Ironically enough Fukuyama, who considers himself "an exemplar of bourgeois thought", (Analysis, 1992, p.27) has come under substantial attack by the political right whose strategic positions he defends. In Britain he considers that the dismissive attitude to his work here reflects two classic British right-wing concerns: "..the peculiarities of the positivist English intellectual tradition which is very hostile to Hegel" and "strong anti-Americanism" (Analysis, 1992, p. 27)

One has the impression that Fukuyama recruits the teleological premises of Hegel's histiography to reinforce the impetus of his work and lend force to an historical determinist analysis.

Fukuyama uses History in the Hegelian sense to mean the end of historical thinking. There can be no qualitative social arrangements superior to capitalism. (Furedi, 1992, 218)

Richards may be rather too dismissive in the following passage but he has a point.

"Fukuyama's thesis is ultimately reduced to the observation that since the self-proclaimed Marxist leaders are now looking for capitalist solutions, there must be something progressive about Western liberalism." (1989, p. 28

However, Fukuyama's perspectives do not mean that extraordinarily important events cannot take place within History: that history cannot proceed within History.

It is impossible to attack, or even to approach, such a view because all historical events can be explained, or explained away, as simply 'moments' within the overall Historical totality. On the other hand, relatively small social changes, such as those at the level of governmental responsibility, are stated to be of significant import. This is in contrast to a Marxist view of social change as being at the level of the nature of the state as a precursor to modifying the relations of production.

Let us focus for a time on some empirical aspects of Fukuyama's argumentation. In grand style he announces:

"But surely the class issue has actually been successfully resolved in the West. As Kojeve, (among others) noted, the egalitarianism of modern America represents the essential achievement of the classless society envisaged by Marx." (1989, p.9)

As Richards sardonically notes, "modern America" boasts apartheid style ghettos, deep poverty and a massive police apparatus all within a few blocks of the State Department. (Richards, 1989, p.28) Fukuyama can hardly not know this but it is not the crux of his argument. For even though he immediately contradicts himself by not denying that there are "rich people and poor people in America, or that the gap between them has not grown in recent years", he attributes this fact not to the structural nature of capitalist society but rather to "the historical legacy of premodern conditions." (Fukuyama, 1989, p.9) Using this kind of analysis one can logically resolve the distinction between a society characterised by its essential egalitarianism and yet marred by massive inequality!

The problems of American liberal democracy are identified as historical 'left-overs' emanating from another period.

"Thus black poverty in the United States is not the inherent product of liberalism but the "legacy of slavery and racism" which persisted long after the formal abolition of slavery." (Fukuyama, 1989, p.9)

It is true that the end of the Civil War in the U.S.A. ended in a compromise which, in many ways, left it "unfinished". Even so, this does not altogether explain the continuing, institutionalised, widespread and deep seated discrimination against black people in the U.S. Fukuyama's argument is ultimately undialectical because he assigns primary explanatory significance to past history. Certainly, changes in the economic base of a national entity do not automatically promote changes in the superstructures. Neither do changes in the political and legal superstructures necessarily enact modifications in the ideological superstructure. But movements in one area or areas open up the possibilities of changes in others even if there is a substantial 'lag' in terms of cause and effect. If we were to accept the staticity of Fukuyama's version then it is difficult to fathom how any change at all can occur.

Somewhere, even if the definition can only be arbitrarily declared, we have to assign some responsibility for the social totality of a society to its contemporary leadership. By Fukuyama's argument we could simply attribute the repressive nature of Stalinism to the authoritarian nature of previous Russian society. There is, of course, a kernel of truth in this but it would be completely simplistic as an overall explanation.

In contrast to Fukuyama's view that the undemocratic and inegalitarian components of liberal democracy are historical remnants a new work by an astute bourgeois commentator argues that poverty and powerlessness are structurally integral to the American system. "The contented majority", who are a majority of those who vote, are increasingly reluctant to contribute towards any public services via taxation. (Galbraith, 1992)

In fact, statistics released by the U.S. Census Bureau show a deepening of poverty in the country, (14.2%, 35.7 million people in 1991), and an increasing differentiation between rich and poor. In the worlds richest country "one in every four children aged under six is in poverty." (Tisdall, 1992) Far from being a relic of a "premodern" age the increase in poverty can be located as a direct effect of economic depression and the increasing gap between rich and poor as a consequence of Republican tax handouts to the rich. Over the last decade there has been "a 49% increase in the number of African Americans living in poverty in the cities." (Tisdall, 1992) Such a close correlation between economic depression and black poverty seems to conclusively indicate that the inferior position of black people in U.S. society is rather more than a "legacy."

Fukuyama is not content merely to argue that "the class issue" has been fundamentally resolved within the major liberal democratic societies but that this is also the case between the imperialist and imperialised countries. (Of course, he does not use such terminology).

In attacking dependency theory Fukuyama argues that the examples of "tiger" economies such as Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea disproves the exploitative economic link which the left establishes between the imperialist and imperialised economies. (Fukuyama, 1992, p.101) Omitted is the fact that these "tiger" nations received massive economic aid from the imperialists after World War 11, and were able to equip themselves with a new technological base which radically promoted the extraction of intensive surplus value from their respective working classes. When allied with repressive political systems which ensured suitable conditions for the extraction of extensive surplus value, including child labour, then economic growth is hardly surprising. In a very real sense the success of these nations, initially substantially aided by the allies for their own geopolitical reasons, illustrates the presence of imperialism from the opposite angle to that which we are accustomed.

But, for Fukuyama, cultural traditions explain economic growth. (Fukuyama, 1989 p.7, 1992, pp.225-234) He asserts that despite other factors, "nonetheless, anyone who has spent time travelling or living abroad cannot help but notice that attitudes to work are decisively influenced by national cultures." (Fukuyama, 1992, p.224) This is a more subtly nuanced variation on the "they are poor because they are lazy" theme which is a perennial leitmotiv in bourgeois thought and, as Larrain points out, even in aspects of Marx and Engels thinking. (1989, 234, 236) But Marx and Engels were writing over a century ago! To put it crudely, "countries that are rich have a capitalist culture and free market ideas. Countries that are poor do not." (Richards, 1989, p.28)

In contrast to Fukuyama's idealism, recent research by Elizabeth Dore indicates that imperialist exploitation is very much a factor in the global economy. Dore notes,

"...the growing disparity between poor and rich countries and the flow of funds from the underdeveloped to the developed world. In 1890, Europe was twice as wealthy (per capita) as China or India. By 1940, it was forty times richer; in 1990 it was seventy times richer. The imbalance between poor and rich countries is growing rapidly. In each year since 1986, at least US$43 billion more had flowed from the South to the North, than vice versa. Together, Latin American, African and Asian countries pay about three times more every year just in payments to service foreign debt than the total they receive in development assistance through all channels. These debt repayments are, in essence, a forced contribution from the world's poor to the world's wealthy countries." (Dore, 1992, pp.73-4)

Far from being confined to cultural factors, then, the expanding differentiation between the poor and rich sectors of the world economy is very much an objective economic fact.

Fukuyama cites the Holy Trinity as an example of people prepared to die for an idea. (1989, p.8) The Marxist would have no absolute argument with such a conception. The 1981 Hunger Strike in north East Ireland, which led to ten deaths, would be a contemporary political example. In addition, the whole history of the Communist movement reveals many who have died for reasons closely connected with ideological concerns. Certainly it is the great ideas which motivate people. Marx was quite clear, in one of his earliest works, that when ideas become the property of a mass of people then these ideas themselves can be a "material force". (O' Malley, 1970))

To say this, however, is very different from saying that ideas solely determine social life. Neither is it the case that ideas are simply derived from social life. Marxists must argue dialectically and note that ideas have groundings in social life but are not simple reflections of that life. Rather, ideas are mediated derivations of social life and therefore enact a greater or lesser approximation to it.

Marxism recognises the importance of social structures and also the potential impetus of praxis, which inevitably has to emanate from the constraints of those structures, in defining oppositional expressions which finally can interrupt, or even destroy, the prevailing social structures. Marx sums these parameters up succinctly when he notes that:

"Men make their own history, but not of their own free will, not under circumstances they themselves have chosen but under the given and inherited circumstances with which they are directly confronted." (Marx, 1973, p.146)

Many of the critics of Marxism do not wish to recognise the fine graduations which such an interactive duality proposes and confine the doctrine to a straight-jacket of their own interpretation. Marx's supposed teleological view of history is a particular favourite. (Furedi, 1992, pp.261-3)

"Marx never argued that history would come to an end - not even with the achievement of a 'communist utopia'. It is testimony to the vulgar state of contemporary intellectual standards that such distortions can circulate without the mildest public rebuke." (Richards, 1989, p.27 )

Quite.

When capitalism can provide a reasonable minimum of nutrition, clothing and shelter for the planets inhabitants then, and only then, will it be appropriate to declare the end of Marxist-Leninism. It is the structured inability of the system to do this, and in fact a growth in the economic contradiction between rich and poor at all levels of world economy, which means that there will always be those who struggle for a better future.

Ted Talbot.

ANALYSIS, Analysis Publications, Issue 2, Summer 1992, B.C.M. Analysis, London, WC1N 3XX.

DORE, Elizabeth, Debt and Ecological Disaster in Latin America. In:- Race and Class, No. 34.1, 1992.

FUKUYAMA, Francis, The End of History. In:- National Interest, 1989

FUKUYAMA, Francis, The End of History and the Last Man, Hamish Hamilton, 1992.

FUREDI, Frank, Mythical Past, Elusive Future, Pluto Press, London, 1992.

GALBRAITH, John, Kenneth, The Culture of Contentment, Sinclair-Stevenson, London, 1992.

MARX, Karl, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, In:- Surveys From Exile, Penguin, Middlesex, 1973.

MESZAROS, Istvan, The Power of Ideology, Harvester Press, Hertfordshire, 1989.

O' MALLEY, Joseph, Ed., Karl Marx:- Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, C.U.P., Cambridge, 1970.

RICHARDS, Frank, The Future Hasn't Even Begun, In:- Living Marxism, November, 1989, Junius Publications, London.

TISDALL, Simon, America's Poor are Getting Poorer, In:- The Guardian Weekly, vol 147, No. 11, Week Ending September 13th, 1992.