Not so long ago I heard some rather important public figure speaking on the radio say that we are currently “at the beginning of the middle of the end of the crisis”. For the umpteenth time I was amazed by the elegance with which our experts and bureaucrats use the Russian language. So I tried to make some sense of this phrase, and after giving it some thought I came to a surprising conclusion: the phrase with surprising accuracy expresses the condition of the intellects in our country (and perhaps even throughout the world) when it comes to assessing the current social-economic situation.

To express this more clearly, then it goes something like this: the crisis is supposedly coming to an end, and if you believe the stock market analysts it should have ended long ago. However, there is no real economic growth to speak of, and increases in production and consumption are expressed in tenths or even hundredths of a percent, while most of the symptoms of a social crisis continue to surround us. And to call this an “upswing” or a “recovery” is difficult even for professional optimists. In short, it’s all quite muddled.

Meanwhile, the crisis we are experiencing today, which began as a financial-economic crisis, quickly transformed into an ideological crisis. This latter crisis, as opposed to the former, hasn’t been overcome, and mainly because it hasn’t even been mentioned. As a result, we see a completely inadequate, absurdly contradictory and confused picture of the world, a picture that continues to become more complicated and entangled with new facts. The economy, as if in spite of itself, doesn’t appear to been on the rebound, but that’s not the most important calamity. 

The public consciousness is ailing no less than the economy, and thus it is impossible to analyze or understand the processes that are taking place, not to mention forecast into the future. The symptoms of the disease are quite similar throughout the world, but to various degrees of severity. In post-communist states, such as Russia and Ukraine, it is happening to a much severer degree than in the West. And this intellectual ailment could perhaps be called the Fukuyama Syndrome.

The American philosopher Francis Fukuyama, with whom this all began, has already gone out of fashion, and the thesis he proposed in the early 1990s about the end history today mainly provokes smirks. However, in truth, a large portion of the business, political and even intellectual elite of the world continues to live according to this thesis, and without being conscious of this.

Fukuyama’s idea of the end of history was based on the real success of capitalism, when toward the end of the 20th century all efforts to create socialist states or some other alternative to capitalism failed. From this he drew two conclusions. The first was that there is no such alternative to capitalism. The second (and less clearly formulated although no less significant) was that capitalism is inherently tied to liberal economics, and that there are no alternatives to the liberal economic model within the framework of capitalism. 

If the first thesis is at least quite debatable, then the second is nothing less than absurd and contrary to common sense, not to mention a well known fact in the history of middle-class society. However, it is this particular thesis that has become the foundation of the entire political and economic thinking of the contemporary elite and also is a cornerstone in the culture of the today’s liberal intelligentsia. 

It doesn’t come as a surprise the crisis has bewildered those who live in accordance with such an ideology. The possibility of a crisis did not fit into the minds of people believed in the infallibility of the market and the “natural laws” of liberal economic (although already in the 18th century it was known that periodically repeating crises and social upheavals were part of this system). When the neoliberal model was shaken, it was perceived as the end of capitalism, and then end of capitalism was seen as the end of the world, the apocalypse. And then it turned out that the end of the world had been postponed, and the panic was replaced by calm and they came to the conclusion that everything would fix itself, you justed have to wait. 

The fight against the crisis has essentially been, to speak in medical terms, a treatment of the symptoms, for which the only medicine is the injection of money into the economy. In other words, the physicians give the patient ever-increasing doses of painkiller while refusing not only to treat but also to even diagnose the disease. Structural changes not only are not taking place; all of the efforts of the ruling class are aimed at not allowing any such changes and leaving everything the same. It’s no surprise that the crisis, instead of ending, appears to linger on and on, getting deeper and become chronic in form, turning into a long-term depression from which there is not and will not be an escape until it is recognized that the rules of economic life need to be changed.

But no one wants to change anything. It is quite natural for the ruling class to be conservative. Why change something when their lives are just fine as they are?

Alas, the problem we face today is not so much the mindset of the elite as it is the deep and overwhelming conservatism of society, including those whose present life is not so great. The collapse of the communist system and experience in the following years of devastating reform have turned people away from any kind of change, even if they could theoretical turn out for the better. The lower levels of society are no less infected with the Fukuyama Syndrome than the upper levels, although no one would admit it out load (and most do not know this American philosopher’s name).

History hasn’t come to an end, but people do not want it to be reborn. They do not want to be a part of history; they don’t want to once again fall under its grindstone. And that’s understandable. But you can’t run away from history. You can only participate in it through your own actions or become a victim of the chaotic turn of events.

The ideological crisis facing the world today appears to be missing a “historical subject”. Nonetheless the drama will play itself out, regardless of whether there any main actors. Fate will take the lead role – the objective course of the social economic process, breaking plans and fates, destroying political institutions and disarraying economic structures. We can only hope that this unavoidable process of destruction doesn’t occur too quickly.

The economic crisis is staying put, rejecting the promises of both optimists and doomsdayers. Society has time. And if this time is used to clear up the conscious, to overcome the ideological crisis, then perhaps it will turn out that things are not so bad after all. This is not yet the end of the crisis, but it certainly is not the end of history.