Closing the Door on the End of History

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“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist (Kevin Spacey in The Usual Suspects, 1995).” In late December 1991 the Red Menace of the Soviet Empire came to a final formal end. We in Western Europe witnessed a series of historic events our parents and grandparents had thought unimaginable; from the nuclear stand-off of the thirteen day October Crisis in 1962, through the Protect and Survive drills, to the point where we watched as Berlin united and the USSR fragmented. Our entire dualistic framework of understanding the global economy and international politics simply evaporated. As Marx had predicted, all that was solid melted into air.

When the fast food giant McDonalds opened its doors on Red Square selling Big Macs and Coca Cola we knew that the victory of Liberal Democratic Capitalism was complete. At that moment we had reached Fukuyama’s end point of history. This was the ultimate stage in the evolution of human social and political development – freedom, democracy, and liberalised markets. From this point on, until the end of time, people everywhere would be free; transformed into the classic homo economicus, motivated only by rational consumerist choice, and unburdened by the weight of tradition and ideology. We had entered into our long awaited utopia, or so we had thought.

Little did we know the end of history was also to be the beginning of the end of the world. The 90s became a decade of unfettered Capitalist triumphalism. Energies previously spent manning the walls against the westward march of the East were transferred into the markets and a new era of confidence and optimism was born. At last the tide had turned from the set back of the 1927 Crash, and the relative egalitarianism of the past six decades could be at last addressed by the architects of freedom. We could get back to business as usual. From 1992 new markets were opened in haste, profit and rationalism was the order of the day, and the gap between the rich and the poor burst wide to expose a chasm, and so a new revolution erupted.

Anti-Capitalism and Anti-Globalisation movements sprang up and challenged the new order of the world, the advent of the internet provided alternative avenues for socialism, social justice, and democracy. Globalised mass politicisation, possibly the greatest threat to the hegemony of Capitalism in its history, was to be met with the full force of the counter revolution of the status quo. It is this chapter of the end of history in which we are living, and even Fukuyama has joined the forces of rebellion. Event Crisis Solution has been deployed to maximum effect by an élite who now perceive even democracy to be the enemy, and everywhere new walls are being erected. We are living in the security zone before the termination of democracy.

Ùr-Fhàsaidh
Jason Michael
Blog Author
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