End of history

Cover of The End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukuyama.

The end of history is a disproved capitalist concept proposed after the collapse of the Soviet Union mainly by the neo-liberal economist Francis Fukuyama in his 1992 work The End of History and the Last Man. This notion suggests that modern Western-style capitalism and bourgeois democracy is the optimal state of human development and more advanced modes of production such as socialism are impossible.

Advocates of this concept propose that society will, and in fact has, reached the end of history, i.e. a final shape of sociopolitical norm at which humanity's development halts. However, since this notion was originally presented at the end of the 20^th century, it has been shown to be erroneous as, under the post-Cold War world order, economic crisis persisted and grew more extreme, the many problems associated with liberal democracy became more pronounced, and the "democratic" United Stated-led order became contested and weakened by "authoritarian" powers such as Russia and China.

This is not unexpected as a historical materialist understanding shows that capitalism has remained the same mode of production it was prior, and its dynamics such as inter-imperialist competition would not simply go away, still demanding the need for a revolution of the proletariat for socialism and the abolition of capitalism.

See also

• Human nature, another pro-capitalist argument which posits that capitalism is the natural state of humanity