:12 p.m.), Why democracy still
wins: A critique of Eric X. Lis A tale of two political systems,
http://blog.ted.com/why-democracy-still-wins-a-critique-of-eric-x-lis-
a-tale-of-two-political-systems/
i
Badiou, Alan. Is the Word Communism Forever Doomed? Miguel
Abreu Gallery New York.2008.
8
Badiou, Alan. Is the Word Communism Forever Doomed? Miguel
Abreu Gallery New York.2008.
9
Kuhn, Thomas.Part X. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.1996
10
Badiou, Alan. Is the Word Communism Forever Doomed?
Miguel Abreu Gallery New York.2008.

Word count:2200