The End of History or The Beginning of the End?

A glance at a theory in the mind of Putin

Photo by Raph Howald on Unsplash

The Cold War ended when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Instead of sighing in relief, the West beat its chest. The following year political scientist Francis Fukuyama published The End of History.

Fukuyama didn’t mean history stopped being recorded. It was a reference to Marx’s theory of history. Marx believed history progressed through socioeconomic stages. First, feudalism than capitalism. Both were systems of exploitation that led to class conflict.

Marx predicted the capitalist stage would end with the working class overthrowing the ownership class. Which in turn would create a “dictatorship of workers” under the new socioeconomic banner of socialism. Marx’s final stage of history was communism, a classless and stateless society where cooperation replaced competition and human beings were all equals.

Fukuyama was convinced the implosion of the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) indicated Marx’s final stage of history would never materialize. Therefore, history ended in the capitalist stage with Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government. According to Fukuyama, the universalization of this final form of government would advance underdeveloped countries and establish a global order of…