Francis Fukuyama & the Perils of Identity

Peter Benson critiques a liberal but nationalistic brand of identity politics.

- Peter Benson

The American political philosopher Francis Fukuyama is still best known for his 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man. It was written in response to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union. Those events, he contended, constituted the triumph of liberalism, democracy, and capitalism over the alternative social model provided by communist totalitarianism. “For a very large part of the world,” he wrote, “there is now no ideology with pretensions to universality that is in a position to challenge liberal democracy” (p.45). From today’s perspective, this triumph seems a good deal less definitive. Various forms of totalitarianism remain alive and well: in China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere. And the rise of populist politicians in the West has placed strains on the continuance of recognizable liberal democracy. Fukuyama’s latest book, Identity: Contemporary Identity Politics and the Struggle for Recognition (2018), was written as a reaction to the unexpected election of Donald Trump. Like many people, Fukuyama feels troubled by the fact that a liberal democratic society could elect as its leader a man so notably opposed to liberal values and often openly contemptuous of democratic processes. How could this happen? What does it tell us about our world?

Curiously enough, Trump had already been mentioned briefly in The End of History (on p.328). At that time, he was merely a well-known tycoon in the building trade, and Fukuyama referred to him as a representative example of driving ambition. Fukuyama’s concern was whether a stable liberal democracy could provide adequate satisfaction for such hugely ambitious people. Clearly, for Trump, the mere acquisition of large amounts of money did not in the end fully gratify his striving for success, which drove him on into the political sphere.