Meta: Default to Fukuyama?

[raharris1973]

I wrote this for SHWI, but I think it has some applicability here too. By Fukuyama, I mean the idea that there is only one basic model, democracy and capitalism.

There's a tendency here to treat Hitler's rise and initiation of World
War Two as a one in a million event. The same is true of the
Boleshevik revolution, which is possible to treat as an initiating
point for fascism as well as communism as we knew it, because of the
ways the two ideologies posed as counters to the other. The assumed
default is an absence of a second world war and totalitarian
ideologies for the other 999,000 TLs imaginable from the beginning of
the 20th century. Forms of government assumed likely are either
democratic, monarchical, or military dictatorship.

Perhaps the ATLs would not know how lucky they are, and to them, the
problems of economic booms and busts, crime, urbanization and colonial
unrest might make them feel they live in far from the best possible
worlds, but we, from OTL can confidently say that we do live in one of
worst in a million TLs possible from the dawn of the 20th century.

Am I correct this is the majority view on this discussion group?

 

[basileus]

Fukuyama is an idiot.
To me, the real "one in a million" is democracy (true democracy I mean, not the parodies prevailing even in tmost of the so-called "free" world). Considering the Hobbesian tendency of most humans (OK, most males), I think the probability of authoritarian or totalitarian regimes in the 20th centruy is extremely high. Sure, without WWI they would be less thorough and nasty in their domination of society, but they would likely happen. In a modern mass society, when a bourgeoise abdicates its leading role or it's erased from a country, the results are quite easy to predict.

 

[Faeelin]

What the hell is that guy smoking? I can see a lot of worlds possible in which the world is much, much, much worse than ours.

 

[Straha]

like for example the decades of darkness TL....

 

[carlton_bach]

I do believe that the rise of hitler and stalin, respectively, are 'one in a million' events in the shape they took. However, I am not at all convinced by Fukuyama or anyone else that the alternatives would automatically be all that much better. Liberal democracy, in whatever shape, is a very vulnerable concept, and capitalism depends on an immensely complex social foundation that most societies have proved unable to replicate (hence 'crony-capitalism') or maintain (hence fall of the polis-society).

Also, we should not forget that many of the horrors perpetrated by Bolsheviks and Nazis have, in lesser intensity, been copied by other regimes in other contexts. In a way, Civil rights and minority protections (for what they are worth through much of the world) are Hitler's legacy, in that his methods have been discredited utterly. Even if we assume that liberal democracy (and not, say, 'controlled democracy', a paternalistic technocratic state or a race-based republican fascism) triumph, what reason would we have to assume that tzhe state would not practice forcible eugenics, wars of displacement or extermination against 'lesser races' and similarly brutal attempts at social engineering? Science, in its Liberalist narrative guise, is iconoclastic, and this has been perhaps the defining force of the twentieth century. Which means that things you 'just can't do' in the 1840s become not only possible, but acceptable and, in a bitter-medicine/surgical-excision sort of way by 1890. In OTL, that has lately meant things like homosexual marriage and sexual liberation, but it might as well mean enforced sterilisation of carriers of 'nonperforming' genes, systematic relocations of population groups, and re-education in order to create the best of all societies.

And before any American says 'that couldn't happen here' - it did. it happened everywhere until the 40s, and went on a good deal longer in some places.

Of course, a fully democratic, kindly and humane TL is thinkable, but it doesn't strike me as very likely.

 

[Macsporan]

Fukuyama's thesis is right-wing triumphalist garbage brought on by too much good cocaine and the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990's, compounded by naivity, arrogance and ignorance.

There is no reason to suppose that human desire for political novelty has expired for all time just because the Ruskies decided they couldn't win a nuclear-weapons building competition with an economy three times their size.

In fact there has been capitalism without democracy and democracy without capitalism: and all this begs the question as to whether capitalism is really such a benificient system or whether the corrupt and run-down systems that govern the West are in any sense really democracies.

In the US especially the political system seems to be a happy hunting ground for a variety of capitalist and fascist beasts and has long ago ceased to serve the interests of the humble and hardworking.

Fukyama Sux Seriously.

 

[raharris1973]

All I'm saying is that if I had a nickel...

for every time in a what-if discussion when I heard the following type of statements I'd be a rich man-

"This stops the Boleshevik coup, and without Boleshevism you can't have reactionary fascism. This in turn means WWII won't happen. Europe is social-democratic or capitalist, GDP and population of the world much higher by 2004. Yay, happier world"

or

"Hiter was the only person in Europe who wanted a WWII. If you eliminated him at almost any point before Sep 1939, at most there would be a minor border adjustment war or two in Europe, but not a general conflagration.
The rest of Europe warily watches the USSR, but the USSR is weaker and unable to do much. Man did I say how unlikely WWII was? Nobody from an ATL would have believed it could happen. So anyway, it was just our bad luck we had Hitler. Man, change any little butterfly flap and you just won't have WWII or the Holocaust. Yay happier world."

 

[Straha]

as the 20th century shows I don't see a limit on how dark things could have gotten. The idea of multiple world blocs more concerned with domestic repression than imperialism seems IMO the most likely path that we could have travelled. We didn't have to take this path of history which got off light compared to other worlds.

 

[Grey Wolf]

Fascinating thread

Every prevailing ideology at the time of its ascendancy believes itself to have been inevitable

Fukuyama has most in common with the Whiggish view of history. Oddly I subscribe to this as an IDEAL - that the progress of man is to develop for the greater good. I hardly see it in the world about us

Liberal Democracy, ah there now is a term that has got me into all sorts of weird arguments with Americans who hate the word 'liberal'. It seems they are happy to have authoritarian democracies... And to me that is at least as indicative as anything as to how this argument is non-sensical as addressed by Fukuyama

Any ideology operating on its extremes is a failure - that goes for socialism or capitalism. It should go without saying to say (er, lol) that each of thes ideologies claims to know the best path for Man's enlightenment. It stands to reason that there is something worthwhile and true in each of them. Therefore only a blend comprising the best of all makes sense

I find it odd when people attack me for that. I've been called far left for advocating social democracy, no less.

Grey Wolf

 

[MerryPrankster]

In the USA "liberal" has become associated with a group of elitist leftists who think they know better than the people who they claim to be helping. Example: The Boston Busing Crisis where Justice Garrity (one such person) forcibly bused schoolchildren into parts of the city not safe for them (black students being attacked by cranky whites, white students being robbed by black hooligans) and sending in soldiers to make sure the city's parents were properly submissive.

The gun-control issue is another instance where the elitist element of much of the modern left shows through--gun owners are derided as uneducated "hicks" (country people) who desperately to hold onto their "popguns" and apparently want large guns to compensate for small portions of their anatomy (guess which part?).

Go to www.democraticunderground.com and see the gun control section of the message board. You'll see a lot of snobbery there.

US "liberals" or "modern liberals" don't have too much in common with the original meaning of "liberal," which meant "free." Classic liberalism was anti-authority, seeking to check the power of kings, sleazy clergymen, etc. Hence "liberal democracy" which is a democracy with freedom.

 

[Macsporan]

What's that you say?

Bravo Wolf: Social Democracy Rules!

Bravo to for the Mighty Quinn: your insight into the mental processes of Right-wing boofheads will be a revelation to us all.

That bussing thing sounds like lunacy to me, especially calling out the army. Judges aren't allowed to do that in my country.

The charge of leftist elitism makes me laugh. The spectacle of ghoulish conservative economists, the authoritarian corporate vampires, and monsters from the depths of the Right-wing Think-Tanks calling anyone else an elitist after lifetimes of opposing unions, workplace health and safety, environmental provisions, affirmative action, minimum wages and organising the bloody overthrow of socialist regimes in the Third World—quite literally killing poor people for money—is an awesome piece of hypocrisy even by the standards of the US Right.

As for gun control I am against it. Anything that makes it easier for violent, pea-brained Americans to kill each other is OK by me. The sad thing is that most of the time it is the unarmed ones who get shot. Beats me why they need all those guns anyway. Do they think the Redcoats are coming back?

As for the quaint stuff about liberal democracy being anti-authority: think again. It was concerned more with transferring authority to a new mercantile elite, not abolishing it altogether. Indeed it was compatible with the most flagrant abuse of human rights. Liberal Britain during the Napoleonic wars ran ugly slave empires in the Caribbean and Ireland, kidnapped free citizens off the street to serve in the navy, and her dark satanic mills were justly legendary. The United States was and is rather similar.

As for kings and sleazy clergymen: well liberal democracy has had little success in containing the Imperial Presidency, of which Dubya is merely the latest and most extreme example; sleazy priests like Pat Robertson and other rabid fundamentalists wield vast power, as do their secular equivalents in the "bought priesthood" of capitalism, who can quote Adam Smith and Milton Friedman chapter and verse to justify any and every act of injustice and oppression.

No Virginia, there's no such thing as a compassionate conservative…

 

[Hendryk]

In the USA "liberal" has become associated with a group of elitist leftists who think they know better than the people who they claim to be helping. Example: The Boston Busing Crisis where Justice Garrity (one such person) forcibly bused schoolchildren into parts of the city not safe for them (black students being attacked by cranky whites, white students being robbed by black hooligans) and sending in soldiers to make sure the city's parents were properly submissive.

The gun-control issue is another instance where the elitist element of much of the modern left shows through--gun owners are derided as uneducated "hicks" (country people) who desperately to hold onto their "popguns" and apparently want large guns to compensate for small portions of their anatomy (guess which part?).

I was going to tackle the issue initially raised (are communism and fascism mere aberrations?), then I got to the aforementioned post. All I can say about it is: words fail me. "Elitist leftists"? What is this, the National Review? Have Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly somehow snuck their way onto this forum? Hey, thanks for calling me the elite just because I'm to your left, but frankly I don't think I qualify on economic terms--as my banker will readily tell you. Funny how being in favor of equal rights and a fair income redistribution--measures that by definition favor the underdog--makes one an elitist, whereas being the pampered son of a powerful family that has bred five generations of Yale graduates, matter-of-factly saying "The haves and the have-mores: some people call you the elite, I call you my base", and leaving 40 million Americans below the poverty line while giving fellow millionnaires one tax cut after another, makes one a good ol' boy. There must be a typo in my dictionary at the entry for "elitist", or perhaps the word just means the opposite in English of what it means in French.
As for gun control, you're free to argue against it, as other people have done before you on this forum, but at least give rational arguments, or I'm going to think there may indeed be some truth to the idea that gun owners somehow feel physically inadequate.

Now, back to the topic. From what I've learned in political science (and to summarize things to the extreme), fascism came about as authoritarian European societies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries seeked a way to integrate the newly self-conscious and politically unstable popular masses into their systems without resorting to democratization. It was a piecemeal process, upon which a hodgepodge of theories grafted themselves after a while. Meanwhile European societies used mass violence and brutal exploitation as part of their colonial endeavor, and, as Hannah Arendt observed, got so used to it that they eventually turned that violence first against each other, during WWI, then against themselves. By the 1920s all the ingredients of fascism as an ideology were therefore assembled.
So, in this view, fascism was a fairly likely byproduct of European modernity. The equation can be expressed thus: authoritarian regimes+the industrial revolution+class consciousness+colonialism+a habit of large scale violence=fascism. Therefore removing fascism from history would require that at least one of these ingredients be unavailable. Short of that, you're going to have at least some of Europe experiencing a right-wing totalitarian regime of one stripe or another in the first half of the 20th century.
The story for communism is a little different, but I'll come back to it later.

 

[Paul Spring]

I think that several very good points have been raised so far -

First, I'm generally inclined to disagree with the idea of "inevitability" in history. There are just too many variables to make any one social, economic, or political system "inevitable". One of the reasons that I first became interested in AH was because it is a way of showing how one or a few small changes at one point in history can lead to very large changes later on. Fukuyama's thesis seems to me to be another of these "inevitability" arguments, with all of its inherent weaknesses.

Second, while I am generally a supporter of democracy and capitalism, I agree that there is a tendency among their supporters to gloss over the suffering that has been caused. It is true that industrial-era Britain and the United States did not even come close to the kind of systematic murder that was practiced by the Soviet Union and the Third Reich. Nevertheless, there has been plenty of cruelty and more than a little outright murder in those countries' histories. It is possible to argue that capitalism still causes less overall suffering, and brings more overall benefits, than any other system yet devised, but to depict it as a unmixed blessing is certainly wrong.

Third, I think that it is an important and often overlooked fact that the excesses of totalitarian countries may have actually helped make other countries a little LESS oppressive by thoroughly discrediting certain ideas that were pretty widespread in even the most democratic countries. A classic example of this is how the Third Reich helped to discredit the eugenics movement which has become pretty widespread in western Europe and the US. The Holocaust certainly didn't end anti-Semitism in the west, but it certainly reduced it and made it more muted and defensive. The economic decay of the Soviet Union helped discourage the more extreme forms of state control over the economy.

Fourth, it looks like Mac is back. That unique brand of sneering contempt for anyone who thinks differently has been missed. OK, I lied, it probably hasn't been missed at all. Still, I think anyone on this board who has more conservative views should thank Macsporan, since after all people with attitudes like his have probably driven millions of moderates over to the political right.


Overall, I can't plausibly speculate on whether OTL was a "lucky" or an "unlucky" timeline. My gut instinct is that things could have been much worse or much better, and I've scene interesting scenarios for both, but as for the likelihood of either, anyone else's guess is as good as mine.

 

[MerryPrankster]

"That bussing thing sounds like lunacy to me, especially calling out the army. Judges aren't allowed to do that in my country."

The judge himself didn't do anything; the troops were Guardsmen sent (by the governor, I believe) to restore order after white parents rioted when their kids were forcibly bused across the city to black schools. However, the fact remains that in terms of "who started it," then government did with that rather foolish ruling that ultimately angered the black families who wanted their kids sent to better schools who'd gotten the ball rolling in the first place. I fail to see how it's moral for the government to indulge in anti-democratic social experimenting by force (police were there to make sure the kids got bused) but it's immoral for the parents to fight back.

""Elitist leftists"? What is this, the National Review? Have Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly somehow snuck their way onto this forum? Hey, thanks for calling me the elite just because I'm to your left, but frankly I don't think I qualify on economic terms--as my banker will readily tell you. Funny how being in favor of equal rights and a fair income redistribution--measures that by definition favor the underdog--makes one an elitist, whereas being the pampered son of a powerful family that has bred five generations of Yale graduates, matter-of-factly saying "The haves and the have-mores: some people call you the elite, I call you my base", and leaving 40 million Americans below the poverty line while giving fellow millionnaires one tax cut after another, makes one a good ol' boy. There must be a typo in my dictionary at the entry for "elitist", or perhaps the word just means the opposite in English of what it means in French."

I'm not talking about you, I was referring primarily to the ideological types. Garrity was probably one of them. Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton are good example of a "elitist leftists."

And I think Ann Coulter is nuts.

 

[Grey Wolf]

Now, back to the topic. From what I've learned in political science (and to summarize things to the extreme), fascism came about as authoritarian European societies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries seeked a way to integrate the newly self-conscious and politically unstable popular masses into their systems without resorting to democratization. It was a piecemeal process, upon which a hodgepodge of theories grafted themselves after a while. Meanwhile European societies used mass violence and brutal exploitation as part of their colonial endeavor, and, as Hannah Arendt observed, got so used to it that they eventually turned that violence first against each other, during WWI, then against themselves. By the 1920s all the ingredients of fascism as an ideology were therefore assembled.
So, in this view, fascism was a fairly likely byproduct of European modernity. The equation can be expressed thus: authoritarian regimes+the industrial revolution+class consciousness+colonialism+a habit of large scale violence=fascism. Therefore removing fascism from history would require that at least one of these ingredients be unavailable. Short of that, you're going to have at least some of Europe experiencing a right-wing totalitarian regime of one stripe or another in the first half of the 20th century.
The story for communism is a little different, but I'll come back to it later.

Do you know, I had not considered it in this light - probably because I am not a political philosophy student/alumni. But it seems to me that your evaluation of fascism makes good sense. If so, it undermines the idea that fascism is simply a reaction to communism and shows that it is a vibrant strand in its own right in history

Matt, you seem to equate 'elite leftist' or what-not with the same kind of comments that were made against Fabians - how can people be rich on the one hand and concerned about socialist values on the other ? But you use similar arguments for your own side - you don't say that GOP politicians who are rich don't care about people, or don't believe in equal rights.

Grey Wolf

 

[MerryPrankster]

"Matt, you seem to equate 'elite leftist' or what-not with the same kind of comments that were made against Fabians - how can people be rich on the one hand and concerned about socialist values on the other ? But you use similar arguments for your own side - you don't say that GOP politicians who are rich don't care about people, or don't believe in equal rights."

There are elitist snob conservatives who want to micromanage everyone's lives "for their own good" too. Some Religious Right types (Robertson, mostly, though Falwell leans in that direction) fit the bill rather nicely.

 

[Chrispi]

While I don't accept the possibility that history will "default" to a certain result (such a scenario will violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics, among other things, as I mentioned in an earlier post,) there do exist strong tendencies independent of any POD, among them physical laws (like Thermodynamics and its implications for energy policy/imperialism) and technological development. Perhaps "hedonism" or self-gratification is one of these invariants. If so, then there is a tendency for people to demand more freedom and develop ever more libertine societies...