1989年，日裔美國政治經濟學者法蘭西斯‧福山（Francis Fukuyama）在《國家利益》（The National Interest）期刊上發表《歷史的終結》（The End of History），主張冷戰結束後，民主制度已戰勝共產制度，西方自由民主制將成為人類政治發展的最終形態，並且「歷史」在意義上已經終結，因為沒有其他意識形態能夠對自由民主制構成重大挑戰。這一觀點受到廣泛關注和討論，既有支持者認為福山的論點預見了自由民主的普及趨勢，也有批評者認為他的預測過於樂觀，忽視了後冷戰時代的挑戰，例如極端民族主義、宗教基本主義以及專制國家的回潮。不論如何，世界確實因此邁入了以美國為主的「單極」時代。然而，時至2025年，川普再度當選美國總統，他承接了首任期未竟的「讓美國再次偉大」（MAGA, Make America Great Again）訴求：在貿易與科技政策上對中國大陸采取強硬態度，並在全球化、氣候變遷、非法移民、多元性別（LGBT）等議題上展現保守立場。這既是對「美國單極主導」地位受到質疑的回應，也反映了美國社會對中國大陸的崛起的憂慮與不安。過去三十多年來，美國在軍事、經濟與價值觀層面享有近乎獨大的地位，但中國大陸的經濟發展與軍事實力迅速提升，意味著「單極世界」或許已走到另一個轉折點。在此時代交替之際，OT重新翻閱福山的著作，希冀藉由回顧這段「歷史終結」的宣告，重新審視人類走到今日所面臨的結構性挑戰，以及未來可能的發展方向。
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當年福山是在怎樣的背景寫出《歷史的終結》？1989年被廣泛視為「冷戰結束的轉折年」，全球政治在該年出現了劇烈的變化與轉折，以下幾個面向可以幫助我們理解當時的大背景：
- 冷戰格局的鬆動與東歐劇變
蘇聯體制改革：戈巴契夫（Mikhail Gorbachev）自1985年上台後，推行「改革」（Perestroika）與「公開化」（Glasnost），試圖在政治與經濟上進行鬆動。這些改革雖然旨在挽救蘇聯，但也意外促進了東歐衛星國對更大自由與民主的要求，並加速了蘇聯對東歐控制的瓦解。東歐民主化浪潮：東歐國家的共產黨統治接連受到人民大規模抗議或要求改革的衝擊，如波蘭的「團結工聯」(Solidarity) 在1989年舉行的半自由選舉中大獲成功；匈牙利進行修憲並逐漸轉向多黨制；東德人民大規模外逃與示威，終於導致同年11月柏林圍牆倒塌；捷克的「天鵝絨革命」(Velvet Revolution) 也在同年爆發，瓦茨拉夫·哈維爾（Václav Havel）接掌政權。東歐集體的民主化轉向，加上柏林圍牆的倒塌，成為冷戰結束的象徵性事件。雖然蘇聯本身直到1991年才正式解體，但1989年已顯示整個東方陣營全面瓦解的前奏。
- 美國與西方的角色
美蘇對抗的降溫：里根政府後期、老布希政府（George H. W. Bush）上台後，持續與蘇聯領導人戈巴契夫會談，兩國緊張態勢逐漸緩和。美國與西方陣營因東歐巨變，看似在意識形態對抗中取得全面優勢。在許多觀察者眼中，自由民主與市場經濟被視為在冷戰競賽中「勝出」，法蘭西斯·福山（Francis Fukuyama）於1989年發表了〈歷史的終結？〉(The End of History?) 一文，象徵當時許多西方知識界認為自由主義秩序將成為世界的終局形態。
- 中國大陸的局勢與六四事件
改革開放與保守勢力的衝突：中國大陸從1978年開始改革開放，但在1980年代後期，經濟改革引致通脹、貪腐等問題，社會對更大政治改革的呼聲高漲。1989年4月胡耀邦去世引起學生與市民悼念活動，後演變成大規模要求民主與改革的示威。6月初，北京政府在天安門廣場進行血腥鎮壓，震驚國際，也使中國大陸與西方關係陷入低潮。相較於東歐國家轉向自由化的趨勢，中國大陸選擇了不同道路。六四事件象徵中國大陸的政治開放受挫，國際社會對北京的制裁與譴責一度升溫；然而經濟改革仍在往後持續推進，對外開放也並未被全面逆轉。
- 全球南方與其他地區
1980年代後期，拉美國家如巴西、阿根廷、智利等多國逐漸走向民主轉型，軍政府一一退場。隨著美蘇對抗的降溫，一些受到東西方陣營操縱的地區衝突（如非洲多國內戰、中美洲游擊戰）開始走向和談或降溫；但也有一些地區仍持續動盪不安。油價波動、外債危機、國際貨幣基金組織（IMF）的結構調整方案等議題，使得原先被意識形態沖淡的經濟發展問題，在1989年前後更為凸顯。
- 資訊與全球化初顯
雖然當時網際網路尚未普及，但衛星電視、電話、傳真等傳播技術在1980年代加速發展，使得世界各地訊息流通越來越迅速。跨國企業與全球市場的連結日益頻繁，西方陣營與一些新興市場（如亞洲四小龍）的經濟互動日趨緊密，也為冷戰結束後的世界秩序定下經貿與市場整合的調性。
由上面幾個面相可見1989年是冷戰體系由「雙極對峙」向「後冷戰秩序」轉型的關鍵時刻，東歐劇變與柏林圍牆倒塌象徵共產體制在歐洲的瓦解；與此同時，中國大陸的「六四事件」則展現了另一條政治道路的分岔。整體而言，1989年的全球政治可用「冷戰迅速轉折、東歐民主浪潮、意識形態對抗式微」來概括，為往後幾年的「後冷戰」世界格局奠下了基礎。
讀完福山在1989年所寫的《歷史的終結》，誠如文章中引用科耶夫論證黑格爾在1806年耶拿戰役看到拿破崙擊敗普魯士君主制的勝利，便斷言耶拿戰役標示著「歷史的終結」，視為法國大革命理念的勝利，以及自由與平等原則即將普世化的象徵。從這個觀點來說，人類確實是渴求自由與平等，不過在福山這篇文章完成後的30年間，面對著中國大陸崛起的強烈競爭，以及美國自由民主制度缺陷的浮現，我認為人們更趨向於有意識的選擇自由；例如面對民族主義，願意放棄部分的自由換取民族大義，或是面對經濟或軍事競爭趨於弱勢時，可以用部分的自由與平等交換該國的經濟或軍事實力。當然，這也是出於居於領導地位的政治人物的意識選擇，而他的選擇則進一步影響的更多的群眾。即便是在美國這樣的社會，這200多年來這樣的案例也屢見不顯。我的意思是：「自由與平等」是意識形態選擇的「歷史的終結」，在未來的歷史中會有更多自由平等戰勝其他意識形態的例子出現，但也會不斷地出現許多的意識形態挑戰自由與平等這樣的「普世價值」。也就是雖然自由與平等作為意識形態終點的可行性，但也需要考慮其在現實政治與國際競爭中的變數。
在福山的論述中，自由民主與市場經濟的結合，構成了人類意識形態演進的終點，但現實世界中，這並不意味著沒有挑戰者。在過去30多年，中國崛起、美國自由民主制度的缺陷浮現，以及民族主義與國家實力的重新被重視，都顯示自由與平等並非一個線性發展的終極狀態，而是持續被挑戰、動態變化的價值體系。「人們願意為了民族大義、經濟實力或軍事競爭而放棄部分自由與平等」，呼應了福山文章中提到的馬克斯·韋伯（Max Weber）所論述的價值選擇（value choice）。自由與平等雖然是理想，但當國際競爭激烈、國家安全受到威脅、經濟動盪不安時，許多社會確實會基於現實考量，選擇犧牲部分自由來換取穩定與國家利益。例如：
- 美國在冷戰時期，為了對抗共產主義，政府在某些時期限制公民自由（如麥卡錫主義、愛國法案）。
- 中國模式的發展，則是一種以經濟增長換取政治控制的選擇，在這個過程中，許多中國民眾願意接受較少的政治自由，以換取更高的生活水準。
- 民族主義的興起，如俄羅斯、中國，甚至西方民主國家的右翼民粹主義，都顯示許多人民願意在一定程度上接受限制自由，來換取國家整體利益。
這些案例支持了OT的論點：「自由與平等」雖然是意識形態選擇的歷史終點，但仍會不斷面臨各種新的挑戰。這與黑格爾的歷史辯證法（dialectics）相符：歷史雖然朝向一個終點邁進，但這個過程本身仍是充滿矛盾與衝突的。
從這個角度來看，福山的「歷史終結」不應該被理解為「歷史停止」，而是應該視為自由與平等在長期歷史發展中的優勢將逐步確立，但它仍然會面對來自民族主義、集體主義、權威主義等意識形態的周期性挑戰。這意味著，未來仍然會出現更多自由與平等勝出的案例，但它們的勝利不會是自動發生的，而是需要在具體的政治與經濟條件下，被有意識地選擇與捍衛。
但這樣的總結就點出了一個有趣的矛盾：即便自由與平等作為意識形態的終點，它仍然必須不斷地與各種挑戰對抗，這使得歷史的「終結」變得更像是一個持續發生的過程，而非一個靜態的結果。這也許正是黑格爾的歷史觀與福山的「終結論」最值得我們深思的地方。
The End of History?
The National Interest, Summer 1989
Francis Fukuya
Francis Fukuyama is deputy director of the State Department's policy planning staff and former analyst at the RAND Corporation. This article is based on a lecture presented at the University of Chicago's John M. Olin Center and to Nathan Tarcov and Allan Bloom for their support in this and many earlier endeavours. The opinions expresses in this article do not reflect those of the RAND Corporation or of any agency of the U.S. government.
In watching the flow of events over the past decade or so, it is hard to avoid the feeling that something very fundamental has happened in world history. The past year has seen a flood of articles commemorating the end of the Cold War, and the fact that "peace" seems to be breaking out in many regions of the world. Most of these analyses lack any larger conceptual framework for distinguishing between what is essential and what is contingent or accidental in world history, and are predictably superficial. If Mr. Gorbachev were ousted from the Kremlin or a new Ayatollah proclaimed the millennium for a desolate Middle Eastern capital, these same commentators would scramble to announce the rebirth of a new era of conflict.
And yet, all of these people sense dimly that there is some larger process at work, a process that gives coherence and order to the daily headlines. the twentieth century saw the developed world descend into a paroxysm of ideological violence, as liberalism contended first with the remnants of absolutism, then bolshevism and fascism, and finally an updated Marxism that threatened to lead to the ultimate apocalypse of nuclear war. But the century that began full of self-confidence in the ultimate triumph of Western liberal democracy seems at its close to be returning full circle to where it started: no to an "end of ideology" or a convergence between capitalism and socialism, as earlier predicted, but to an unabashed victory of economic and political liberalism.
The triumph of the West, of the Western idea, is evident first of all in the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to Western liberalism. In the past decade, there have been unmistakable changes in the intellectual climate of the world's tow largest communist countries, and the beginnings of significant reform movements in both. But this phenomenon extends beyond high politics and it can be seen also in the ineluctable spread of consumerist Western culture in such diverse contexts as the peasants' markets and color television sets now omnipresent throughout China, the cooperative restaurants and clothing stores opened in the past year in Moscow, the Beethoven piped into Japanese department stores, and the rock music enjoyed alike in Prague, Rangoon, and Tehran.
What we may be witnessing in not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government. This is not to say that there will no longer be events to fill the pages of Foreign Affairs's yearly summaries of international relations, for the victory of liberalism has occurred primarily in the realm of ideas or consciousness and is as yet incomplete in the real or material world. But there are powerful reasons for believing that it is the ideal that will govern the material world in the long run. To understand how this is so, we must first consider some theoretical issues concerning the nature of historical change.
在觀察過去十多年來的世界局勢演變時，很難不產生一種感覺：世界歷史正經歷某種非常根本的變化。過去一年裡，出現了大量文章，談論冷戰的終結，以及「和平」似乎在世界各地逐漸展露的事實。然而，這些分析多半缺乏更宏觀的概念框架，去區分在世界歷史中哪些是本質性的，哪些只是偶然或意外，因此顯得流於表面。如果戈巴契夫先生被趕出克里姆林宮，或者有新的阿亞圖拉在中東某荒涼的首都宣示世界末日，這些評論家也會爭相宣布迎來一個嶄新的衝突時代。
然而，所有人都依稀感到有一股更大的力量在運作，一種賦予每日頭條連貫性與秩序的進程。二十世紀裡，已開發國家陷入了一場意識形態暴力的狂潮：自由主義先是對抗封建專制的殘餘，接著是布爾什維克主義與法西斯主義，最後則是升級版的馬克思主義，威脅要把人類推向核戰爭的終極浩劫。然而，這個世紀甫一開端，西方自由民主似乎對於自身最終勝利滿懷信心；如今在世紀末，又似乎回到出發點：並非如早先預測的「意識形態終結」或資本主義與社會主義的融合，而是徹底肯定了經濟與政治自由主義的勝利。
西方、或「西方理念」的勝利，首先體現在對西方自由主義構成可行、系統性替代方案的徹底匱乏。過去十年裡，世界上最大的兩個共產主義國家的知識界出現了明顯的變化，兩國也開始了具改革意義的運動。然而，這種現象不只出現在高層政治，同樣可以見於消費主義西方文化的不可阻擋之擴散：從中國大陸到處可見的農民市集與彩色電視機，到莫斯科過去一年裡成立的合作餐廳與服裝店；從日本百貨公司裡播放的貝多芬音樂，到在布拉格、仰光與德黑蘭受到同樣喜愛的搖滾樂。
我們如今所目睹的，或許不僅僅是冷戰的結束，或戰後某特定時期的終結，而是「歷史本身的終結」：也就是說，人類意識形態演化的終點，以及西方自由民主作為人類政府最終形態的普遍化。這並不表示未來《外交事務》(Foreign Affairs) 的年度國際關係總結上就會沒有事件可寫，因為自由主義的勝利主要發生在思想與意識領域，在現實或物質世界中，這場勝利尚未徹底完成。但有充分理由相信，理想最終會支配物質世界。要了解其中緣由，我們首先必須探討有關歷史變遷本質的一些理論問題。
I
The notion of the end of history is not an original one. Its best known propagator was Karl Marx, who believed that the direction of historical development was a purposeful one determined by the interplay of material forces, and would come to an end only with the achievement of a communist utopia that would finally resolve all prior contradictions. But the concept of history as a dialectical process with a beginning, a middle, and an end was borrowed by Marx from his great German predecessor Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.
For better or worse, much of Hegel's historicism has become part of our contemporary intellectual baggage. The notion that mankind has progresses through a series of primitive stages of consciousness on his path to the present, and that these stages corresponded to concrete forms of social organization, such as tribal, slave owning, theocratic, and finally democratic egalitarian societies, has become inseparable form the modern understanding of man. Hegel was the first philosopher to speak the language of modern social science, insofar as man for him was the product of his concrete historical and social environment and not, as earlier natural right theorists would have it, a collection of more or less fixed "natual" attributes. The mastery and transformation of man's natural environment through the application of science and technology was originally not a Marxist concept, but a Hegelian one. Unlike later historicists whose historical relativism degenerated into relativism tout court, however, Hegel believed that history culminated in an absolute moment -- a moment in which a final, rational form of society and state became victorious.
It is Hegel's misfortune to be known now primarily as Marx's precursor, and it is our misfortune that few of us are familiar with Hegel's work from direct study, but only as it has been filtered through the distorting lens of Marxism. In France, however, there has been an effort to save Hegel from his Marxist interpreters and to resurrect him as the philosopher who most correctly speaks to our time. Among those modern French interpreters of Hegel, the greatest was certainly Alexandre Kojeve, a brilliant Russian emigre who taught a highly influential series of seminars in Paris in the 1930's at the Ecole Practique des Hautes Etudes. While largely unknown in the United States, Kojeve had a major impact on the intellectual life of the continent. Among his students ranged such future luminaries as Jean-Paul Sartre on the Left and Raymond Aron on the Right; post war existentialism borrowed many of its basic categories from Hegel via Kojeve.
Kojeve sought to resurrect the Hegel of the Phenomenology of Mind, the Hegel who proclaimed history to be at an end in 1806. For as early as this Hegel saw in Napoleon's defeat of the Prussian monarchy at the Battle of Jena the victory of the ideals of the French Revolution, and the imminent universalization of the state incorporating the principles of liberty and equality. Kojeve, far from rejecting Hegel in light of the turbulent events of the next century and a half, insisted that the latter had been essentially correct. The Battle of Jena marked the end of history because it was at that point that the vanguard of humanity (a term quite familiar to Marxists) actualized the principles of the French Revolution. While there was considerable work to be done after 1806 -- abolishing slavery and the slave trade, extending the franchise to workers, women, blacks, and other racial minorities, etc. -- the basic principles of the liberal democratic state could not be improved upon. The tow world wars in this century and their attendant revolutions and upheavals simply had the effect of extending those principles spatially, such that the various provinces of human civilization were brought up to the level of its most advanced outposts, and of forcing those societies in Europe and North America at the vanguard of civilization to implement their liberalism more fully.
The state that emerges at the end of history is liberal insofar as it recognize and protects through a system of law man's universal right to freedom, and democratic insofar as it exists only with the consent of the governed. For Kojeve, this so-called "universal homogenous state" found real-life embodiment in the countries of postwar Western Europe -- precisely those flabby, prosperous, self-satisfied, inwardlooking, weak-willed states whose grandest project was nothing more heroic than the creation of the Common Market. But this was only to be expected. For human history and the conflict that characterized it was based on the existence of "contradictions": primitive man's quest for mutual recognition, the dialectic of the master and slave, the transformation and mastery of nature, the struggle fo the universal recognition of rights, and the dichotomy between proletarian and capitalist. But in the universal homogenous state, all prior contradictions are resolved and al human needs are satisfied. There is no struggle or conflict over "large" issues, and consequently no need for generals or statesmen; what remains is primarily economic activity. And indeed, Kojeve's life was consistent with his teaching. Believing that there was no more work for philosophers as well, since Hegel (correctly understood) had already achieved absolute knowledge, Kojeve left teaching after the war and spent the remainder of his life working as a bureaucrat in the European Economic Community, until his death in 1968.
To his contemporaries at mid-century, Kojeve's proclamation of the end of history must have seemed like the typical eccentric solipsism of a French intellectual, coming as it did on the heels of World War II and at the very height of the Cold War. To comprehend how Kojeve could have been so audacious as to assert that history has ended, we must first of all understand their meaning of Hegelian idealism.
「歷史的終結」這一概念並非新創。最著名的推廣者是卡爾·馬克思（Karl Marx），他認為歷史發展的方向是由物質力量的相互作用所決定的，並且歷史的終結只有在共產主義烏托邦實現時才會到來，屆時所有過去的矛盾都將被最終解決。然而，將歷史視為一個具有開端、發展與終結的辯證過程，這一概念實際上是馬克思從其德國前輩喬治·威廉·弗里德里希·黑格爾（Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel）那裡借來的。
無論好壞，黑格爾的歷史主義已經成為當代思想的一部分。人類在通往現代的道路上經歷了一系列原始意識階段，而這些階段對應著具體的社會組織形式，如部落社會、奴隸制社會、神權社會，最終發展為民主平等的社會——這一觀念已經與現代人對人類發展的理解密不可分。黑格爾是第一位使用現代社會科學語言的哲學家，因為在他看來，人類並不是像早期自然權利理論家所認為的那樣，只是擁有固定「自然」屬性的個體，而是其具體歷史與社會環境的產物。通過科學與技術的應用，人類得以掌控並改造自然環境——這一概念最初並非來自馬克思，而是來自黑格爾。然而，與後來那些歷史主義者不同，黑格爾的歷史觀並未墮落為徹底的相對主義。他堅信歷史將達至一個「絕對時刻」，在這個時刻，一種最終合理的社會與國家形態將取得勝利。
黑格爾的不幸在於，如今他主要被視為馬克思的先驅，而我們的不幸則在於，許多人對黑格爾的理解並非來自直接研讀其著作，而是透過馬克思主義所扭曲的詮釋。在法國，曾有一場運動試圖將黑格爾從馬克思主義的詮釋中解放出來，並將他重新塑造成最能回應我們時代的哲學家。在這些現代法國詮釋者當中，最重要的人物無疑是亞歷山大·科耶夫（Alexandre Kojève），一位來自俄國的流亡知識分子，他於1930年代在巴黎高等實踐學院（École Pratique des Hautes Études）講授了一系列極具影響力的哲學研討課程。雖然科耶夫在美國幾乎默默無聞，但他對歐洲思想界影響深遠。他的學生包括左翼的尚-保羅·沙特（Jean-Paul Sartre）與右翼的雷蒙·阿隆（Raymond Aron）等日後的思想巨擘。戰後存在主義（existentialism）從黑格爾經由科耶夫的闡釋中借用了許多基本概念。
科耶夫試圖重新挖掘《精神現象學》（Phenomenology of Mind）中的黑格爾——即那位在1806年宣告歷史已經終結的黑格爾。早在當時，黑格爾便在耶拿戰役（Battle of Jena）中看到拿破崙擊敗普魯士君主制的勝利，並將其視為法國大革命理念的勝利，以及自由與平等原則即將普世化的象徵。科耶夫並未因接下來一個半世紀的動盪而否定黑格爾的觀點，反而堅持認為黑格爾基本上是正確的。耶拿戰役標誌著歷史的終結，因為在那一刻，人類的先鋒（這是一個馬克思主義者十分熟悉的術語）將法國大革命的原則付諸實踐。儘管1806年後仍有大量工作要完成，例如廢除奴隸制度與奴隸貿易、擴大工人、婦女、黑人及其他種族少數群體的選舉權等，但自由民主國家的基本原則已經確立，無法再被進一步改進。本世紀兩次世界大戰及其引發的革命與社會動盪，實際上只是將這些原則推廣到更廣闊的空間，讓人類文明的各個地區逐步達到其最先進部分的水準，同時促使歐洲與北美這些文明前沿地區進一步完善其自由主義制度。
在歷史的終點所出現的國家，是自由的，因為它透過法律體系承認並保護人類普遍的自由權利；它是民主的，因為它僅憑被治理者的同意而存在。對科耶夫而言，這個所謂的「普世同質國家」（universal homogenous state）在戰後西歐國家中得到了現實體現——那些肥胖、富裕、自滿、內向、意志薄弱的國家，它們最宏大的計畫不過是建立一個共同市場。然而，這種結果完全在意料之中。人類歷史以及貫穿歷史的衝突，根源於各種「矛盾」的存在：從原始人類尋求相互承認，到主奴辯證法，再到人類對自然的掌控與改造、對普遍權利承認的鬥爭，以及無產階級與資本家的對立。然而，在普世同質國家中，所有過去的矛盾都已被解決，人類的需求亦得到了滿足。「重大」議題不再引發衝突與鬥爭，將軍與政治家因此變得不再必要，剩下的主要是經濟活動。事實上，科耶夫的個人生活也與其理論相一致。他認為，既然黑格爾（正確地被理解後）已經達致絕對知識，哲學家便再無可為。因此，戰後他便放棄了學術研究，轉而擔任歐洲經濟共同體（European Economic Community）的一名官僚，直至1968年去世。
對於二十世紀中葉的知識界而言，科耶夫宣告歷史終結的說法，無疑像是法國知識分子典型的主觀唯心主義之作，尤其是當時世界剛剛經歷了第二次世界大戰，並且正處於冷戰的巔峰時期。要理解科耶夫為何能如此大膽地宣稱歷史已經結束，我們首先必須理解黑格爾唯心主義的真正含義。
II
For Hegel, the contradictions that drive history exist first of all in the realm of human consciousness, i.e. on he level of ideas -- not the trivial election year proposals of American politicians, but ideas in the sense of large unifying world views that might best be understood under the rubric of ideology. Ideology in this sense is not restricted to the secular and explicit political doctrines we usually associate with the term, but can include religion, culture, and the complex of moral values underlying any society as well.
Hegel's view of the relationship between the ideal and the real or material worlds was an extremely complicated one, beginning with the fact that for him the distinction between the two was only apparent. He did not believe that the real world conformed or could be made to conform to ideological preconceptions of philosophy professors in any simpleminded way, or that the "material" world could not impinge on the ideal. Indeed, Hegel the professor was temporarily thrown out of work as a result of a very material event, the Battle of Jena. But while Hegel's writing and thinking could be stopped by a bullet form the material world, the hand on the trigger of the gun was motivated in turn by the ideas of liberty and equality that had driven the French Revolution.
For Hegel, all human behavior in the material world, and hence all human history, is rooted in a prior state of consciousness -- an idea similar to the new expressed by John Maynard Keynes when he said that the views of men of affairs were usually derived from defunct economists and academic scribblers of earlier generations. This consciousness may not be explicit and self-aware, as are modern political doctrines, but may rather take the form of religion or simple cultural or moral habits. And yet this realm of consciousness in the long run necessarily becomes manifest in the material world, indeed creates the material world in its own image. Consciousness is causes and not effect, and can develop autonomously from the material world, hence the real subtext underlying the apparent jumble of current events is the history of ideology.
Hegel's idealism has fared poorly at the hands of later thinkers. Marx revered the priority of the real and the ideal completely, relegating the entire realm of consciousness -- religion, art, culture, philosophy itself -- to a "superstructure" that was determined entirely by the prevailing material mode of production. Yet another unfortunate legacy of Marxism is our tendency to retreat into materialists or utilitarian explanations of political or historical phenomena, and our disinclination to believe in the autonomous power of ideas. A recent example of this is Paul Kennedy's hugely successful The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, which ascribes the decline of great powers to simple economic over extension. Obviously, this is true on some level: an empire whose economy is barely above the level of subsistence cannot bankrupt its treasury indefinitely. But whether a highly productive modern industrial society chooses to spend 3 or 7 percent of its GNP on defence rather than consumption is entirely a matter of that society's political priorities, which are in turn determined in the realm of consciousness.
The materialist bias of modern thought is characteristic not only of people on the Left who may be sympathetic to Marxism, but of many passionate anti-Marxists as well. Indeed, there is on the right what one might label the Wall Street Journal school of deterministic materialism that discounts the importance of ideology and culture and sees man as essentially a rational, profit-maximizing individual. It is precisely this kind of individual and his pursuit of material incentives that is posited as the basis for economic life as such in economic textbooks. One small example will illustrate the problematic character of such materialist views.
Max Weber begins his famous book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, by noting the different economic performance of Protestant and Catholic communities throughout Europe and America, summed up in the proverb that Protestants eat well while Catholics sleep well. Weber notes that according to any economic theory that posited man as a rational profit-maximizer, raising the piecework rate should increase labor productivity. But in fact, in many traditional peasant communities, raising the piece-work rate actually had the opposite effect of lowering labor productivity: at the higher rate, a peasant accustomed to earning two and one-half marks per day found he could earn the same amount by working less, and did so because he valued leisure more than income. The choices of leisure over income, or of the militaristic life of the Spartan hoplite over the wealth of the Athenian trader, or even the ascetic life of the early capitalist entrepreneur over that of a traditional leisured aristocrat, cannot possibly be explained by the impersonal working of material forces, but come preeminently out of the sphere of consciousness -- what we have labeled here broadly as ideology. And indeed, a central theme of Weber's work was to prove that contrary to Marx, the material mode of production, far from being the "base", was itself a "superstructure" with roots in religion and culture, and that to understand the emergence of modern capitalism and the profit motive one had to study their antecedents in the realm of the spirit.
As we look around the contemporary world, the poverty of materialist theories of economic development is all too apparent. The Wall Street Journal school of deterministic materialism habitually points to the stunning economic success of Asia in the past few decades as evidence of the viability of free market economics, with the implication that all societies would see similar development were they simply to allow their populations to pursue their material self-interest freely. Surely free markets and stable political systems are a necessary precondition to capitalist economic growth. But just as surely the cultural heritage of those Far Eastern societies, the ethic of work and saving and family, a religious heritage that does not, like Islam, place restrictions on certain forms of economic behavior, and other deeply ingrained moral qualities, are equally important in explaining their economic performace. And yet the intellectual weight of materialism is such that not a single respectable contemporary theory of economic development addresses consciousness and culture seriously as the matrix within which economic behavior is formed.
Failure to understand that the roots of economic behavior lie in the realm of consciousness and culture leads to the common mistake of attributing material causes to phenomena that are essentially ideal in nature. For example, it is commonplace in the West to interpret the reform movements first in China and most recently in the Soviet Union as the victory of the material over the ideal -- that is, a recognition that ideological incentives could not replace material ones in stimulation a highly productive modern economy, and that if one wanted to prosper one had to appeal to baser forms of self-interest. But the deep defects of socialist economies were evident thirty or forty years ago to anyone who chose to look. Why was it that these countries moved away from central palnning in the 1980's? The answer must be found in the consciousness of the elites and leaders ruling them, who decided to opt for the "Protestant" life of wealth and risk over the "Catholic" path of poverty and security. That change was in no way made inevitable by the material condition was in which either country found itself on the eve of the reform, but instead came about as the result of the victory of one idea over another.
For Kojeve, as for all good Hegelians, understanding the underlying processes of history requiresunderstanding developments in the realm of consciousness or ideas, since consciousness will ultimately remake the material world in its own image. To say that history ended in 1806 meant that mankind's ideological evolution ended in the ideals of the French or American Revolutions: while particular regimes in the real world might not implement these ideals fully, their theoretical truth is absolute and could not be improved upon. Hence it did not mater to Kojeve that the consciousness of the postwar generation of Europeans had not been universalized throughout the world; if ideological development had in fact ended, the homogenous state would eventually become victorious throughtout the material world.
I have neither the space nor, frankly, the ability to defend in depth Hegel's radical idealist perspective. The issue is not whether Hegel's system was right, but whether his perspective might uncover the problematic nature of many materialist explanations we often take for granted. This is not to deny the role of material factors as such. To a literal minded idealist, human society can be built around any arbitrary set of principle regardless of their relationship to the material world. And in fact men have proven themselves able to endure the most extreme material hardships in the name of ideas that exist in the realm of the spirit alone, be it the divinity of cows or the nature of the Holy Trinity.
But while man's very perception of the material world is shaped by his historical consciousness of it, the material world can clearly affect in return the viability of a particular state of consciousness. In particular, the spectacular abundance of advanced liberal economies and the infinitely diverse consumer culture made possible by them seem to both foster and preserve liberalism in the political sphere. I want to avoid the materialist determinism that says that liberal economics inevitably produces liberal politics, because I believe that both economics and politics presuppose an autonomous prior state of consciousness that makes them possible. But that state of consciousness that permits the growth of liberalism seems to stabilize in the way one would expect at the end of history if it is underwritten by the abundance of a modern free market economy. We might summarize the content of the universal homogenous state as liberal democracy in the political sphere combined with easy access to VCRs and stereos in the economic.
對黑格爾而言，驅動歷史發展的矛盾首先存在於人類意識領域，也就是思想層面——這裡所指的思想，並非美國政治人物在選舉年提出的瑣碎政策，而是那些能夠統攝世界觀的大規模意識形態。在這種意義上，意識形態並不限於我們通常聯想到的世俗且明確的政治學說，它還可以包括宗教、文化以及構成任何社會道德基礎的價值體系。
黑格爾對於理想世界與現實（物質）世界的關係，持有極為複雜的觀點。他認為這兩者之間的區別只是表象而已。他並不認為現實世界會按照哲學教授們的意識形態預設發展，或者說物質世界完全不會影響意識領域。事實上，黑格爾本人就曾因為物質世界的一場戰爭——耶拿戰役（Battle of Jena）——而一度失業。然而，儘管黑格爾的著作與思考可以被物質世界的一顆子彈中斷，扣動扳機的那隻手卻是受到了自由和平等思想的驅動，而這些理念正是推動法國大革命的核心信念。
對黑格爾而言，所有人類在物質世界的行為，以及整個人類歷史，都是源自於先前的意識狀態——這與約翰·梅納德·凱恩斯（John Maynard Keynes）所說的觀點類似，即現實中決策者的想法通常是承襲自過去經濟學家的理論，甚至是一些已被遺忘的學術論述。這種意識形態可能不像現代政治學說那樣明確自覺，而是以宗教、文化習俗或道德規範的形式存在。然而，長遠來看，這種意識形態必然會在現實世界中展現，甚至按照其形象創造出物質世界。換言之，意識形態是原因，而不是結果；它可以獨立於物質世界發展，因此，在當前世界事件混亂無章的表象之下，真正的歷史動力其實是意識形態的發展歷程。
黑格爾的唯心主義在後來的思想家手中遭遇了不公平的對待。馬克思徹底顛倒了理想與現實的優先性，將整個意識形態領域——包括宗教、藝術、文化乃至哲學本身——貶為單純由生產模式決定的「上層建築」。馬克思主義的一個不幸遺產，是讓我們習慣於以物質主義或功利主義的視角來解釋政治與歷史現象，並且忽視思想的自主力量。這種偏見的典型例子是保羅·甘迺迪（Paul Kennedy）廣受歡迎的著作《大國的興衰》（The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers），其核心論點是大國的衰落源於經濟過度擴張。這在某種程度上確實成立：一個經濟僅勉強維持生存水準的帝國，確實無法無限制地透支國庫。但現代工業化社會選擇將國內生產總值（GNP）的3%還是7%投入國防，而非消費，完全取決於該社會的政治優先順序，而這些優先順序又根植於意識形態領域。
現代思想中的物質主義偏見，不僅存在於那些可能同情馬克思主義的左翼人士之間，甚至也影響了許多激烈反馬克思主義的右派人士。事實上，右派中有一種可以稱為《華爾街日報》學派（Wall Street Journal school）的決定論式物質主義，它否定意識形態與文化的重要性，並將人類視為純粹的理性、逐利個體。這種經濟學教科書中常見的理性人假設，認為物質誘因是經濟生活的唯一驅動力。然而，一個簡單的例子就能顯示這種物質主義觀點的缺陷。
馬克斯·韋伯（Max Weber）在其名著《新教倫理與資本主義精神》（The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism）開篇便指出，歐洲與美洲的新教徒與天主教徒社群之間的經濟表現存在顯著差異，這可以用一句諺語來概括：「新教徒吃得好，天主教徒睡得香。」韋伯指出，根據任何將人類視為理性逐利者的經濟理論，提高計件工資應當提升勞動生產力。然而，在許多傳統農村社會，實際情況恰恰相反：當計件工資提高時，農民並未更努力工作，反而減少了勞動，因為他們發現自己可以更快賺到同樣的收入，於是選擇休閒而非額外的收入。同樣，斯巴達士兵對軍事生活的選擇，相較於雅典商人對財富的追求，或者早期資本主義企業家對禁欲生活的選擇，相較於傳統貴族的閒適生活，這些行為都無法透過物質因素來解釋，而是來自意識形態領域——也就是我們在這裡廣義上稱為「意識形態」的概念。韋伯的核心論點正是要證明，相較於馬克思所認為的「生產方式決定上層建築」，物質生產模式本身反而是一種「上層建築」，其根源在於宗教與文化。因此，若要理解現代資本主義與利潤動機的誕生，就必須回溯其精神層面的起源。
當我們審視當代世界時，物質主義經濟發展理論的缺陷顯而易見。《華爾街日報》學派的決定論式物質主義經常將過去幾十年亞洲的經濟成功，視為自由市場經濟可行性的證明，並暗示所有社會只要讓人民自由追求物質利益，便能獲得類似的發展。然而，誠然，自由市場與穩定的政治體制是資本主義經濟增長的必要條件，但同樣重要的，還有東亞社會的文化傳統，例如勤奮工作、儲蓄觀念、家庭價值觀，以及不同於伊斯蘭教的宗教遺產——伊斯蘭教對某些經濟行為有限制，而東亞宗教則沒有這種限制。然而，當代學術界對物質主義的偏重已經達到這樣的程度，以至於幾乎沒有一個嚴肅的經濟發展理論會將意識形態與文化視為經濟行為的關鍵背景。
未能理解經濟行為的根源來自意識與文化，導致我們經常將物質因素錯誤地歸因於本質上屬於意識形態的現象。例如，西方經常將中國大陸與蘇聯的改革運動解釋為「物質戰勝意識形態」的結果——也就是認為，這些國家意識到意識形態誘因無法取代物質誘因來促進現代經濟發展，因此轉而鼓勵人們追求個人利益。然而，社會主義經濟的嚴重缺陷在三、四十年前便已顯而易見，為何這些國家直到1980年代才開始放棄中央計劃經濟？答案必須從統治菁英的意識形態轉變中尋找：他們選擇了「新教徒」式的富裕與風險，而非「天主教徒」式的貧窮與安全。這一變革並非由物質條件所決定，而是意識形態之間的一場勝利。
對科耶夫（Kojeve）而言，如同所有真正的黑格爾學派哲學家，要理解歷史的基本過程，就必須理解意識或思想領域的發展，因為意識最終將按照其形象重塑物質世界。當科耶夫說「歷史在1806年結束」時，他的意思是，人類的意識形態演進已經在法國大革命與美國革命的理念中達到了終點：儘管現實世界中的特定政權可能無法完全實踐這些理念，但它們在理論上的正確性是絕對的，無法再被改進。因此，對科耶夫來說，戰後歐洲世代的意識是否已經普遍化並不重要；如果意識形態的發展確實已經結束，那麼「同質化國家」（homogenous state）最終將在物質世界中取得勝利。
坦白說，我既沒有足夠的篇幅，也沒有足夠的能力來深入捍衛黑格爾的激進唯心主義觀點。問題的關鍵並不在於黑格爾的體系是否正確，而在於他的視角是否能揭示許多我們習以為常的物質主義解釋所隱含的問題。這並不意味著要否認物質因素本身的作用。對於一個極端唯心論者而言，人類社會可以圍繞任何一組任意選擇的原則構建，而不論這些原則與物質世界的關聯。然而，事實證明，人類確實能夠為了純粹存在於精神領域的理念而承受極端的物質匱乏，例如對神聖母牛的崇拜，或對三位一體（Holy Trinity）本質的信仰。
然而，儘管人類對物質世界的認知是由其歷史意識所塑造的，物質世界仍然能夠反過來影響某種特定意識形態的可行性。特別是，發達自由經濟所帶來的驚人繁榮，以及其促成的極度多樣化的消費文化，似乎在政治領域既培育又維繫了自由主義。我希望避免那種認為「自由經濟必然產生自由政治」的物質決定論，因為我認為，無論是經濟還是政治，都預設了一種自主的先驗意識狀態，使其得以成形。然而，在現代自由市場經濟的豐裕之下，那種促進自由主義發展的意識狀態，似乎確實如我們所預期的那樣，在歷史終點穩定下來。我們可以簡要地將「普世同質國家」的內容概括為：「政治上是自由民主，經濟上則是能輕鬆獲得錄影機與音響設備的社會。」
III
Have we in fact reached the end of history? Are there, in other words, any fundamental "contradictions"in human life that cannot be resolved in the context of modern liberalism, that would be resolvable by an alternative political-economic structure? If we accept the idealist premises laid out above, we must seek an answer to this question in the realm of ideology and consciousness. Our task is not to answer exhaustively the challenges to liberalism promoted by every crackpot messiah around the world, but only those that are embodied in important social or political forces and movements, and which are therefore part of world history. For our purposes, it matters very little what strange thoughts occur to people in Albania or Burkina Faso, for we are interested in what one could in some sense call the common ideological heritage of mankind.
In the past century, there have been two major challenges to liberalism, those of fascism and of communism. The former saw the political weakness, materialism, anomie, and lack of community of the West as fundamental contradictions in liberal societies that could only be resolved by a strong state that forged a new "people" on the basis of national excessiveness. Fascism was destroyed as a living ideology by World War II. This was a defeat, of course, on a very material level, but it amounted to a defeat of the idea as well. What destroyed fascism as an idea was not universal moral revulsion against it, since plenty of people were willing to endorse the idea as long as it seemed the wave of the future, but its lack of success. After the ear, it seemed to most people that German fascism as well as its other European and Asian variants were bound to self-destruct. There was no material reason why new fascist movements could not have sprung up again after the war in other locales, ut for the fact that expansionist ultranationalism, with its promise of unending conflict leading ot disastrous military defeat, had completely lost its appeal. The ruins of the Reich chancellory as well as the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed this ideology on the level of consciousness as well as materially, and all of the proto-fascist movements spawned by the German and Japanese examples like the Peronist movement in Argentina or Subhas Chandra Bose's Indian National Army withered after the war.
The ideological challenge mounted by the other great alternative to liberalism, communism, was far more serious. Marx, speaking Hegel's language, asserted that liberal society contained fundamental contradiction that could not be resolved within its context, that between capital and labor, and this contradiction has constituted the chief accusation against liberalism ever since. But surely, the class issue has actually been successfully resolved in the West. As Kojeve (among others) noted, the egalitarianism of modern America represents the essential achievement of the classless society envisioned by Marx. This is not to say that there are not rich people and poor people in the United States, or that the gap between them has not grown in recent years. But the root causes of economic inequality do not have to do with the underlying legal and social structure of our society, which remains fundamentally egalitarian and moderately redistributionist, so much as with the cultural and social characteristics of the groups that make it up, which are in turn the historical legacy of premodern conditions. Thus black poverty in the United States is not the inherent product of liberalism, but is rather the "legacy of slavery and racism" which persisted long after the formal abolition of slavery.
As a result of the receding of the class issue, the appeal of communism in the developed Western world, it is safe to say, is lower today than any time since the end of the First World War. This can be measured in any number of ways: in the declining membership and electoral pull of the major European communist parties, and their overtly revisionist programs; in the corresponding electoral success of conservative parties form Britain and Germany to the United States and Japan which are unabashedly pro-market and antistatist; and in an intellectual climate whose most "advanced" members no longer believe that bourgeois society is something that ultimately needs to be overcome. This is to say that the opinions of progressive intellectuals in Western countries are not deeply pathological in any number of ways. But those who believe that the future must inevitably be socialist tend to be very old, or very marginal to the real political discourse of their societies.
One may argue that the socialist alternative was never terribly plausible for the North Atlantic world, and was sustained for the last several decades primarily by its success outside of this region. But it is precisely in the non-European world that one is not struck by the occurrence of major ideological transformations. Surely the most remarkable changes have occurred in Asia. Due to the strength and adaptability of the indigenous cultures there, Asia became a battleground for a variety of imported Western ideologies cultures there, Asia became a battleground for a variety of imported Western ideologies early in this century. Liberalism in Asia was a very weak reed in the period after World War I; it is easy today to forget how gloomy Asia's political future looked as recently as ten or fifteen years ago. It is easy to forget as well how momentous the outcome of Asian ideological struggles seemed fore world political development as a whole.
The first Asian alternative to liberalism to be decisively defeated was the fascist one represented by Imperial Japan. Japanese fascism (like its German version) was defeated by the force of American arms in the Pacific war, and liberal democracy was imposed on Japan by a victorious United States. Western capitalism and political liberalism when transplanted to Japan were adapted and transformed by the Japanese in such a way as to be scarcely recognizable. Many Americans are now aware that Japanese industrial organization is very different from that prevailing in the United States or Europe, and it is questionable what relationship the factional maneuvering that takes place with the governing Liberal Democratic Party bears to democracy. Nonetheless, the very fact that the essential elements of economic and political liberalism have been so successfully grafted onto uniquely Japanese traditions and institutions guarantees their survival in the long run. More important is the contribution that Japan has become both a symbol and a underpinning of the universal homogenous state. V.S. Naipaul traveling in Khomeini's Iran shortly after the revolution noted the omnipresent signs advertising the products of Sony, Hitachi, and JVC, whose appeal remained virtually irresistible and gave the lie to the regime's pretensions of restoring a state based on the rule of he Shariah. Desire for access to the consumer culture, created in large measure by Japan, has played a crucial role in fostering the spread of economic liberalism throughout Asia, and hence in promoting political liberalism as well.
The economic success of the other newly industrializing countries (NICs) in Asia following on the xample of Japan is by now a familiar story. What is important from a Hegelian standpoint is that political liberalism has been following economic liberalism, more slowly than many had hoped but with seeming inevitability. Here again we see the victory of the idea of the universal homogenous state. South Korea had developed into a modern, urbanized society with an increasingly large and well-educated middle class that could not possibly be isolated from the larger democratic trends around them. Under these democratic trends around them. Under these circumstances it seemed intolerable to a large part of this population that it should be ruled by an anachronistic military regime while Japan, only a decade or so ahead in economic terms, had parliamentary institutions for over forty years. Even the former socialist regime in Burma, which for so many decades existed in dismal isolation from the larger trends dominating Asia, was buffeted in the past year by pressures to liberalize both its economy and political system. It is said that unhappiness with strongman Ne Win began when a senior Burmese officer went to Singapore for medical treatment and broke down crying when he saw how far socialist Burma had been left behind by it ASEAN neighbors.
But the power of the liberal idea would seem much less impressive if it had not infected the largest and oldest culture in Asia, China. The simple existence of communist China created an alternative if it had not infected the largest and oldest culture in Asia, China. The simple existence of communist China created an alternative pole of ideological attraction, and as such constituted a threat to liberalism. But the past fifteen years have seen an almost total discrediting of Marxism-Lenisnism as an economic system. Beginning with the famous third plenum of the Tenth Central Committee in 1978, the Chinese Communist party set about decollectivizing agriculture for the 800 million Chinese who still lived in the countryside. The role of the state in agriculture was reduced to that of a tax collector, while production of consumer goods was sharply increased in order to five peasants a taste of the universal homogenous state and thereby an incentive to work. The reform doubled Chinese grain output in only five years, and in the process created for Deng Xiao-ping a solid political base from which he was able to extend the reform to other parts of the economy. Economic statistic do not begin to describe the dynamism, initiative, and openness evident in China since the reform began.
China could not now be described in anyway as a liberal democracy. At present, no more than 20 percent o fits economy has been marketed, and most importantly it continues to be ruled by a selfappointed Communist party which has given no hint of wanting to devolve power. Deng has made none of Gorbachev's promises regarding democratization of the political system and there is no Chinese equivalent of glasnost. The Chinese leadership has in fact been much more circumspect in criticizing Mao and Maoism than Gorbachev with respect to Brezhnev and Stalin, and the regime continues to pay lip service to Marxism-Leninism as its ideological underpinning. But anyone familiar with the outlook and behavior of the new technocratic elite now governing China knows the Marxism and ideological principle have become virtually irrelevant as guides to policy, and that bourgeois consumerism has a real meaning in that country for the first time since the revolution. The various slowdowns in the pace of reform, the campaigns against "spiritual pollution" and crackdowns on political dissent are more properly seen as tactical adjustments made in the process of managing what is an extraordinarily difficult political transition. By ducking the question of political reform while putting the economy on a new footing, Deng has managed to avoid the breakdown of authority that has accompanied Gorbachev's perestroika. Yet the pull of the liberal idea continues to be very strong as economic power devolves and the economy becomes more open to the outside world. There are currently over 20,000 chinese students studying in the U.S. and other Western countries, almost all of them of children of the Chinese elite. It is hard to believe that when they return home to run the country they return home to run the country they will be content for China to be the only country in Asia unaffected by the larger democratizing treat. The student demonstrations in Beijing that broke out first in December 1986 and recurred recently on the occasion of HU Yao-bang's death were only the beginning of what will inevitably be mounting pressure for change in the political system as well.
What is important about China from the standpoint of world history is not the present state of the reform or even its future prospects. The central issue is the fact that the People's Republic of China can no longer act as a beacon for illiberal forces around the world, whether they be guerrillas in some Asian jungle or middle class students in Paris. Maoism, rather than being the pattern for Asia's future, became an anachronism, and it was the mainland Chinese who in fact were decisively influenced by the prosperity and dynamism of their overseas co-ethnics -- the ironic ultimate victory of Taiwan.
Important as these changes in China have been, however, it is developments in the Soviet Union -- the original "homeland of the world proletariat" -- that have put the final nail in the coffin of the Marxist Leninist alternative to liberal democracy. It should be clear that in terms of formal institutions, not much has changed in the four years since Gorbachev has come to power: Free markets and the cooperative movement represent only a small part of the Soviet economy, which remains centrally planned; the political system is still dominated by the Communist party, which has only begun to democratize internally and to share power with other groups; the regime continues to assert that it is seeking only to modernize socialism and that its ideological basis remains Marxism-Leninism; and, finally, Gorbachev faces a potentially powerful conservative opposition that could undo many of the changes that have taken place to date. Moreover, it is hard to be too sanguine about the chances for success of Gorbachev's proposed reforms, either in the sphere of economics or politics. But my purpose here is not to analyze events in the short-term, or to make predictions for policy purposes, but to look at underlying trends in the sphere of ideology and consciousness. And in that respect, it is clear that an astounding transformation has occurred.
Emigres from the Soviet Union have been reporting for at least the last generation now that virtually nobody in that country truly believed in Marxism-Leninism any longer, and that this was nowhere more true than in the Soviet elite, which continued to mouth Marxist slogans out of sheer cynicism. The corruption and decadence of the late Brezhnev-era Soviet state seemed to matter little, however, for as long as the state itself refused to throw into question any of the fundamental principles underlying Soviet society, the system was capable of functioning adequately out of sheer inertia and could even muster some dynamism in the realm of foreign and defense policy. Marxism-Leninism was like a magical incantation which, however absurd and devoid of meaning, was the only common basis on which the elite could agree to rule Soviet society.
What has happened in the four years since Gorbachev's coming to power is a revolutionary assault on the most fundamental institutions and principles of Stalinism, and their replacement by other principles which do not amount to liberalism per se but whose only connecting thread is liberalism, This is most evident in the economic sphere, where the reform economists around Gorbachev have become steadily more radical in their support for free markets, to the point where some like Nikolai Shmelev do not mind being compared in public to Milton Friedman. There is a virtual consensus among the currently dominant school of Soviet economists now that central planning and the command system of allocation are the root cause of economic inefficiency, and that if the Soviet system is ever to heal itself, it ust permit free and decentralized decision-making with respect to investment, labor, and prices. After a couple of initial years of ideological confusion, theses principle have finally been incorporated into policy with the promulgation of new laws on enterprise autonomy, cooperatives, and finally in 1988 on lease arrangements and family farming. There are, of course, a number of fatal flaws in the current implementation of the reform, most notably the absence of a thoroughgoing price reform. But the problem is no longer a conceptual one: Gorbachev and his lieutenants seem to understand the economic logic of marketization well enough, but like the leaders of a Third World country facing the IMF, are afraid of the social consequences of ending consumer subsidies and other forms of dependence on the state sector.
In the political sphere, the proposed changes to the Soviet constitution, legal system, and party rules
amount to much less than the establishment of a liberal state. Gorbachev has spoken of demo- cratization primarily in the sphere of internal party affairs, and has shown little intention of ending the Communist party's monopoly of power; indeed, the political reform seeks to legitimize and therefore strengthen the CPSU's rule. Nonetheless, the general principles underlying many of the reforms -- that the "people" should be truly responsible for their own affairs, that higher political bodies should be answerable to lower ones, and not vice versa, that the rule of law should prevail over arbitrary police actions, with separation of powers and an independent judiciary, that there should be legal protection for property rights, the need for open discussion of public issues and the right of public dissent, the empowering of the Soviets as a forum in which the whole Soviets as a forum in which the whole Soviet people can participate, and of a political culture that is more tolerant and pluralistic -- come from a source fundamentally alien to the USSR's Marxist-Leninist tradition, even if they are incompletely articulated and poorly implemented in practice.
Gorbachev's repeated assertions that he is doing no more than trying to restore the original meaning of Leninism are themselves a kind of Orwellian doublespeak. Gorbachev and his allies have consistently maintained that intraparty democracy was somehow the essence of Leninism, and that the various liberal practices of open debate, secret ballot elections, and rule of law were all part of the Leninist heritage, corrupted only later by Stalin. While almost anyone would look good compared to Stalin, drawing so sharp a line between Lenin and his successor is questionable. The essence of Lenin's democratic centralism was centralism, not democracy; that is, the absolutely rigid, monolithic, and disciplined dictatorship of a hierarchically organized vanguard Communist party, speaking in the name of the demos. All of Lenin's vicious polemics against Karl Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg, and various other Menshevik and Social Democratic rivals, not to mention his contempt for "bourgeois legality" and freedoms, centered around his profound conviction that a revolution could not be successfully made by a democratically run organization.
The Soviet Union could in no way be described as a liberal or democratic country now, nor do I think that it is terribly likely that perestroika will succeed such that the label will be thinkable any time in the near future. But at the end of history it is not necessary that all societies become successful liberal societies, merely that they end their ideological pretensions of representing different and higher forms of human society. And in this respect I believe that something very important has happened in the Soviet Union in the past few years: the criticisms of the Soviet system sanctioned by Borbachev have been so thorough and devastating that there is very little chance of going back to either Stalinism or Brezhnevism, in any simple way. Gorbachev has finally permitted people to say what they had privately understood for many years, namely, that the magical incantation of Marxism-Leninism were nonsense, that Soviet socialism was not superior to the West in any respect but was in fact a monumental failure. The conservative opposition in the USSR, consisting both of simple workers afraid of unemployment and inflation and of party officials fearful of losing their jobs and privileges, is outspoken and may be strong enough to force Gorbachev's ouster in the next few years. But what both groups desire is tradition, order, and authority; they manifest no deep commitment to Marxism-Leninism, except insofar as they have invested much of their own lives in it. For authority to be restored in the Soviet Union after Gorbachev's demolition work, it must be on the basis of some new and vigorous ideology which has not yet appeared on the horizon.
If we admit for the moment that the fascist and communist challenges to liberalism are dead, are there any other ideological competitors left? Or put another way, are there contradictions in liberal society beyond that of class that are n ot resolvable? Two possibilities suggest themselves, those of religion and nationalism.
The rise of religious fundamentalism in recent years within the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim traditions has been widely noted. One is inclined to say that the revival of religion in some way attests to a broad unhappiness with the impersonality and spiritual vacuity of liberal consumerist societies. Yet while the emptiness at the core of ideology -- indeed, a flaw that one does not need the perspective of religion to recognize -- it is not at all clear that it is remediable through politics. Modern liberalism itself was historically a consequence of the weakness of religiously-based societies which, falling to agree on the nature of the good life, could not provide even the minimal preconditions of peace and stability. In the contemporary world only Islam has offered a theocratic state as a political alternative to both liberalism and communism. But the doctrine has little appeal for non-Muslims, and it is hard to believe that the movement will take on any universal significance. Other less organized religious impulses have been successfully satisfied within the sphere of personal of personal life that is permitted in liberal societies.
The other major "contradiction" potentially unresolvable by liberalism is the one posed by nationalism and other forms of racial and ethic consciousness. It is certainly true that a very large degree of conflict since the Battle of Jena has had its roots in nationalism. Two cataclysmic world wars in this century have been spawned by the nationalism of the developed world in various guises, and if those passions have been muted to a certain extent in postwar Europe, they are still extremely powerful in the Third World. Nationalism has been a threat to liberalism historically in Germany, and continues to be one in isolated parts of "post-historical" Europe life Northern Ireland.
But it is not clear that nationalism represents an irreconcilable contradiction in the heart of liberalism. In the first place, nationalism is not one single phenomenon but several, ranging from mild cultural nostalgia to the highly organized and elaborately articulated doctrine of National Socialism. Onl systematic nationalism of the latter sort cant qualify as a formal ideology on the level of liberalism or communism. The vast majority of the world's nationalist movements do not have a political program beyond the negative desire of independence from some other group or people, and do not offer anything like a comprehensive agenda for socio-economic organization. As such, they are compatible with doctrines and ideologies that do offer such agendas. While they may constitute a source of conflict for liberal societies, this conflict does not arise from liberalism itself so much as from the fact that the liberalism in question is incomplete. Certainly a great deal of the world's ethnic and nationalist tension can be explained in terms of peoples who are forced to live in unrepresentative political systems that they have not chosen.
While it is impossible to rule out the sudden appearance of new ideologies or previously unrecognized in liberal societies, then, the present world seems to confirm that the fundamental principles of sociopolitical organization have not advanced terribly far since 1806. Many of the wars and revolutions fought since that time have been undertaken in the name of ideologies which claimed to be more advanced than liberalism, but whose pretensions were ultimately unmasked by history. In the meantime, they have helped to spread the universal homogenous state to the point where it could have a significant effect on the overall character of international relations.
我們真的已經達到了歷史的終結嗎？換句話說，是否存在某些人類生活中無法在現代自由主義的框架內解決的根本「矛盾」，而這些矛盾只能透過另一種政治經濟體系來解決？如果我們接受前述的唯心主義前提，那麼我們必須在意識形態與思想領域尋找這個問題的答案。我們的任務並非要回應世界各地每一位瘋狂救世主對自由主義提出的挑戰，而是要關注那些體現在重要社會或政治力量與運動中的挑戰，因為它們才真正屬於世界歷史的一部分。對我們而言，阿爾巴尼亞或布吉納法索的人們心中可能產生的奇怪想法並不重要，因為我們關心的是人類共同的意識形態遺產。
在過去一個世紀中，自由主義面臨了兩大主要挑戰：法西斯主義與共產主義。法西斯主義認為西方社會存在根本性的矛盾，例如政治上的軟弱、物質主義、社會異化（anomie）與社群感的缺乏，並主張這些問題只能透過一個強大的國家來解決，該國家將以極端民族主義為基礎塑造一個新的「人民」。然而，法西斯主義作為一種活躍的意識形態，已在第二次世界大戰中被徹底摧毀。當然，這場戰敗首先發生在物質層面，但同時也是一場意識形態上的失敗。摧毀法西斯主義的並不是全球對其的道德譴責——因為當法西斯主義看似「未來的潮流」時，仍然有許多人願意支持它——而是它的失敗。戰後，大多數人認為，無論是德國法西斯主義，還是歐洲與亞洲的其他變體，最終都難逃自我毀滅的命運。戰爭結束後，沒有任何物質因素阻止法西斯主義在其他地方重新崛起，唯一的阻力是其擴張主義與極端民族主義所帶來的無止境衝突與最終的軍事災難，使其失去了吸引力。德國帝國總理府（Reich Chancellery）的廢墟，以及廣島與長崎的原子彈，從物質層面與意識形態層面共同終結了這種意識形態。受到德國與日本啟發的各種準法西斯運動，如阿根廷的庇隆主義（Peronism）或印度的蘇巴斯·錢德拉·鮑斯（Subhas Chandra Bose）領導的印度國民軍（Indian National Army），也在戰後逐漸消亡。
然而，另一種挑戰自由主義的主要意識形態——共產主義——則要嚴重得多。馬克思（Marx）以黑格爾的語言表達觀點，認為自由社會內部存在無法自行解決的根本矛盾，即資本與勞動之間的對立，這一直是對自由主義的主要批判。然而，在西方社會，這一階級問題實際上已經得到了成功的解決。正如科耶夫（Kojeve）等人所指出的，美國的平等主義已經體現了馬克思所構想的無階級社會的核心成就。這並不是說美國不存在富人與窮人，也不是說貧富差距在近年來沒有擴大。然而，經濟不平等的根本原因，並非來自我們社會的法律與社會結構——這些結構在本質上仍然是平等主義的，並且具有適度的財富再分配機制——而是來自社會群體的文化與歷史遺產，這些遺產往往源於前現代社會的條件。例如，美國黑人群體的貧困問題，並不是自由主義本身的產物，而是奴隸制度與種族歧視的歷史遺產，這些遺產在奴隸制度正式廢除後依然持續存在。
由於階級問題在西方已經退居次要地位，共產主義在已開發世界的吸引力，如今已降至自第一次世界大戰結束以來的最低點。我們可以透過多種方式來衡量這一趨勢：歐洲主要共產黨的黨員數量與選舉影響力持續下降，而它們的政策也變得公開修正主義化；另一方面，從英國、德國到美國與日本，支持市場經濟、反對政府干預的保守派政黨在選舉中獲得勝利；此外，當前的知識界氣氛顯示，即便是最「先進」的思想家，也不再認為資產階級社會必然需要被超越。這並不意味著西方進步派思想家不會以各種方式對自由社會提出批判。然而，堅信「未來必然屬於社會主義」的人，如今要麼已經年事已高，要麼已經被邊緣化，無法影響本國真正的政治討論。
有人可能會爭辯說，社會主義選項從未真正適用於北大西洋世界，它之所以能夠存續幾十年，主要是因為它在這個地區以外的成功。然而，真正發生重大意識形態變革的，恰恰是非歐洲世界，特別是亞洲。 由於亞洲本土文化的韌性與適應能力，該地區在本世紀早期成為各種輸入西方意識形態的戰場。在第一次世界大戰後的亞洲，自由主義極為脆弱。今天，人們很容易忘記，就在十幾年前，亞洲的政治前景仍然充滿陰霾。人們也往往忽視了亞洲意識形態鬥爭的結果，對全球政治發展的深遠影響。
第一個在亞洲被決定性擊敗的非自由主義意識形態，是以日本帝國為代表的法西斯主義。日本的法西斯主義（如同其德國版本）最終被美國軍事力量擊潰，美國在戰後對日本強制推行了自由民主制度。當西方資本主義與政治自由主義移植到日本後，日本人對其進行了適應與改造，以至於其最終形式與原始版本已經大不相同。許多美國人如今都意識到，日本的工業組織與美國或歐洲的運作模式截然不同，而自民黨（Liberal Democratic Party）內部的派系鬥爭，也讓日本的民主制度顯得與西方傳統有所不同。然而，經濟與政治自由主義的基本要素，已經被成功地嫁接到日本獨特的傳統與制度之上，這也確保了它們的長遠存續。更重要的是，日本本身已經成為「普世同質國家」（universal homogenous state）的一個象徵與基石。V.S.奈保爾（V.S. Naipaul）曾在伊朗革命後不久前往霍梅尼統治下的伊朗旅行，他發現當地到處都是索尼（Sony）、日立（Hitachi）與JVC的產品廣告，這些產品的吸引力幾乎是無法抗拒的，直接戳破了伊朗政權所宣稱的「恢復伊斯蘭教法統治」的幻象。日本創造的消費文化，激發了人們對經濟自由主義的渴望，並在亞洲推動了政治自由主義的擴展。
亞洲其他新興工業化國家（NICs）在日本的示範作用下取得的經濟成功，如今已經是一個廣為人知的故事。從黑格爾的視角來看，真正重要的是，政治自由主義正在追隨經濟自由主義的步伐前進，雖然進展比許多人所希望的要慢，但卻似乎是不可避免的。這再次顯示了「普世同質國家」（universal homogenous state）概念的勝利。韓國已經發展成為一個現代化、城市化的社會，擁有一個規模不斷擴大的、受過良好教育的中產階級，這個群體不可能與周圍更大的民主化趨勢隔絕。在這樣的背景下，對於韓國人民中的許多人而言，讓國家繼續被一個過時的軍事政權統治，是難以忍受的——特別是當日本在經濟上只領先韓國十幾年，卻已經擁有超過四十年的議會制度時。即使是曾長期與亞洲更廣泛發展趨勢隔絕的緬甸前社會主義政權，在過去一年內也受到了強大的自由化壓力，要求其開放經濟與政治體制。據說，緬甸軍事強人奈溫（Ne Win）的權威開始動搖，是因為一位高級緬甸軍官到新加坡接受醫療時，當他看到新加坡的繁榮與發展，並與緬甸社會主義體制下的落後進行比較時，不禁淚流滿面。
然而，若沒有影響亞洲最大、最古老文化的中國，自由主義的影響力將無法展現其真正的力量。中國共產政權的存在本身，曾經為全球反自由主義力量提供了一個替代性的意識形態中心，因此，它對自由主義構成了實質性的威脅。但過去十五年來，馬克思列寧主義作為一種經濟體系已經幾乎完全失去其正當性。從1978年中共十一屆三中全會開始，中國共產黨便著手推行農業去集體化改革，以應對當時仍然有八億中國農民生活在農村的現實。國家在農業領域的角色被縮減為僅僅是一個稅收徵收機構，而消費品的生產則大幅增加，以讓農民嘗到「普世同質國家」所帶來的物質豐裕，並因此提高其勞動積極性。這場改革在短短五年間使中國糧食產量翻倍，並為鄧小平（Deng Xiaoping）建立了一個堅實的政治基礎，使他能夠將改革推廣到經濟的其他領域。經濟數據雖然無法完整描述中國大陸改革以來的活力、創新精神與開放程度，但這些變化是顯而易見的。
當然，中華人民共和國今天還無法被描述為一個自由民主國家。目前，中國大陸的市場化經濟僅覆蓋了不到 20% 的經濟活動，而最關鍵的是，國家仍由一個自我任命的共產黨所統治，並未顯露出有意下放政治權力的跡象。鄧小平從未作出戈巴契夫（Gorbachev）關於「政治體制民主化」的承諾，中國大陸也沒有出現蘇聯「開放政策」（glasnost）的對應舉措。與戈巴契夫針對布里茲涅夫（Brezhnev）與史達林（Stalin）的公開批評相比，北京領導層對毛澤東及毛主義的批判要保守得多，並且仍然表面上維護馬克思列寧主義作為其意識形態基礎。然而，熟悉中國大陸當前技術官僚菁英思想與行為方式的人都知道，馬克思主義與意識形態原則早已不再是真正的政策指導。資產階級消費主義如今在中國大陸獲得了真正的意義，這是自1949年革命以來前所未見的現象。雖然中國大陸改革的步伐時有放緩，例如「精神污染」運動與對政治異見人士的鎮壓，但這些更應被視為管理這場極其複雜的政治過渡期時的戰術調整。透過暫時擱置政治改革、優先發展經濟，鄧小平成功避免了蘇聯在推行「改革重組」（perestroika）過程中所遭遇的政治權威崩潰。然而，隨著經濟權力下放與中國大陸經濟日益向外開放，自由主義思想的影響力仍然十分強大。目前，有超過 20,000 名中國大陸的留學生正在美國與其他西方國家學習，這些人大多來自中國大陸的政治與經濟精英階層。很難想像，當他們回國並接管國家時，會願意讓中華人民共和國成為亞洲唯一不受民主化趨勢影響的國家。1986年12月，北京首次爆發的學生示威，以及1989年因胡耀邦（Hu Yaobang）去世而引發的抗議運動，都只是中國大陸政治體系未來必然會面臨的更大壓力的開端。
從世界歷史的角度來看，中國大陸最重要的變化，不在於當前改革的具體進程，甚至不在於其未來的發展前景。真正的核心問題在於，中華人民共和國已經無法再作為全球反自由主義力量的意識形態燈塔——無論是對亞洲某個叢林中的游擊隊，還是對巴黎的中產階級學生。毛主義不僅沒有成為亞洲未來的藍圖，反而淪為了一個歷史遺跡，而真正影響中國的，反而是海外華人的繁榮與活力——這是一種帶有諷刺意味的最終勝利，屬於台灣的勝利。
然而，儘管中國大陸的轉變具有重大意義，真正對馬克思列寧主義構成最後一擊的，還是蘇聯的變革——這個曾經是「世界無產階級的祖國」的國家，如今已經為自由民主提供了最具決定性的勝利。如果單從形式上的制度來看，自戈巴契夫上台以來的四年內，蘇聯並沒有發生根本性變化：自由市場與合作社運動仍只佔蘇聯經濟的一小部分，大多數經濟仍然由中央計劃體系主導；政治體系仍然由共產黨控制，雖然內部開始出現民主化跡象，但它仍未真正與其他政治力量分享權力；政權仍然堅稱其目標只是「現代化社會主義」，而馬克思列寧主義仍然是其意識形態基礎；此外，戈巴契夫還面臨一股強大的保守派勢力，這些勢力有可能推翻迄今為止所推動的改革。不僅如此，無論是在經濟或政治領域，戈巴契夫的改革成功的機率都仍然存疑。然而，我在這裡的目的並非分析短期內的發展，也不是預測政策變化，而是要檢視意識形態與思想領域中的長期趨勢。在這方面，很明顯，蘇聯已經發生了一場驚人的轉變。
過去幾十年來，來自蘇聯的流亡者一直報導說，在蘇聯，幾乎已經沒有人真正相信馬克思列寧主義，這在蘇聯菁英階層中尤為明顯。他們仍然口頭上重複馬克思主義的口號，但這更多是出於虛偽的犬儒主義。勃列日涅夫時期後期的蘇聯國家雖然充滿貪腐與頹廢，但這似乎並不影響其運作，因為只要國家本身不去質疑蘇聯社會的基本原則，這個體制便仍能憑藉慣性維持下去，甚至在外交與國防領域還能展現一定的活力。馬克思列寧主義就像是一種魔咒，儘管荒謬且毫無意義，但它仍是蘇聯統治菁英唯一能夠達成共識的統治基礎。
然而，自戈巴契夫上台以來的四年間，蘇聯發生了一場革命性的變革，對史達林主義最基本的制度與原則發動了正面攻擊，並用其他原則加以取代。這些新原則本身或許不能被稱為自由主義，但它們唯一的共同特徵，就是與自由主義有關。這一點在經濟領域尤為明顯，戈巴契夫周圍的改革派經濟學家逐漸變得更加激進，甚至到了有人公開將自己與密爾頓·傅利曼（Milton Friedman）相提並論的地步。如今，蘇聯經濟學界的主流觀點幾乎已經形成共識：中央計劃與指令式經濟是造成經濟低效的根本原因，如果蘇聯經濟要實現復甦，就必須允許市場機制發揮作用，實現去中心化的投資、勞動與價格決策。雖然戈巴契夫政府在改革初期一度陷入意識形態混亂，但隨著時間的推移，這些市場化原則已逐漸被納入政策之中，例如企業自主權法、新的合作社法，甚至 1988 年的租賃經濟與家庭農場法案。當然，這些改革在執行過程中仍然存在許多致命缺陷，最明顯的是價格改革的缺失，導致市場機制無法真正發揮作用。然而，問題已不再是概念層面的困惑：戈巴契夫與他的幕僚顯然理解市場化經濟的邏輯，但就像許多面對國際貨幣基金組織（IMF）的第三世界國家領導人一樣，他們擔心取消消費補貼與削弱國家部門可能帶來的社會動盪。
在政治領域，蘇聯憲法、法律體系與黨內規則的改革，距離建立一個自由國家還有很長的路要走。戈巴契夫所謂的「民主化」，主要仍局限於黨內事務，並未表現出結束共產黨壟斷政權的意圖，事實上，這些政治改革的目的，是為了使蘇共的統治更加合法化，並因此進一步鞏固蘇共的權力。然而，這些改革所依據的基本原則，如：「人民應當真正對自身事務負責」、「高層政治機構應對基層機構負責，而非相反」、「法律應凌駕於任意的警察行動之上，應當建立權力分立與獨立司法體系」、「應當保障財產權」、「應當允許公開討論公共議題與異議權利」，以及「蘇維埃（Soviets）應該成為讓全民參與政治的論壇，建立更具包容性與多元化的政治文化」——這些原則在本質上都與馬克思列寧主義的傳統格格不入，儘管在實踐上仍然缺乏具體落實。
戈巴契夫反覆聲稱，他的改革只是要回歸「列寧主義的原意」，但這其實是一種「歐威爾式的雙重思考」（Orwellian doublespeak）。戈巴契夫及其盟友持續強調，黨內民主才是列寧主義的本質，而自由辯論、秘密投票選舉與法治原則，本來都是列寧主義的傳統，只是在史達林時代才遭到腐化。然而，雖然幾乎任何人都會比史達林顯得開明，但將列寧與史達林之間劃出明確界線，仍然是一種值得質疑的歷史修正主義。事實上，列寧的「民主集中制」（democratic centralism）核心在於「集中」，而非「民主」，它的本質是一個絕對嚴密、階層化組織的共產黨，獨裁地代表「人民」發聲。列寧對於卡爾·考茨基（Karl Kautsky）、羅莎·盧森堡（Rosa Luxemburg）及其他孟什維克和社會民主主義對手的猛烈批判，以及他對於「資產階級法律」與「自由」的輕蔑，無一不是基於他堅信：革命不可能由一個民主運作的組織來實現。
目前，蘇聯仍然無法被描述為一個自由民主國家，而且我也不認為「改革重組」（perestroika）很可能成功到讓蘇聯短期內變成一個真正自由社會。然而，在歷史的終結這一框架下，並不需要所有社會都成為成功的自由國家，只要它們不再聲稱自己代表著「更高級」或「更先進」的人類社會形態即可。在這方面，蘇聯過去幾年發生了一件極為重要的事情：戈巴契夫所允許的對蘇聯體制的批評，已經徹底削弱了史達林主義與勃列日涅夫主義的合法性，使得蘇聯幾乎不可能再回到過去的模式。戈巴契夫最終允許蘇聯人民公開承認他們私底下早已明白的事實，即：馬克思列寧主義的「魔咒」已經變得荒謬而毫無意義，蘇聯社會主義不僅不比西方優越，甚至是一場徹底的災難。蘇聯的保守派反對勢力由兩大群體組成：一部分是擔心失業與通膨的普通工人，另一部分則是害怕失去權力與特權的黨內官僚。這些人毫不掩飾地反對改革，他們的力量或許強大到足以在未來幾年內推翻戈巴契夫。然而，這兩個群體真正渴望的，並不是回歸馬克思列寧主義，而是傳統、秩序與權威；他們對共產意識形態本身並沒有深厚的忠誠，唯一的理由只是因為他們的個人利益已深深依附於這個體制。如果蘇聯在戈巴契夫的改革之後想要恢復威權統治，那麼它需要尋找一種新的意識形態，然而，目前尚未出現這樣的替代選項。
如果我們暫時承認，法西斯主義與共產主義對自由主義的挑戰已經終結，那麼問題來了：是否仍然存在其他意識形態上的競爭對手？換句話說，自由社會是否仍然存在無法解決的根本矛盾？有兩種可能的挑戰值得探討：宗教與民族主義。
近年來，宗教基本教義派在基督教、猶太教與伊斯蘭教傳統內的興起，已被廣泛關注。有人可能會認為，宗教的復興在某種程度上表明了人們對自由消費主義社會的冷漠與精神空虛的不滿。然而，雖然意識形態內部的空洞確實是一個不容忽視的缺陷——事實上，即使不從宗教角度來看，人們也可以輕易察覺到這一點——但問題在於，這種缺陷是否能透過政治手段來彌補？現代自由主義的出現，正是因為宗教國家本身的弱點——這些國家在對「何為美好生活」的定義上無法達成共識，從而無法確保哪怕是最低限度的和平與穩定。在當代世界，唯一將神權國家作為政治替代方案來對抗自由主義與共產主義的，只有伊斯蘭世界。然而，這一思想對非穆斯林而言並無吸引力，因此很難想像它會成為一種普世性的運動。至於其他較為零散的宗教衝動，通常都能夠在自由社會允許的個人生活領域內得到滿足，而無需對自由主義構成重大挑戰。
另一個可能無法被自由主義解決的「矛盾」，則是民族主義與其他形式的種族與族群意識。毫無疑問，自從耶拿戰役（Battle of Jena）以來，大量的國際衝突都與民族主義有關。本世紀兩次世界大戰，都是因為發達世界的民族主義在不同形式下爆發而引起的。即使在戰後的歐洲，這種激情在某種程度上有所減弱，但在第三世界國家仍然極為強烈。歷史上，民族主義曾對自由主義構成重大威脅，例如德國的極端民族主義，而在歐洲的「後歷史」地區，如北愛爾蘭，民族主義仍然存在一定的破壞力。
然而，民族主義是否代表了自由主義內部的一個無法調和的矛盾，仍然值得討論。首先，民族主義並非單一現象，而是包含多種形態，從溫和的文化懷舊到高度組織化的極端民族主義（如納粹主義），其光譜非常廣泛。只有後者才有資格作為與自由主義或共產主義相對應的意識形態。然而，世界上絕大多數的民族主義運動，其政治目標通常僅限於從某個其他群體或國家爭取獨立，而並不提供一個完整的社會經濟組織藍圖。因此，它們可以與那些真正提供完整政治經濟藍圖的意識形態（如自由主義或社會主義）共存。儘管民族主義可能會對自由社會造成衝突，但這種衝突並非來自自由主義本身的矛盾，而是因為自由主義尚未在全球範圍內充分實現。世界上許多族群與國家的緊張關係，主要來自於這些民族被迫生活在他們無法自由選擇的政治體系內。
當然，我們無法完全排除新意識形態的突然出現，或者某些現有的思想會在未來發展成為對自由主義的真正競爭對手。然而，從當前世界的情勢來看，人類在社會政治組織的基本原則上，似乎並未比1806年時前進多少。自那時以來，許多戰爭與革命都是以自詡為「比自由主義更先進」的意識形態名義發動的，然而，這些意識形態最終都被歷史揭露為不過是幻象。與此同時，這些衝突卻在客觀上推動了「普世同質國家」（universal homogenous state）的擴展，並進一步影響了整體國際關係的特性。
IV
What are the implications of the end of history for international relations? Clearly, the vast bulk of the Third World remains very much mired in history, and will be a terrain of conflict for many years to come. But let us focus for the time being on the larger and more developed states of the world who after all account for the greater part of world politics. russia and China are not likely to join the developed nations of the West as liberal societies any time in the foreseeable future, but suppose for a moment that Marxism-Leninism ceases to be a factor driving the foreign policies of these states -- a prospect which, if not yet here, the last few years have made a real possibility. How will the overall characteristics of a de-ideologized world differ from those of the one with which we are familiar at such a hypothetical juncture?
The most common answer is -- not very much. For there is a very widespread belief among many observers of international relations that underneath the skin of ideology is a hard core of great power national interest that guarantees a fairly high level of competition and conflict between nations. Indeed, according to one academically popular school of international relations theory, system as such, and to understand the prospects for conflict one must look at he shape of the system -- for example, whether it is bipolar or multipolar -- rather than at the specific character of the nations and regimes that constitute it. This school in effect applies a Hobbesian view of politics to international relations, and assumes that aggression and insecurity are universal characteristics of human societies rather than the product of specific historical circumstances.
Believers in this line of thought take the relations that existed between the participants in the classical nineteenth century European balance of power as a model for what a deideologized contemporary world would look lie. Charles Krauthammer, for example, recently explained that if as a result of Gorbachev's reforms the USSR is shorn of Marxist-Leninist ideology, its behavior will revert to that of nineteenth century imperial Russia. While he finds this more reassuring that the threat posed by a communist Russia, he implies that here will still be a substantial degree of competition and conflict in the international system, just as there was say between Russia and Britain or Wilhelmine Germany in the last century. This is, or course, a convenient point of view for people who want to admit that something major is changing in the Soviet Union, but do not want to accept responsibility for recommending the radical policy redirection implicit in such a view. But is it true?
In fact, the notion that ideology is a superstructure imposed on a substratum of permanent great power interest is a highly questionable proposition. For the way in which any state defines its national interest is not universal but rests on some kind of prior ideological basis, just as we saw that economic behavior is determined by a prior state of consciousness. In this century, states have adopted highly articulated doctrines with explicit foreign policy agendas legitimizing expansionism, like Marxism-Leninism or National Socialism.
The expansionist and competitive behavior of nineteenth century Europeans states rested on no less ideal a basis; it just so happened that the ideology driving it was less explicit than the doctrines of the twentieth century. For one thing, most "liberal" European societies were illiberal insofar as they believed in the legitimacy of imperialism, that is, the right of one nation to rule over other nations without regard for the wishes of the ruled. The justifications for imperialism varied from nation to nation, from a crude belief in the legitimacy of force, particularly when applied to non-Europeans, to the White Man's Burden and Europe's Christianizing mission, to the desire to give people of color access to the culture of Rabelais and Moliere. But whatever the particular ideological basis, every "developed" country believed in the acceptabitlity of higher civilizations ruling lower ones- including, incidentally, the United States with regard to the Philippines. This led to a drive for pure territorial aggrandizement in the latter half of the century and played no small role in causing the Great War.
The radical and deformed outgrowth of nineteenth-century imperialism was German fascism, and ideology which justified Germany's right not only to rule over non-European peoples, but over all non German ones. But in retrospect it seems that Hitler represented a diseased by-path in eh general course of European development, and since his fiery defeat, the legitimacy of any kind of territorial aggrandizement has been thoroughly discredited. Since the Second World War, European nationalism has been deranged and shorn of any real relevance to foreign policy, with the consequence that the nineteenth century model of great power behavior has become a serious anachronism. The most extreme form of nationalism that any Western European state has mustered since 1945 has been Gaullism, whose self-assertion has been confined largely to the realm of nuisance politics and culture. International life for the part of the world that has reached the end of history is far more preoccupied with economics than with politics or strategy.
The developed states of the West do maintain defense establishments and in the postwar period have competed vigorously for influence to meet a worldwide communist threat. This behavior has been driven, however, by an external threat from states that possess overtly expansionist ideologies, and would not exit in their absence. To take the "neo-realist" theory seriously, one would have to believe that "natural" competitive behavior would reassert itself among the OECD states were Russia and China to disappear from the face of the earth. That is, West Germany and France would arm themselves against each other as they did in the 1930's, Australia and New Zealand would send military advisers to block each others' advances in Africa, and the U.S. - Canadian border would become fortified. Such a prospect is, of course, ludicrous: minus Marxist-Leninist ideology, we are far more likely to see the "Common Marketization" of world politics than the disintegration of the EEC into nineteenth century competitiveness. Indeed, as our experience in dealing with Europe on matters such as terrorism or Libya prove, they are much further gone than we down the road that denies the legitimacy of the use of force in international politics, even in self-defense.
The automatic assumption that Russia shorn of its expansionist communist ideology should pick up where the czars left off just prior to the Bolshevik Revolution is therefore a curious one. It assumes that the evolution of human consciousness has stood still in the meantime, and that the Soviets, while picking up currently fashionable ideas in the realm of economics, will return to foreign policy views a century out of date in the rest of Europe. This is certainly not what happened to China after it began its reform process. Chinese competitiveness and expansionism on the world scene have virtually disappeared: Beijing no longer sponsors Maoist insurgencies or tries to cultivate influence in distant Africa countries as it did in the 1960's. This is not to say that there are not troublesome aspects to contemporary Chinese foreign policy, such as the reckless sale of ballistic missile technology in the Middle East; and the PRC continues to manifest traditional great power behavior in its sponsorship of the Khmer Rouge against Vietnam. But the former is explained by commercial motives and the latter is a vestige of earlier ideologically based rivalries. The new China far more resembles Gaullist France tan pre World War I Germany.
The real question for the future, however, is the degree to which Soviet elites have assimilated the consciousness of the universal homogenous state that is post Hitler Europe. From their writings and from my own personal contacts with them, there is no question in my mind that the liberal Soviet intelligentsia rallying around Gorbachev has arrived at the end-of-history view in a remarkably short time, due in no small measure to the contacts they have had since the Brezhnev era with the larger European civilization around them, "New political thinking," the general rubric for their views, describes a world dominated by economic concerns, in which there are no ideological grounds for major conflict between nations, and in which, consequently, the use of military force becomes less legitimate. As Foreign Minister Shevardnadze put it in mid-1988: The struggle between two opposing systems is no longer a determining tendency of the present-day era. At the modern stage, the ability to build up material wealth at an accelerated rate on the basis of front-ranking science and high level techniques and technology, and to distribute it fairly, and through joint efforts to restore and protect the resources necessary for mankind's survival acquires decisive imporatnace.
The post historical consciousness represented by "new thinking" is only one possible future for the Soviet Union, however. There has always been a very strong current of great Russian chauvinism in the Soviet Union, which has found freer expression since the advent of glasnost. It may be possible to return to traditional Marxism-Leninism for a while as a simple rallying point for those who want to restore the authority that Gorbachev has dissipated. But as in Poland, Marxism-Leninism is dead as a mobilizing ideology: under its banner people cannot be made to work harder, and its adherents have lost confidence in themselves. Unlike the propagators of traditional Marxism-Leninism, however, ultranationalsits in the USSR believe in their Slavophile cause passionately, and one gets the sense that the fascist alternative is not one that has played itself out entirely there.
The Soviet Union, then, is at a fork in the road: it can start down the path that was staked out by Western Europe forty-five years ago, a path that most of Asia has followed, or it can realize its own uniqueness and remain stuck in history. The choice it makes will be highly important for us, given the Soviet Union's size and military strength, for that power will continue to preoccupy us and slow our realization that we have already emerged on the other side of history.
The passing of Marxism-Leninism first from China and than from the Soviet Union will mean its death as a living ideology of world historical significance. For while there may be some isolated true believers left in places like Managua, Pyongyang, or Cambridge, Massachusetts, the fact that there is not a single large state in which it is a going concern undermines completely its pretensions to being in the vanguard of human history. And the death of this ideology means the growing "Common Marketization" of international relations, and the diminution of the likelihood of large-scale conflict between states.
This does not by any means imply the end of international conflict per se. For the world at that point would be divided between a part that was historical and a part that was post historical. Conflict between states sill in history, and between those states and those at the end of history, would still be possible. There would still be a high and perhaps rising level of ethic and nationalist violence, since those are impulses incompletely played out, even in parts of he post historical world. Palestinians and Kurds, Sikhs and Tamils, Irish Catholics and Walloons, Armenians and Azeris, will continue to have their unresolved grievances. This implies that terrorism and wars of national liberation will continue to be an important item on the international agenda. But large-scale conflict must involve large states still caught in the grip of history, and they are what appear to be passing form he scene.
The end of history will be a very sad time. The struggle for recognition, the willingness to risk one's life for a purely abstract goal, the worldwide ideological struggle that called forth daring, courage, imagination, and idealism, will be replaced by economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems, environmental concerns, and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands. In the post historical period there will be neither art nor philosophy, just the perpetual care taking of he museum of human history. I can feel in myself, and see in others around me, a powerful nostalgia for the time when history existed. Such nostalgia, in fact, will continue to fuel competition and conflict even in the post historical world for some time to come. Even though I recognize its inevitability, I have the most ambivalent feelings for the civilization that has been created in Europe since 1945, with its north Atlantic and Asian offshoots. Perhaps this very prospect of centuries of boredom at the end of history will serve to get history started once again.
歷史終結對國際關係的影響是什麼？顯然，世界上大部分的第三世界國家仍然深陷歷史之中，未來多年內仍將是衝突的戰場。然而，讓我們暫時將焦點放在那些更大、更發達的國家上，畢竟，它們才是世界政治的主要參與者。俄羅斯與中國大陸在可預見的未來內，可能不會成為與西方已開發國家同等的自由社會，但假設有一天，馬克思列寧主義不再驅動這些國家的外交政策——這個可能性雖尚未完全實現，但過去幾年的變化讓它變得越來越真實。那麼，在這樣的假設前提下，一個去意識形態化（de-ideologized）的世界，將與我們所熟悉的世界有何不同？
最普遍的回答是——不會有太大改變。許多國際關係學者普遍相信，在意識形態的表層之下，國家利益才是真正的核心，這意味著國家之間仍將維持相當程度的競爭與衝突。事實上，某些學術界流行的國際關係理論認為，國際體系的結構本身（如兩極體系或多極體系）才是理解衝突發生的關鍵，而非組成該體系的國家性質或政權特徵。這種學派本質上是將霍布斯式（Hobbesian）的政治觀點應用於國際關係，認為侵略與不安全感是人類社會的普遍特徵，而非特定歷史條件的產物。
持此觀點的人，通常會將 19 世紀歐洲的「勢力均衡」模式視為當代無意識形態世界的典型範例。 例如，查爾斯·克勞特哈默（Charles Krauthammer）曾經指出，如果戈巴契夫的改革使蘇聯擺脫馬克思列寧主義意識形態，那麼蘇聯的行為將回歸到 19 世紀帝俄的模式。在他看來，這或許比共產主義俄羅斯更令人放心，但仍然意味著國際體系將維持大量競爭與衝突，類似於 19 世紀俄羅斯與英國、或德意志帝國（Wilhelmine Germany）之間的對抗。這種觀點，對於那些願意承認蘇聯正在發生重大變化，卻不想承擔重新制定激進外交政策責任的人來說，確實是個方便的立場。但這種說法真的成立嗎？
事實上，認為意識形態只是附加在「永恆大國利益」之上的一層「上層建築」的觀點，極具爭議。因為任何國家如何界定其「國家利益」，本質上都是基於某種先前存在的意識形態基礎——就如我們之前所討論的，經濟行為也是由某種意識狀態所決定的。在 20 世紀，許多國家採納了高度系統化的意識形態，例如馬克思列寧主義或國家社會主義（納粹主義），這些意識形態不僅制定了明確的外交政策綱領，並正當化其擴張主義目標。
然而，19 世紀歐洲國家的擴張與競爭行為，其背後同樣依賴於意識形態支撐，只不過當時的意識形態不如 20 世紀的政治學說那麼明確。舉例來說，大多數 19 世紀的「自由」歐洲社會，在本質上並不自由，因為它們普遍認為帝國主義的合法性，即一個國家可以不顧被統治民族的意願，對其他國家進行統治。各國對帝國主義的正當性解釋各異：有些是基於赤裸裸的武力主義（特別是對非歐洲國家），有些則是白人的責任（White Man’s Burden）與歐洲的基督教傳教使命，還有些則認為殖民可以讓有色人種接觸到拉伯雷（Rabelais）與莫里哀（Molière）等歐洲文化。但無論背後的意識形態如何，所有「已開發國家」都相信，高度文明的國家有權統治落後的國家，甚至美國也在統治菲律賓問題上持有類似觀點。這種擴張主義，在 19 世紀後半葉演變成純粹的領土擴張競賽，並在一定程度上促成了第一次世界大戰的爆發。
19 世紀帝國主義的極端畸形產物，則是 20 世紀的德國法西斯主義。這一意識形態不僅正當化了德國對非歐洲民族的統治權，甚至進一步主張德國人有權統治所有非日耳曼民族。然而，回顧歷史，希特勒（Hitler）及其意識形態只是歐洲發展進程中的一個病態支流，自二戰結束以來，任何形式的領土擴張行為的合法性已經徹底崩潰。自第二次世界大戰結束後，歐洲民族主義已經變得無法支撐實質的外交政策，因此19 世紀「大國行為模式」已經完全過時。自 1945 年以來，西歐國家表現出的最極端民族主義，不過是戴高樂主義（Gaullism），其影響僅限於無足輕重的外交姿態與文化政策。在那些已經達到歷史終結的國家，國際政治已遠遠不如經濟議題重要。
西方已開發國家仍然維持著龐大的國防體系，並在冷戰期間積極爭奪全球影響力，以應對共產主義的威脅。然而，這種行為的驅動力，主要來自外部的擴張主義意識形態，而並非國家本身的「自然競爭性」。如果我們要認真看待「新現實主義」（Neo-Realism）理論，那麼我們就必須相信，即使俄羅斯與中國從地球上消失，「自然」的競爭行為仍會在經濟合作與發展組織（OECD）國家之間重新浮現。換句話說，德國與法國將像 1930 年代那樣重新武裝自己，澳洲與紐西蘭將派遣軍事顧問互相阻止對方在非洲的勢力擴張，而美加邊境將重新築起軍事防線。這樣的假設顯然荒謬：在沒有馬克思列寧主義意識形態的世界中，世界政治更可能「共同市場化」（Common Marketization），而不會回歸 19 世紀的軍事競爭。事實上，在應對恐怖主義或利比亞問題時，歐洲國家的態度比美國更為拒斥武力，甚至連自衛戰爭的正當性都不願承認，這也顯示出自由主義世界正朝向更和平的方向發展。
因此，假設蘇聯擺脫其擴張主義的共產意識形態後，就會回到沙皇時代的對外政策，這一假設其實相當奇怪。它的前提是，人類意識的演進在這段時間內完全停滯，並且蘇聯雖然在經濟領域接受當前流行的自由市場理念，卻會在外交政策上回到與今日歐洲完全脫節的百年前模式。然而，這種情況並未發生在中國大陸。自從中國大陸開始改革開放後，其對外擴張主義與競爭意識幾乎消失：北京不再像 1960 年代那樣支持毛派游擊隊，也不再積極尋求在遙遠的非洲國家建立影響力。這並不是說當代中國大陸的外交政策沒有爭議之處，例如其在中東魯莽地出售彈道飛彈技術，以及北京政府仍然支持紅色高棉（Khmer Rouge）以對抗越南。但前者的動機主要來自商業利益，而後者則是冷戰時期意識形態對抗的殘餘。總體而言，今日的中國大陸更像戴高樂時期的法國，而非一戰前的德國。
然而，真正關鍵的問題是：蘇聯的菁英階層在多大程度上接受了「普世同質國家」（universal homogenous state）的意識形態？也就是說，他們是否已經內化了後希特勒時代的歐洲世界觀？根據他們的著作以及我個人的接觸來看，我毫不懷疑，聚集在戈巴契夫周圍的自由派蘇聯知識分子，在極短的時間內便接受了「歷史終結」的觀點。這在很大程度上要歸功於他們自勃列日涅夫時代以來，與更廣泛的歐洲文明世界保持的聯繫。蘇聯的「新思維」（New Political Thinking）可以看作這一觀點的總體表達，它所描繪的是一個由經濟問題主導的世界，在這個世界中，國家之間不再有意識形態上的重大衝突，因此，軍事武力的使用變得越來越不具正當性。正如蘇聯外交部長謝瓦爾德納澤（Eduard Shevardnadze）在 1988 年中所說：「兩種對立制度之間的鬥爭，不再是當代世界的主導趨勢。在現代階段，加速物質財富的生產，並以先進的科學與技術為基礎來公平分配財富，以及共同努力恢復並保護人類生存所必需的資源，這些議題已變得至關重要。」然而，「新思維」所代表的後歷史意識形態，並非蘇聯唯一的可能未來。蘇聯內部一直存在一股強烈的大俄羅斯沙文主義思潮，這股勢力在「開放政策」（glasnost）推行後獲得了更自由的表達空間。雖然在短期內，蘇聯可能會回歸傳統的馬克思列寧主義，以作為團結保守派勢力、恢復政府權威的手段，但與波蘭的情況類似，馬克思列寧主義作為一種動員意識形態，早已喪失其效力。在這面旗幟下，無法讓人民更努力工作，而支持者本身也已對其失去信心。但與傳統馬克思列寧主義的推廣者不同，蘇聯的極端民族主義者是真心信仰斯拉夫民族主義的，因此可以感覺到，法西斯主義這條道路在蘇聯或許仍未完全被堵死。
因此，蘇聯如今站在歷史的十字路口：它可以選擇走上 45 年前西歐的道路——這條道路也是大部分亞洲國家已經選擇的道路，亦即逐步融入國際自由秩序；或者，它可以選擇強調自身的獨特性，並繼續深陷歷史的糾葛。對於我們來說，蘇聯的選擇將至關重要，因為其龐大的國土與軍事實力仍然是我們的主要關切。如果蘇聯選擇後者，將繼續拖慢我們對「歷史終結」的全面認識，使我們難以完全擺脫歷史的影響。馬克思列寧主義首先在中國衰落，然後在蘇聯衰落，這將標誌著它作為一種具「世界歷史意義」的活躍意識形態的終結。雖然在馬納瓜（Managua）、平壤（Pyongyang）或劍橋（Cambridge, Massachusetts）等地，仍然會有零星的忠實信徒，但當世界上沒有任何一個主要國家真正實踐這一意識形態時，它就再也無法宣稱自己是人類歷史的「先鋒」。這種意識形態的死亡，意味著國際關係將日益「共同市場化」（Common Marketization），而大規模的國際衝突也將變得越來越不可能。但這並不意味著國際衝突將徹底消失。因為世界將被分為「已經進入歷史終結」的國家，與「仍然身陷歷史」的國家。這兩者之間的衝突仍然是可能的。此外，種族與民族主義衝突的強度可能仍會維持在高水平，甚至有所增加，因為這類衝突在某些後歷史國家內部，仍未完全解決。例如，巴勒斯坦人與庫德族、錫克教徒與泰米爾人、愛爾蘭天主教徒與瓦隆人（Walloons）、亞美尼亞人與阿塞拜疆人——這些族群之間的歷史怨恨仍然存在。因此，恐怖主義與民族解放戰爭仍將是國際議程上的重要問題。但從更宏觀的角度來看，大規模的戰爭，必須依賴仍然身陷歷史的國家來發動，而這些國家如今正在逐步消失。
歷史的終結，將是一個令人憂鬱的時代。對於人類尋求承認（recognition）的奮鬥，以及為純粹的抽象理想而奮不顧身的勇氣，乃至全球範圍的意識形態鬥爭——這些曾經激發人類的膽識、勇氣、想像力與理想主義的因素，將被經濟計算、技術問題的無休止解決、環境議題，以及對精緻消費需求的滿足所取代。在後歷史時代，將不再有偉大的藝術與哲學，只有對「人類歷史博物館」的永久維護。我能夠在自己內心深處，甚至在周圍的人群中，感受到對「歷史仍然存在的時代」的強烈懷舊情感。事實上，這種懷舊情感甚至將在一定程度上繼續推動後歷史世界的競爭與衝突。雖然我承認歷史終結的不可避免性，但對於1945 年以來建立的這種歐洲文明模式，以及其在大西洋與亞洲的延伸版本，我始終抱持著極為矛盾的情感。或許，對於歷史終結後「無聊時代」的恐懼，最終將再次引發歷史的回歸。
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