Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man was published in 1992, causing an exceptional stir across political and media circles at the time. Its author, an American of Japanese descent, was then an obscure academic professor. He would later become a prominent figure on the international political and intellectual scene, among the leading thinkers associated with the neoconservatives. The Iraq War, however, proved to be a decisive turning point that led to his break with them and his embrace of liberalism.
In recent days, Fukuyama's name has once again been circulating in international media circles following the publication of his book In the Realm of the Last Man, an autobiography. I read it, only to discover that the realm in question is walled off, accessible only to specialists in political and philosophical thought. I found very little of what I had expected from an autobiography. What I found was a different kind of life story, one that is essentially a life told through ideas. For this very reason, the non-specialist reader may find it difficult to follow the intellectual and philosophical debates presented throughout the book among thinkers of different political and philosophical orientations.
These lines are not intended as a review of the book, nor do I intend to become immersed in a discussion of the issues it raises. But as a Libyan reader, I was particularly interested in the author's account of meetings with Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and his son, Saif al-Islam, during two visits he made to Libya in 2006 and 2007. He had been invited by a British-American public relations firm that had been hired to polish the regime's image in Western circles, so that its leader would appear to be a political thinker rather than the authoritarian ruler and dictator he was generally portrayed as in the American and Western media. This was followed by invitations to a number of well-known American, British and European political thinkers to visit Libya, meet Gaddafi and engage in dialogue with him. Francis Fukuyama was among them.
At their first meeting, in the desert city of Sabha, the capital of the south, Gaddafi caught the American thinker off guard with a smile, reminding him that they belonged to the same club, as both were authors of famous books. He was, of course, referring to his own Green Book, and told Fukuyama that meeting him was a valuable opportunity.
In his notes, Fukuyama described Gaddafi as an intelligent man, but said that his education was no different from that of any military officer. He gave as an example a discussion they had about the mechanisms through which wealth is created. Gaddafi surprised his guest by putting forward a view that ran counter to the most basic principles of economics. He insisted that wealth was not created or produced through work, production and innovation, but rather that it was "taken," in the most direct and literal sense: stolen and seized.
This view does not seem surprising when one considers the Colonel's own record of seizing power, confiscating property and nationalizing economic sectors throughout his years in power. It was as though he was projecting his own logic of "taking" what did not belong to him onto his understanding of wealth creation as a whole. His naivety on the subject surprised the American academic and led him into a deeper discussion, in which he cited the mechanisms that had enabled a wealthy American such as Bill Gates to build his fortune.
What was particularly strange was that Gaddafi's stubbornness suddenly disappeared. He became convinced by Fukuyama's argument and acknowledged that wealth could indeed be created rather than seized or stolen. According to the Colonel, however, that acknowledgment applied only to the possibility of creating wealth in Western countries.
Fukuyama says that after returning to America, he received a call from one of the officials at the public relations firm, who told him that in the following days Colonel Gaddafi had delivered a speech in which he acknowledged that very point.
The discussion was not limited to the creation of wealth. It inevitably extended to the Colonel's Green Book. Gaddafi went to considerable lengths to persuade Fukuyama of his theory of popular democracy, based on people's congresses, which he presented as a "third theory." Fukuyama, however, writes in his book that the Colonel's book was nothing more than a crude device for justifying his authoritarian rule and despotism.
Part of the chapter was also devoted to Fukuyama's meeting with Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, focusing particularly on his studies at the London School of Economics, where he pursued a doctoral degree. The author noted the financial scandals that later surrounded that degree, which came to light following the outbreak of the Libyan uprising in February 2011.
Fukuyama revealed that he had received an offer from the consulting firm behind the invitation to serve as a reader and reviewer of Saif al-Islam's dissertation, but declined. He admitted that he was extremely grateful for that decision, because his name was later spared from appearing on lists of those implicated in the scandal and the media uproar it generated, which affected the reputation of British universities because of the attention they gave to money.
What is particularly noteworthy is that the image-polishing campaign that brought Fukuyama and others to Libya to burnish the regime's image ultimately resulted in Fukuyama himself becoming one of the witnesses to the gulf between that manufactured image and the reality that Libyans had experienced firsthand.
