After the end of the Cold War, there seems to be no book in political science that is as controversial as Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man, so much so that it became a symbol. Some people enthusiastically embraced the book's conclusions, and many people questioned it. But in the debate about the "final conclusion of history", people's discussions often get superficial, thus misunderstanding Fukuyama's original meaning.
Political scientist Liu Yu explains, "History is coming to an end — this is certainly not to say that institutional competition has disappeared, but that the conceptual competition behind institutional competition is disappearing." In the past few decades, history has not ended, and the main line of political struggle has changed from ideological "left and right" to identity "ethnic groups". Whether it is the "Trump phenomenon" in the United States, the terrorist attacks of the Islamic State, the xenophobic parties in the EU countries that advocate Brexit, the rise of Hindu nationalism, the pan-Turkism in Turkey... Liu Yu concludes, "People are amazed to find that even if we get rid of ideological dogma, human society has not moved towards a universal rationalism, but has fallen into a fragmented, flammable and explosive 'new tribalism'. ”
Identity has become the main thread of today's political struggles. In social movements on the left, it manifests itself in gender consciousness or sexual orientation consciousness, and on the right it manifests itself in nationalism, ethnic identity, or religious sentiment. Identity politics has become the focus of understanding the current political crisis. Fukuyama's new book, Identity Politics, discusses the mechanisms behind identity politics today. Fukuyama argues that shifting the core issues of politics from class to identity is a letter that was sent to the "wrong address." The real problems are the deterioration of inequality in countries around the world, the lack of national capacity, and the threat of technological change to workers.
How should we view Fukuyama's shift and analysis of "identity politics"? What are the deeper reasons behind the political conflicts caused by identity politics? How will the future of human politics unfold? The following is authorized by the publishing house and excerpted from the introduction written by Liu Yu in "Identity Politics", with slight deletions.
The original author | Liu Yu
Excerpt from | Xu Yuedong
The Politics of Identity, by Francis Fukuyama, translated by Liu Fang, Republic of |, October 2021 edition
To understand the starting point of the book "Identity Politics", we may start with two phenomena.
One is the phenomenon of "European volunteers from the Islamic State". According to a 2016 report by the International Counter-Terrorism Center, about 4,000 eu member states rushed to the Middle East to fight in "jihad", including more than 700 in the UK, more than 900 in France, and around 500 in Belgium... In his book The Origins of the Political Order, Fukuyama mentions that, because of the exemplary significance of Danish politics, the question of political modernization can be expressed as the question of "how to get to Denmark.". In this "model country," one hundred and twenty-five volunteers have traveled to the Middle East to fight since 2011, most of them joining the Islamic State, and twenty-seven have died in suicide attacks. Strikingly, most of the volunteers are descendants of Muslim immigrants born and raised in Europe.
Another phenomenon is the phenomenon of "blue-collar workers supporters of the Republican Party." In the 2016 U.S. presidential election, 62 percent of white blue-collar workers voted for Republican candidate Trump, becoming the decisive force in his victory. Trump, though, is not the leader who "won blue-collar workers for the Republican Party." Since 1980, Republican candidates such as Reagan, the Bush fathers and sons, McCain, and Romney have all won the votes of most blue-collar workers. In other words, the shift of the working class from Democrats to Republicans is a trend of the past four decades or so, not a result of Trump's personal charisma.
Why put these two phenomena together? On the surface, European "jihadist" volunteers and American blue-collar workers are not comparable, but they have one thing in common: their political choices seem to run counter to their immediate "interests." As far as the "jihadist volunteers" are concerned, these young people in Europe can be said to have no worries about food and clothing, at least the material standard of living is far better than in the war-torn Middle East, but they have no hesitation in "abandoning the light and turning to the dark". In fact, studies have shown that developed countries are significantly higher than developing countries in terms of "jihadist" exporters per 10,000 people. In the case of the "blue-collar supporters of the Republican Party", from a purely interest point of view, their voting direction is also puzzling: the Democratic Party is the party that is more pro-union, more advocates raising the minimum wage, more advocates expanding government health insurance, and is more supportive of poverty alleviation, that is, more in line with the interests of blue-collar workers. In recent years, however, most of them have abandoned interest considerations and voted "irrationally" for the Republican Party.
Why? Why do these two groups choose such "irrational" behavior? This question, and countless similar ones, may have been Fukuyama's original intention in writing The Politics of Identity.
Francis Fukuyama
From left-right struggles to identity politics
The rise of "identity politics" (or "identity politics") is a new phenomenon in the post-Cold War era that caught many people off guard. Previously, the main line of global political struggle was the "left-right struggle". When the Soviet bloc disintegrated in 1989 and the end of the Cold War was proclaimed, people seemed justified in celebrating the arrival of an "era of reason." It was also at this moment that Fukuyama wrote the famous "The End of History and the Last Man" (hereinafter referred to as "The End of History"). In its optimistic discourse, history is coming to an end—this is certainly not to say that institutional competition has disappeared, but that the conceptual competition behind institutional competition is disappearing—and that all institutions in the world claim to be democratic, and this discursive strategy itself is a manifestation of the end of this conceptual competition.
Since then, however, history has not ended, it has merely switched a runway — to be precise, the main line of political struggle has changed from ideological "left and right" to identity "ethnicity". Sometimes this heightened ethnic consciousness manifests itself in nationalism or racial identity, sometimes in religious sentiment, sometimes in gender or sexual orientation, and so on. It was astonishing to find that even free from ideological dogma, human society did not move towards a universal rationalism, but fell into a fragmented, flammable and explosive "new tribalism."
Only by understanding this "new tribalism" can we understand the above-mentioned "irrational" political phenomenon. Although Muslims of Muslim descent have nothing to eat and drink in Europe, perhaps because of resentment over "marginalized identities" or the loss of the Atomized Lifestyle in the West, some of these extremists seek to find "warmer collectives" and join the "grander struggle", and the Islamic State has provided a place for these young people with its fanatical group and clear sense of meaning. Similarly, for many blue-collar workers in the United States, while they are more likely to profit from Democratic policies, the threat of large numbers of immigrants to their cultural identity, and the demonization of them by certain progressive discourses ("white garbage"), make them prefer to turn to the Republican Party to defend their identity.
Obviously, it is not only the above two phenomena that embody the rise of "new tribalism" in the post-Cold War era. As far as the eye can see, ethnic conflicts in countless countries are resurgent. In India, political secularism during the Congress period was increasingly challenged, and the Hindu identity instigated by the Bharatiya Janata Party rekindled the conflict between Hindus and Muslims; in Indonesia, the "principle of equality of all religions" was gradually eroded, religious conservatives pressured the judicial system, making indonesia's religious environment more pressing; in South Africa, the compromise between Mandela and De Klerk was once a legend of racial reconciliation, but in recent years, the reverse racist party has not only begun to grow. It also drives the populist trend of an ANC government... In short, it seems that people everywhere have awoken from a "rational coma", re-embraced their ethnic identity, and even developed it as a political weapon.
In a sense, Identity Politics is a "sequel" to The End of History.
The End of History ends with the concept of "acknowledgment," and "Identity Politics" begins here. Although Fukuyama is primarily an empirical research scholar, his political values have always been looming behind empirical research. If there is one core concept of this value, it is "recognition". Under the influence of Hegel's view of history, Fukuyama always believed that the search for mutual and reciprocal "recognition" was the fundamental driving force for the evolution of political systems. According to this conception, political modernization is to find the "equilibrium of recognition" in the "imbalance of recognition". The Reformation awakened the individual's "inner self," while the Enlightenment demanded an external recognition of this "inner self," which the French Revolution further enforced through military force.
This struggle for recognition has taken various forms in history. The liberal path emphasizes the struggle for "individual rights", because in the early days of modernity, the enemy of "recognition" was the kingship, so "human rights" was a resistance to "royal power". The socialist path emphasizes the "seizure of power by the proletariat", because when the traditional royal power retreats, the propertied become the "uncrowned king", so the "uncrowned king" is pulled down and becomes a new political target. In the 21st century, the struggle to "recognition" focuses on identity, when the enemy is no longer kingship or capital, but "the other" or the "imaginary other."
This seems to be a political "back-to-home phenomenon", but it is not surprising when you think about it carefully. Since the end of the Cold War, human history has entered an unprecedented phase of "super-globalization". In a sense, the rise of identity politics is a cultural backlash against "super-globalization." Of course, this backlash unfolds in different forms in various countries, but whether it is right-wing populism in Europe and the United States, nationalism in Russia, the revival of Hinduism in India, the return of Christianity in Hungary, or the resurgence of conservatism in Turkey, etc., it is in the process of encountering the "other", people re-put on the "traditional" armor to resist the "loss of self". However, unlike the individual self of the Enlightenment era, the "self" of this era is increasingly collective.
The struggle for recognition, therefore, is incomparably difficult not necessarily because it has encountered some indestructible enemy, but because each round of victory introduces another form of defeat. The struggle of liberalism has overthrown the crown, but it has introduced highly unequal social power; the struggle of socialism can "overthrow capital", but it may also introduce bureaucratic power from above; excessive emphasis on individual rights dissolves man's "sense of belonging"; and excessive emphasis on "belonging" may inhibit individual freedom. Acknowledgment is difficult to achieve equilibrium, and ultimately not necessarily because of the arrogance of counter-dynamics, but because one form of recognition and another form of recognition may fight and dissolve each other.
The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama, translated by Chen Gaohua/Meng Fanli School, Republic of China| Guangxi Normal University Press, September 2014
Identity politics and contemporary political crises
The "new tribalism" was a heavy blow to post-Cold War political optimism. In recent years, a well-known global phenomenon has been the "decline of democracy"—whether it is the political polarization of developed countries, the democratic upheaval in developing countries, or the deepening of authoritarian power in authoritarian countries, all of which present different dimensions of democratic decline. Why? Why can't people shoulder the freedom they have gained through hard struggle? There are clearly various reasons, the most significant of which may be the rise of identity politics. Political passions ignited by identity consciousness are like a hurricane that blows ships that would otherwise advance along the path of Enlightenment reason to pieces.
First of all, the most striking thing is obviously the phenomenon of political polarization in Europe and the United States in the past few years, which is also the focus of the analysis of the book "Identity Politics". In the United States, whites and minorities voted roughly close to the two major parties in the 1950s, but by the 2020 presidential election, 90 percent of blacks, 63 percent of Hispanics, and 67 percent of Asians voted for Democrats, while 56 percent of whites voted for Republicans. Of course, the resentment that some whites have arisen because of their "relative status decline" is an important reason, but Fukuyama has not pushed all the responsibility on them. "For some progressives, identity politics has become a cheap alternative to serious thinking." In his view, the Democrats' overzealousness on identity issues has led to the alienation of many whites at the bottom, and the demeaning and even stigmatization of American tradition by progressives has made them even more angry.
Equally striking is the regression and even collapse of democracy in the third wave of democratization. Since the mid-1970s, there has been an unprecedented "Great Leap Forward in Democratic Transition" around the world, and in just four decades, competitive democracies have risen from about forty to about a hundred. However, many new democracies have not set sail since then, but have fallen back into the water. The reason for this is that identity politics remains a central factor. Why did Egypt's democracy collapse after only two years? Because fragile nascent democracies cannot withstand the extreme rift between "political Islamists" and "political secularists." Why is Iraq's transition so turbulent? Because of the conflict between Sunnis and Shiites, between Kurds and Arabs, between extreme Sunnis and moderate Sunnis... War has been ignited everywhere in Iraq. Why did Zimbabwe, after driving out white colonizers, go from being the breadbasket of Africa to the inflation capital of the world? Because Mugabe succeeded in casting whites as scapegoats for all policy failures... In the process, the political elite's ambitions for power through incitement to hatred meet and fulfill countless people's desire to find a "sense of belonging." On the surface, the political drama of various countries is dazzling, but in the final analysis, the plot is much the same, and most of them are the upsurge of identity politics that blocks the survival of the fittest function of democratic institutions.
Identity politics has also worsened the international political order, moving political polarization from the domestic to the international stage. The ethnic conflict during the disintegration of Yugoslavia led to the biggest war in Europe since the end of World War II. 9/11, though committed by only twenty extremists, kicked off the global war on terror. The 1994 Rwandan massacre not only killed hundreds of thousands of Rwandans, but also triggered the "African World War" between Rwanda, Burundi, Congo, Angola, Uganda and other countries through the domino effect. The rise of the Islamic State has not only devastated several Middle Eastern countries, but its refugee flows have also exacerbated Right-wing populism in Europe with a huge ripple effect. Today, the contradictions between China and the United States are constantly repeated and escalating, which has also triggered countless discussions about the "Thucydides Trap". Where identity politics rises, the clouds of international conflict begin to gather.
Stills from "Hotel Rwanda"
In short, whether in developed, developing or international society, the passion for identity politics has gradually spread into an out-of-control fire, burning everywhere. In Fukuyama's view, shifting the core issues of politics from class to identity is a letter that was posted to the "wrong address." The real problems are the worsening inequality in countries around the world, the lack of national capacity, the threat of technological change to workers, and so on; but what is rising around the world is nationalism, religious extremism, and various identity groups competing to climb the "pyramid of victims". Firefighters are fighting bravely, but the fire is burning elsewhere.
Reasons and values of identity
However, the "wrong address" is excusable.
Needless to say, identity is "the situation of human nature." Everyone comes into this world not as an abstract "individual", but is born with a country, a race, a people, a gender, a language, and often a religion... These identity networks form the basis of each person's self-shaping. In a sense, the circle of identity with the attributes of pro-alienation and proximity is not only "natural" or even "good", because it "expands the radius of trust", in the language of economics, it "reduces transaction costs", in the language of sociologists, it "increases social capital", and in the language of literary scholars, it smears a layer of fraternity and warmth on an overly rational world.
Modernization and globalization further reinforce this "human condition". Modernization means that traditional and stable community ties are broken, and the life of modern people becomes a long "wandering", people are constantly thrown into unfamiliar places, strange groups, strange relationships, and "alone" to bear all challenges. This atomized state drives what Fromm calls the psychology of "escaping freedom"—people trying to grasp something in a world that is constantly falling apart, even if it is only an "imaginary community." The acceleration of globalization continues to extend the distance of "wandering" and increase the weight of freedom through greater possibilities. The escape from freedom thus becomes a race, and ethnic conflict becomes a stampede in this race.
Of course, politics will always be the central force shaping identity politics. The rise of the Nazis stemmed not only from the long-standing anti-Semitism in European history, but also from the organized hatred incitement of the Hitler clique. The war in the former Yugoslavia was not only because of the hostility among the peoples of the region, but also because political leaders consciously mobilized nationalism to win votes. Decades after the colonizers had left, the hatred of black Zimbabwe towards whites was not entirely spontaneous, and Mugabe's rising hate education was the central motivator. A hundred years ago, there was no such thing as India, Tanzania, Singapore, or Indonesia, but the nascent "state" was always kneading ethnic identities among strangers who did not interact with each other through education, the economy, the bureaucracy, and even violence. Therefore, when we use the term "imaginary community" to describe ethnic identity, we should always ask: Whose "imagination" is it? By what is "imagining"? Strong identity is a human condition, but also a consequence of politics.
Identity also doesn't always have negative consequences. Historically, in various anti-colonial and anti-hegemonic struggles, nationalism has often been the best catalyst for collective struggle. Napoleon, as the "enlightener on horseback", was able to win victories in Europe for a time precisely because he awakened the nationalism of all the peoples of Europe. The independence movement in India in the 20th century, the anti-Japanese struggle in China, the anti-colonialism in Africa, and the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa all resorted to various forms of identity. By the second half of the 20th century, identity-driven political struggles had deepened into a variety of civil rights movements in full swing: feminism, anti-racism, homosexual affirmative action, and the rights struggles of immigrant refugees, all demonstrating the political explosive power that identity can inspire. The results of these movements show that identity politics may not only be compatible with enlightenment values such as freedom, equality, and fraternity, but also be an extremely effective mobilization accelerator for achieving these goals.
The "Black Man's Life Is Life" movement
The value of identity lies not only in political mobilization, but also in the cultivation of the ethics of responsibility. Numerous studies have shown that in societies with high ethnic homogeneity, people tend to be more enthusiastic about welfare provision and public services, while in societies with high ethnic divisions, people are more reserved for wealth transfers. This is not difficult to understand – usually people will be more generous with what they see as "siblings" and more wary of "non-self". The reason why the high taxes and high welfare of the Nordic countries have been passed for many years may be related to the high homogeneity of their societies, and the refugee crisis that has affected the entire European region in recent years has not only affected the political ecology of northern Europe, but also may impact the economic model of these countries. Progressives complain about the misgivings of the underclass in Europe and the United States about illegal immigrants and refugees, but under the premise of scarce resources, arranging resource allocation according to the differential pattern of emotional ties is not only a helpless situation of human nature, but also a first-come, first-served "queuing" ethic.
Identity of "many" and "one"
On the one hand, identity politics is often the core mechanism of various violent conflicts and democratic decline, and on the other hand, identity has historically been a driving force for various progressive movements. Why is it that sometimes fierce ethnic identities breed the flood of Nazism or the Rwandan massacres, and sometimes become a catalyst for anti-colonialism and civil rights struggles? What is the distinction between "good identity politics" and "bad identity politics"?
Consider the two sides of the Taliban organization. Contrary to the image of the heinous in our minds today, the original Taliban were an organization that resisted Soviet occupation. That is to say, in its innate political genes, there is a rational side to it, and what it strives for is "the independence and freedom of Afghanistan." But it is well known that the Taliban, which came to power, became a brutally oppressive regime that governed with its narrow fundamentalist doctrines, depriving women of their rights, cracking down on religious dissidents, prohibiting political freedoms and making Afghanistan a haven for terrorist organizations.
What is the fundamental difference between the "progressive" Taliban and the "reactionary" Taliban? Perhaps it is because the collective freedom pursued by the former is a necessary channel for individual rights, while the latter suppresses individual rights with a unified doctrine. Without the expulsion of aggressive Soviet troops, Afghan political options would be greatly limited, civil rights would be greatly reduced, in this sense, the liberation of Afghanistan is the premise of the liberation of every Afghan, and ethnic mobilization becomes a necessary channel for individual liberation. However, after the expulsion of the Soviet army, the Taliban made decrees based on extreme doctrines, suppressing everyone's way of thinking and behaving, and it became the greatest restraint of individual rights. In other words, identity politics has a natural collectivity, and when this collectivity becomes an auxiliary force for individual rights, it tends to take on a "progressive character", and when this collectivity becomes an oppressive force of individual rights, it often becomes "reactionary".
Why are individual rights the yardstick of collective identity? Fundamentally, perhaps the reason lies in how we understand human dignity: through what exactly should people be "recognized"? Of course, as mentioned earlier, each person comes into the world with a specific identity, and these identities provide each person with an emotional circle structure and meaning interpretation system as an initial setting. However, does the value of human beings come from some fixed and unchanging collective characteristics, or is it a person's ability to break through the "initial setting" and shape himself? If we accept that the value of man is higher than that of plants and animals precisely because of his ability to shape himself, then perhaps the value of man should not be anchored above his "initial setting".
This is also the problem of radical identity politics. It places so much emphasis on each person's initial setting, i.e., one's characteristics such as race, gender, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation, that it treats each person as a prisoner of a particular collective attribute. Of course, self-shaping does not mean that one breaks away from one's innate identity and becomes an abstract, floating individual – this is as impossible as getting rid of history, and the meaning of self-shaping is not to erase the innate identity mark, but precisely to choose, sort, and blend between existing identity attributes, while selectively integrating into different "others" to create a unique self. The innate imprint is one of the materials that shape the "self", but it is only "one".
This is not to say that identity has only the "instrumental value" of serving individual rights. Needless to say, the internal fraternity and sense of responsibility of each community, which is cohesive by identity, has an "intrinsic value", and people may even "cede" some rights (such as the redistribution of wealth through taxation) for this fraternity and responsibility, but "ceding my rights" is different from "depriving others of their rights", the former based on independent choice and the latter based on coercive violence. When a person cedes "individual rights" to achieve "community responsibility" based on independent choice, he is essentially practicing an individual right, even though the purpose of his practice is the collective value he cherishes.
Measuring the pros and cons of identity politics in terms of respect for individual rights allows us to discover the "one" hidden behind the "many." In recent years, "multiculturalism" has increasingly become the political philosophy of multi-ethnic countries in resolving ethnic conflicts – there is a growing belief that cultural integration or assimilation is unnecessary, that the best of each ethnic group is not only possible, but that diversity is a source of strength. However, the reason why the "many" can coexist harmoniously is because there is a "one" behind it, that is, a free space that allows different ideas, cultures and religions to coexist. Without this "one," "many" becomes a tearing force. The Taliban could not have built "multiculturalism" with Christians, just as the Nazis would not have lived in harmony with the Jews under the banner of "multiculturalism." Ignoring this "one," "multiculturalism" will degenerate into "cultural relativism."
This "cultural relativism" is exactly what Fukuyama is wary of at the end of the book. He was more in favor of the "Creed Nation" program than the "multiculturalism" program. In his view, "liberal democracies have good reason not to govern themselves around a series of identity communities that are constantly multiplying and inaccessible to outsiders," and a better strategy is to cultivate "creed identities," that is, to construct "us" "based on the creeds of constitutionalist principles, the rule of law, democratic accountability, and the equality of all men." In other words, "one" is the premise of "many", and "many" is the consequence of "one".
The emphasis on "creed identity" rather than "ethnic identity" seems out of place in this day and age, as it appears to be using some cultural hegemony to cancel the uniqueness of cultures. This view underestimates the degree to which "pluralism" depends on free space — without the freedom to sing, there would be no pluralism in styles such as rock, folk, jazz, opera, pop songs, etc.; without the freedom to play, there would be no pluralism in basketball, football, badminton, table tennis, and rugby. However, freedom has never been a "natural state", the principle of power under the principle of the weak and the strong is the "natural state" of human beings, and freedom needs artificial strength to create, to maintain, to nurture, to educate. In other words, the reason why "creed identity" is more worth emphasizing than "ethnic identity" is not necessarily because it is more important for each individual, but because its acquisition is more difficult. Ethnic identity is a downward spiral down the river in the "human condition", and "creed identity" is a boat against the current.
This may be the secret of "history is difficult to end". The "creed identity" is difficult to achieve decisive victory because it is constantly fighting against "human nature"—the nature of exclusivity, the nature of the party to fight against the different, the nature of believing that "if it is not of our race, its heart will be different". Unfortunately, the forces that make us love often lead us into hatred, and the mechanisms by which we reduce our transaction costs with our fellow human beings may raise our transaction costs with the "other," and when we call our fellow citizens brothers, we may involuntarily refer to the "other" as "barbarians."
Of course, even if the political conflicts ignited by identity politics today are overwhelming, excessive pessimism may still be excessive. Throughout the history of human civilization, the Reformation four hundred years ago triggered bloody religious wars, slavery was still prevalent in many countries three hundred years ago, women had almost no right to education and employment two hundred years ago, and people were still secretive about homosexuality a hundred years ago... Today, all of this is changing dramatically. These spectacular advances may indicate that humanity has the ability to shape itself beyond its original settings. Through the long baptism of blood and fire, humanity has finally come to realize that under the "we" of all colors, nationalities, languages, and religions, there is a larger "we", fused by human reason and compassion into an endless whole. This "we" has come a long way since the Age of Enlightenment, and it may be possible to expect with trepidation that it will go even further.
Author| Liu Yu;
Excerpt| Xu Yuedong;
Editor| walk away;
Introduction Proofreading | Liu Baoqing.