A Review of Fukuyama’s Liberalism and Its Discontents

What remains constant is Fukuyama’s reliance on transhistorical psychological models of immutable human nature, rather than an analysis of material and economic relations, to explain the current fragility of liberal democracy.

While Fukuyama does not abandon a commitment to the capitalist market, he avers that, under neoliberalism, the “valid insight into the superior efficiency of markets evolved into something of a religion, in which state intervention was opposed as a matter of principle.”

The review has a misleading title. Fukuyama, according to the review itself, does not argue that or has reached the conclusion that “socialism is the only alternative to liberalism.”