I agree with Fukuyama on one point: since the French Revolution, democracy has repeatedly proven to be the fundamentally better system (ethically, politically, economically) than any of the alternatives. However we haven’t witnessed the “triumph of liberal democracy” at all: in the UK, we are seeing the imposition of rampant, unchecked neoliberalism, with the safety net of democracy removed. Authoritarianism. Fukuyama’s work is a celebration of (neo)liberal hegemony and a neo-conservative endorsement of it. It’s an important work to discuss simply because it has been so widely and tacitly accepted, and because of that, some of the implicit, taken-for-granted assumptions and ramifications need to be made explicit. My own partisanship is to fundamental values, moral obligations and principles, and is certainly none-negotiable. Those include equality, human rights, recognising diversity, justice and fairness, mutual aid, support and cooperation, collective responsibility, amongst others, and the bedrock of all of these values and principles is, of course, democracy. Democracy exists partly to ensure that the powerful are accountable to the vulnerable. The far right coalition have blocked that crucial exchange, and they despise the welfare state, which provides the vulnerable protection from the powerful. They despise human rights. Conservatives claim that such protection causes vulnerability, yet history has consistently taught us otherwise. The Coalition’s policies are expressions of contempt for the lessons of over a century of social history and administration. The clocks stopped when the Tories took Office, now we are losing a decade a day. kittysjones.wordpress/2014/03/29/manufacturing-consensus-the-end-of-history-and-the-partisan-man/
Posted on: Fri, 30 May 2014 18:23:53 +0000
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