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About political legitimacy
In a despotism society, legitimacy is a harder problem since the elite needs to see the single despot as a legitimate ruler.
In an oligarchy republic, one politician can exploit popular support to overcome other competitors, and in extremes become a despotist.
The so-called democracy is basically populist politics normalized in an oligarchy.
The legitimacy problem - i.e. how the members of the society accept the political institution, is only a problem within the elites. For the non-elite population, such questions can be easily settled through political manipulation, like Cesar and Hitler.
When there is a legitimacy crisis, it's a crisis among the elite. Some of them may utilize popular support to overthrow the institution, but it's a kind of manipulation - not that the population awakens to some more legitimate alternatives.
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The weakness of the main argument in End of History
The foundational idea of the End of History is inherited from Hegel - man's desire for recognition overriding other desires (mainly preservation) is something that transcends humans, something that proves man's freedom.
This is an outdated view that sees humans as isolated individuals rather than members of social groups. This desire for recognition is probably a product of group competition and the recognition is about one's worth to the community in the context of fierce group competition between communities. The narrative of intragroup fighting for recognition creating the slave and master didn't exist.
Without a better understanding of this desire for recognition through the lens of group competition, ideas built on top of it are flaky as well. For example, we don't know which desire is more prominent: the desire for equal recognition for each member or the desire for the recognition of the community as a whole. In modernity, the further is represented by liberal democracy while the latter by nationalism.
In *End of History,* Fukuyama took one paragraph to dismiss nationalism as an irrational one in contrast with the desire for recognition at the individual level. This distinction, as demonstrated above, is not well-founded.
The argument for liberal democratic being more rational is that it's the only way to reconcile competing desires for individual recognition. This is based on the assumption that individual recognition dominates the projected national recognition. I think there is a lack of historical evidence for this assertion. It's more evident that the majority of a social group is prone to manipulation, be it religion, ideologies, etc while liberal democracy is just one of them to support elected orligarchy. And that is supported by group competition theories.
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About "the logical terminal point in the achievement of absolute self-consciousness"
Hegel declared this as the end of the history and went on to claim that liberal societies were free from contradiction and would therefore bring historical dialectic to a close.
My critique: can we claim absolute self-consciousness when we still don't know how evolution history formed our biological nature? Is that something attainable only after theories like EDSC is in man's consciousness?
As for "liberal societies free from contradiction", is the universal equality and the need for struggling in social group competition a contradiction? A liberal society can't just focus on its own principles of equal rights, it still has to serve another survival function: to compete with other social groups, liberal or not. Isn't that a contradiction?
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Competition between states is less evil than a global totalitarian regime.
Wars are unavoidable when there are states and competition between them. But without state competition, there is no guarantee that a unified global liberalism democracy community won't fall into a totalitarian regime.
Most of the analysis from Fukuyama's end of history would fall apart in a scenario in which state competition no longer exists.
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The end of history when group selection is eliminated?
As long as social groups still compete against each other, the political structure of those groups has to serve the function of competition. The so-called liberalism democracy as of now is still more like an oligarchy republic (as envisioned by the founding father). Will it morph into something different when social group competition completely disappears? I.e. when there is only one social group: the human race. Does that mean will can have a more radical democracy? E.g. instead of voting for policies, each person simply submit their prioritization of her desires and needs. Then the government (human or AI) will simply produce a policy that maximize utility for the entire human population.
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Hypothesis
Nationalism is a new slave ideology
Slave ideology as defined by Hegel and Nietzsche when referred to Christianity. A nationalist takes perfect satisfaction for his desire for recognition in his national pride. He projects the recognition of his state onto the recognition of himself. And it probably has a much better biological root than Christianity.
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