In 2006 Professor Francis Fukuyama produced a second edition of his much-discussed book The End of History and the Last Man . In that book he had argued that history is now at an end, in the sense that all ideas that there might be more 'developed' or 'progressive' forms of society and economy beyond liberal democracy and free-market capitalism were definitively revealed as a delusion in the 1990s (with the collapse of the USSR and its satellites). The large and prestigious US website Open Democracy commissioned a debate on the second edition of Fukuyama's book, and especially on the new introduction which he had written for it, and I was asked to take part.

The link below will take you to my contribution. But it is easy to follow the whole debate - including Fukuyama's reply to myself and other critics - from there. My piece mainly focuses on the severe shortcomings in Fukuyama' s philosophy of history and on the way it leads him, and many who think like him, to deep misunderstandings of the non-European world, and especially of the Islamic Middle East. Since Fukuyama was for a while (he is not now) an enthusiastic 'neo-conservative' supporter of President Bush and of the invasion of Iraq these misunderstandings have been quite politically significant!

http://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-fukuyama/modernisation_3597.jsp