Transcription
Francis Fukuyama is a political scientist famous for his essay "The End of History." It was published in 1989, just after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and it put forward the argument that with communism in decline and collapsing in much of the Eastern Bloc, liberal democracies and market economies, or the combination of those two, no longer faced any ideological competition. In short, he believed market liberalism was humanity's final form.
Um, well, that argument has, of course, long faced criticism, and Fukuyama, you know, he, he sort of realized that, he's recognized that for a while. He's had a change of heart, and he said this specifically about China to Sam Harris a couple of weeks ago.
"Uh, I think that the Chinese have created a pretty impressive system. It is authoritarian. Uh, it's quasi market-based, and they are very successful at marshalling new technology. They're capable of innovating a lot of things we thought they weren't able to do. And conversely, a democracy, especially American democracy, looks like it's falling apart. Uh, if I were, uh, somebody trying to move from a poor, misgoverned country, uh, somewhere else, uh, I would have chosen the United States without question for most of the last several decades. But, you know, these days, I'm not sure that it's such an attractive model for many people. Uh, and I would say if the Chinese keep their, uh, development machine going, uh, you know, it may turn out that they have a real, uh, alternative. I think, however, that it's a little premature to come to that conclusion because there are a lot of problems in China which are related to the fact that there's no feedback, there's no, uh, responsiveness to public opinion. Uh, and that is going to get them into trouble, I think, uh, in the long run."
I think he's actually overstated the case at the end there. I mean, the Chinese government is responsive to public opinion, not in the same way that Western governments are, and obviously, they don't have free speech, which is, you know, there's no two ways about that. Um, but they are very attuned to what their populations want and what they're complaining about, especially on the local level. Um, but why that clip, you know, has gone viral, um, especially sort of from pro-China accounts, is because this is the guy who said, you know, not only is liberal democracy and capitalism the best, but it's now the only system sort of worth paying attention to. It's the final form of human society. There is no competition. And now, not only is he saying, you know, history hasn't ended in the sense that there's still conflict, he's saying that the non-liberal, sort of quasi-capitalist one might actually be better, right? It's not just that it still exists. It's that maybe they are better than the liberal capitalist democracies.
Um, I'm going to talk about this loads. I've just come back from China, and that is one thing you do get walking around. Whatever you think about the system, I'm not really sort of into this politics where it says China brilliant, America terrible. I think both have pros, both have cons, both systems. But walking around China, there is just no doubt whatsoever that this is a system which works, right? In the same way the American system works, right? It's produced enormous wealth. Um, it has a wide degree of consent. You know, it's not a totalitarian society at all, and it is working, right? So, I, I do think it does really, really, um, I suppose encourage humility, um, about people who sort of are very dogmatic about this is the only way society should be organized because that society is organized in a very different way, and it's clearly working for well hundreds of millions of people. Let's be frank.
Um, what's your take on this? Your China take. Everyone, everyone needs one.
"Well, you said the, uh, American system is working. I think it's clear that it's working less and less, right? So, I, I think that history's back on, according to Fukuyama, and it seems like a good time to make that claim because the idea that liberal democracy could just, and capitalism could endlessly sustain itself, and, you know, wealth would rise, and well-being would go up, and poverty would go down, um, has, has that narrative has run its course. It's poverty isn't declining due to capitalism, at least not anymore. Um, the, if you were to walk around the States, especially in a city, you would not probably say this is working. There's a lot of things wrong. There's people sleeping on the street, there's more crime than there is in China. Um, now, I don't, I don't like to take the black and white view either that China good, America bad. Of course, there's a lot of, of nuance there, especially as it comes to, you know, freedom of speech and and authoritarianism. It is clear that the US system, which is premised on largely an oil and gas powered economy and the US petrodollar maintaining financial control over the oil and gas trade, seems to require not only poverty but also dropping bombs and the invasion of countries that go rogue and try to, try to build a multilateral world order like what BRICS is trying to do. And so I think it's very clear that history's back on. And I think the, the reason that's so obvious is that the limits of American financialized capitalism are starting to appear. And I think one of the, those, the biggest ones that's been obvious to me for, for a while is climate change. I mean, the, the ability of this system to keep growing, and it's obvious pushing up against the ecological limits of our planet, to me, is, is an, is an obvious reason why the original, uh, thesis of Fukuyama is, it wasn't correct that history hadn't ended. It just sort of reached stability for a few decades, and now we're starting to see the tipping points that were originally baked into this model."
Yeah, the, the, the aggressiveness of the West versus the peacefulness of China is something like I think about a lot because.
There's two arguments, which is that there is something about liberal capitalist democracies that makes them sort of particularly expansionist, or it's just that whoever is the dominant power in history tends to be quite violent because it can. And I suppose we, I think it's too early to say whether sort of like a dominant, you know, if, if China becomes sort of the main imperial power, will it begin behaving like the West did in the 20th century? I feel like that the 20th century, the West was the driver of sort of like wealth and progress, but also the main kind of murderer, colonizer, and colonizer. And then the issue is, in the 21st century, it seems pretty clear that China and East Asia are going to be the main drivers of of development. And can they do it without the colonialism and the and the war?
So far, they seem to be. Yeah, I mean, the, the West was built on a history of colonialis, colonialism. It didn't only start at the end. It, it was the, the buildup of these Western democracies, and the, the development of the West was largely built on labor that was appropriated from the Global South. The materials appropriated, and, and it was often very violent, the way that order was, order, quote unquote, was brought to those colonies, right? And so I think it's very notable that China has been able to come to this position of power without that history of colonialism that required so much extraction to build up these beautiful capital cities of Europe, right? And so, um, I think it, it points towards, I hope, a future that can be more peaceful in a world order that is, if not dominated, and at least heavily influenced by China. Of course, we can't just assume that their intentions will always be good. Um, but the, the track record is very, very good in terms of the amount of violence required to build them, them up to this point.
Yeah. Externally, I mean, internally, there was quite a lot of violence over the past, yeah, 100 years, but externally, I mean, it is. People often say about, like, when they're sort of talking about the Chinese military, oh yeah, the Chinese military is not going to be very good because they haven't, you know, you only learn how good you are in war, and they haven't been in any wars. And people sort of saying this like it's a negative thing. It's like, that's kind of good. Like, "Yeah, I, I love this powerful country that doesn't know if its military is any good because it hasn't fought any wars." Like, fantastic. Um, that's, and they're like, "Oh, the West, the West knows its militaries are great because we're always invading places." It's like, yeah, that's, that's not a good thing.
Yeah. And we're, we're always need testing grounds to develop new weapons to feed the military-industrial complex, right? And, and that's, I think, a, a big reason why a lot of these conflicts get extended is they like they become testing grounds and areas of of profitability for US arms companies that require shareholder returns, right? And so you, you sort of start to see the, the logical, uh, contradictions baked into a shareholder capitalism baked model of of empire. And, um, yeah, I mean, of course, there, there are, there are holes to poke in the Chinese model as well. Um, but I do think that if it's not all based on profit and, and endless wars, then, uh, it seems like a better model to me.
Um, I'm quite boosterish on China, you know that. And there was a story in the Financial Times this week though that planted some seeds of doubt. Um, so apparently China's spy agency has begun warning Chinese young people against dropping out of the career rat race. So the context here, um, is the trend in China to "lie flat." So this is the idea that for, for young people, um, the Chinese education and jobs market is just too competitive. And that has meant that some people are just deciding, I don't want to do this anymore, right? They're opting out. They're going to live with their parents. Um, seems reasonable, rational to me. Um, there was, when I was walking around Chengdu, it felt like Berlin or Madrid, and you could feel like there were quite a lot of people lying flat in Beijing and Shanghai, less so. Let's go back to that Financial Times article, and they say the Ministry of State Security, the country's spy agency, this week said foreign forces were seeking to erode the minds of Chinese youths by disseminating anti-work propaganda online, encouraging them to drop out or, in Chinese internet parlance, "lie flat."
And they say, "We want only for our youth to lie flat, handing over our development dividends, strategic opportunities, and the future of our nation." So that is what the Ministry of State Security has been saying in a WeChat promotional video. Um, and also from that WeChat video, um, the Ministry says, "May every young person uphold their original aspirations, stand firm on their principles, remain undisturbed by noise and unclouded by confusion, and thrive in the prime of their lives." Um, as I say, I'm still boosterish about China. What they're doing is very impressive. I'm sure their development is going to continue, and, you know, whether or not it accelerates, I don't know. But, you know, I think the 20, the 21st century is theirs, essentially. But it's a very competitive society. Um, young people are expected to work very long hours. I really don't think you need a foreign power to encourage some of them to drop out and chill. I'm glad some of them are dropping out and chilling. Yeah, sounds like they might need a four-day work week as well. But it, I, you know, this is, I'm glad we went straight to this because this is a, a pressure point and, and a maybe a limit or, or a, or a weakness of the Chinese model, right? If it's so hard for young people to get a job that they're dropping out of the workforce entirely, that's a, that's a big problem. And, and it's difficult to, to steer an economy in the sort of like public, uh, sort of, you know, way that the Chinese government is doing and encourage the levels of dynamism that are required to keep all of the the youth employed.
Um, I mean, as someone who flirts with the idea of degrowth and this idea of, you know, maybe if we all just stopped focusing so much on this "line goette" mentality of endless progress, that maybe we'd have better lives. Parts, parts of the "lie flat" movement to me are somewhat aspirational, like, hey, you know, maybe slow down a little bit. But at the same time, if it really is a response to effectively, uh, dead end for young people economically, then that's a, that's a real problem because you need to, you need to like, your young generations need to have a future. And so I think it's a real issue that China's running up against, and I, and I worry for, for the youth of China that that their growth and dynamism is starting to peter out. Um, I think it's in, I mean, I'm, I'm wondering if it's because of the, the inevitable limits of growth-based economies. Um, but I also think that I hope that this can be solved in the near, in the near term because lying flat probably isn't the solution.
I think it's also just maybe the privilege of becoming rich, right? So obviously, if you're, if you're a developing country, um, and you're poor, basically, you don't, you don't get to lie flat because even you say, "Oh, I'll just go live at my parents' house in Chengdu." Right? It's, this to me seems like China becoming a richer country and having the normal thing that any richer country has, which is rich kids. Some young people, not, yeah. But middle class, some young people can afford not to work anymore, and so don't work anymore. And that's where like, art comes from, and where like pop culture and new music, and, you know, like, I think it's great. I think every society needs a lot of people to lie flat. And I think the "lie flat" thing is probably a positive development for China. I mean, also they do work, they work very hard because they're a developing country. Developing countries, you have to work very hard to develop. But if they're going to mature into a, which they are maturing into, a developed economy, I think they should be celebrating the people lying flat instead of pretending that this is, uh, sort of like a conspiracy by foreign powers.
And, and at what point do you manage the economy in such a way where you start to, you start to give the benefits of growth to the working class in the form of higher wages or more leisure time, right? And that's the whole point of the four-day work week. And that's what happened when the neoliberal agenda got woven into corporate capitalism in America is that productivity continued to go up, but none of the benefits of that productivity actually went to workers. And so that was when, you know, basically the, a lot of the economic problems that we're facing today in the West, uh, began, in my opinion. But if those productivity gains aren't translated into higher wages for workers, then they should translate into more time, more free time, right? At the very least, I think they should translate into wages. But I think that ultimately some benefits need to go to workers at some point. And if there's a culture of growth at all costs, always push yourself, no matter what. Develop, develop, develop. At what point does your economy reach, reach a level where you're like, "Okay, we've developed enough to sustain well-being for everyone in this country. Let's actually start to take our foot off the gas and focus on well-being and environmental protection and some of those other things that are not just GDP, right?" And so, I think this is a moment for China to say, "What would a, what would prioritizing other economic objectives look like?"
Yeah. I mean, at the moment, it goes into bridges. So, so people don't get to consume as much as their sort of level of development would suggest. They have a very weak welfare state, very weak pensions. Um, but lots of that money gets saved and then gets invested in infrastructure. And my sense is that sort of China's priority is still sort of to assert its industrial dominance, potentially in case there's some war with the Americans. You know, fair play.