If you want confirmation that US academic writing is in crisis, look no further than Francis Fukuyama (he of the End of History and adherent of the Remnant Ronald Reagan Church of Latter-Day Neocons). His latest piece in Newsweek and the London Times is par for the course: His still strong historicist ideology interwoven with historical un- and half-truths and leavened with rather trite received wisdom.
If I had submitted something like this in university, getting laughed out of the room would have been the least of my worries.
Mr. Fukuyama's article "The Fall of America, Inc." appeared in the 20th October edition of Newsweek and, in a shortened but no better version under the title "The Damage to Brand USA Needs Urgent Repair", in the 14th October edition of the Rupert Murdoch's London Times.
The gist of the article is the proposition that Ronald Reagan created the "Brand USA" on two pillars: (i) Messianic Deregulation and (ii) Messianic Democracy. Both these pillars were "right" at the time as they fell within the Great Sweep of the Forces of History.
Now, however, the first pillar has fallen and the second is shaking, so it is time for America to again buff up its brand.
All this is arrant nonsense. It's shopworn ideological claptrap made worse by gross ignorance of even recent history, and is not even logically argued.
The ideological basis for Mr. Fukuyama is historicism: The notion that there are inescapable laws of historical progress which move in cycles. It is impossible to resist a cycle - those who do get crushed. Yet there is room for - and History needs - the Great Man of the Times who aids History in the birth of the cycle and brings it to full flowering. The old rules no longer apply - the New Cycle has New Rules. The Great Man of the Times has to aid in the destruction of the Old to enable the birth of the New. This is pure Hegel and, with the unauthorised borrowing of Nietzsche, underlies all totalitarian ideologies, especially orthodox Marxism (for a critique of historicism, see Sir Karl Popper's The Poverty of Historicism).
Historicism is not just nonsense, it's dangerous nonsense.
I will just pick out some of the factual falsehoods in Mr. Fukuyama's narrative, but before I do that, a word on the notion of "brand" - maybe unwittingly, Mr. Fukuyama reveals that it is not about convictions, it is about projecting an image without necessary link to reality (think of FOX News' "Fair and Balanced"). The problem America has had in the world is that while Americans like to see themselves as the Good Guys, for others to see you that way, you actually have to BE the Good Guys at least most of the time. Whether or not the pictures of Abu Ghraib are published does not matter: The hapless Iraqis who were there know, and that's what matters.
Conceiving of a "Brand USA" or a "Brand GOP" is exactly the problem. Far too much effort in the US is spent on selling the sizzle instead of worrying about the quality of the steak.
To the facts:
- Linking the international promotion-of-democracy element of the "US Brand" to Ronald Reagan.
This is wrong on so many different levels it's hard to begin; if anybody can be credited with making human rights and democracy a central element of US foreign policy it has to be Jimmy Carter, not Reagan. Reagan used the words when they suited (or when they showed up on his cue cards), but not by any stretch of the imagination can the mining of Nicaraguan harbours, the support of the terrorist Contras and the illegal double-dealing with Iran be captured under the concept of ethical foreign policy.
For me as a Swiss, who have had democratic forms of government since 1291, and no doubt for citizens of other democracies around the world, the US' tendency of arrogating to themselves the sole proprietorship of the notion of "Democracy" is deeply offensive. The grossly illegal conduct (in international law) that the US administration is seeking to justify under that label only adds to the disgust. The sad thing is that the US's conduct while stridently waving the label "democracy" challenges the true democrats to point out the failings of the US practice - it is this that causes disenchantment with the notion of democracy, not that democracy has failed. Democracy has not failed.
- The Notion that Deregulation is New
Mr. Fukuyama argues that the messianic deregulation promoted under Reagan's aegis was completely new, a paradigm shift in economic thinking. That is historical nonsense. The uncritical deregulation since Reagan was no more than an effort to return to the type of economy known to economic historians as Manchester Liberalism: A time when children pulled dollies through coal mines for 12 hours a day and the unregulated pollution from coal furnaces poisoned the cramped and unsanitary tenements in the slums of 19th Century early industrial England. Reagan's deregulation was no jump into the unknown - it was a deliberate reactionary move to roll back not just the New Deal, but return to Manchesterism and in the process to destroy any chance of a new New Deal.
There are some other casual remarks that stick in my European craw: The proposition that "[in Europe], the less-educated, working-class citizens vote reliably socialist, communist and other left-leaning parties". In fact, the only reliable leftist voters are intellectuals.
The other is that European workers are mollycoddled by job protection, holiday allowance, limited work-week etc., all unrealistic and unsustainable "benefits" that weaken European workers' productivity. Study after study has shown that while European job markets have their structural weaknesses, European-style job market regulation has served Europe well in promoting social and political stability and general economic prosperity - countries like the Scandinavian ones, the Netherlands and Switzerland are obvious cases in point. True, it is easier to get rich quickly in the US; but on the other hand, the wealth discrepancies in the US are now more comparable to a third-world dictatorship than a liberal democracy. The concept of "worker productivity" is anyway deeply flawed: A US job shipped to China appears as increase in US productivity, which explains a great part of the "increase" in US productivity.
Finally, it is hard to discern what Mr. Fukuyama's argument ultimately is: Has the "brand" failed because the larger sweep of History is leaving Messianic Deregulation and Messianic Democracy behind and advancing to the next stage (to Messianic Corporatism redivivus)? Or are we still in the Messianic Deregulation and Messianic Democracy Cycle of History, only its practitioners have failed? Mr. Fukuyama argues both at different times.
It's not that Mr. Fukuyama does not address real issues or that all he says is wrong - the problem is that he has to fiddle the facts to fit his ideological preconceptions. But his inability or unwillingness to actually apply his propositions to his logical argument leave his article a complete shambles.