ABSTRACT
In a provocative and well-received article, 'The End of History', Francis Fukuyama announces in a quietly apocalyptic voice that the failure of socialism means an unabashed victory of economic and political liberalism the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government. Fukuyama's brilliant and thoughtful argument is a symptom of the hegemonic power of liberalism in American thought. In many other areas, liberal ideology has in America proved itself to be the enemy rather than the friend of civil society. The East Asian examples show that Western achievements can be reproduced, and for that matter surpassed, without any acceptance of 'the Western idea' of which Fukuyama speaks when he refers to 'the triumph of the West'. Even if it is successful, however, the Soviet reform policy is unlikely to result in a triumph of Western liberalism.
