End of history never came

History did not come to an end in June 1987 when Mikhail Gorbachev presented his "basic theses" to the top organ of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, whose top functionary he was, thereby legitimating the process of political and economic change that came to be known as perestroika. Nor did history come to an end when the effects of perestroika impacted on the economy and society of the Soviet Union's satellite states and synergised with endemic movements for change in these countries, which movements were characterised by a diversity of inspirational roots and goals, even in single countries.

Nor did, again, history come to an end when Günter Schabowski, replying to questions by Ansa's Riccardo Ehrman and Bild-Zeitung's Peter Brinkmann during the historic press conference in the evening of November 9, 1989, confirm that travel by GDR citizens to the Federal Republic and to West Berlin was permitted "sofort, unverzüglich" (immediately, with immediate effect). The fall of the Wall, Germany's reunification, the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 and its replacement by the Russian Federation: none of these - singly or together - brought about anything like the end of history announced by Professor Francis Fukuyama in 1989 and 1992.

The "end of history as such", as he called it, understood, in his own words, as "the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalisation of western liberal democracy as the final form of human government" did not come about. Not then, not in the 20 years since 1989. The globalisation of capitalism, its resounding success in China itself, the important international role of companies headquartered in states that recognise themselves in Islam, have not brought about the universal acceptance of the values of "West" or its political supremacy. Even less have the last two decades seen a pacification of the world. Nor is the beginning of the end of the burning problems that threaten planetary survival anywhere in sight. On the contrary.

This is what I argued on Roderick Agius' programme Kontro-Ezami on Net TV a few weeks ago. It was a pleasant conversation, as conversations with Noel Buttigieg Scicluna tend to be. His diplomatic experience prevails over ideological prejudice, resulting in a relaxed realism. Understandably the editorial sections of the programme focussed on the Malta summit between Bush senior and Gorbachev of December 2-3, 1989. I say "understandably" because it is quite normal for a political party to give prominence to any international event that appears to enhance its reputation. Ironically, one of the factors most often referred to by observers seeking to understand the choice of our country as the venue for this important event, the symbolism of its declared neutrality, was not mentioned once in the background commentary or by the personalities interviewed.

Only a one-sided consideration of the 1989 summit can ignore the significance of Malta's constitutional commitment to the status of "a neutral state actively pursuing peace, security and social progress among all nations by adhering to a policy of non-alignment and refusing to participate in any military alliance". Even if one were to argue - anachronistically - that non-alignment may not be relevant in a world with only one superpower, back in 1989 the world was still torn by allegiances to one of two superpowers. Moreover, although - back in 1989 - one of the two superpowers was evidently in decline, precisely because of its terminal instability, the very real possibility of backlashes from conservative elements within it, made the vision of a sudden flare-up not unrealistic.

I do not wish to belabour this point for the simple reason that, whatever the role of the Malta summit in the greater scheme of things, it too turned out not to have heralded the end of history in Prof. Fukuyama's sense or in any other sense at all. What is more interesting is the attempt by intellectuals close to the Nationalist Party - I am thinking especially of the first half of the 1990s - to cash in on the appeal of the "end of history" rhetoric. I will not pick on the weakest of such attempts but, on the contrary, on the strongest. Take Joe Friggieri's short essay "Lyotard, Fukuyama u Aħna" in Politika, a journal published by the Nationalist Party and edited by Mario Tabone, in its May 1994 issue.

Prof. Friggieri was of course aware that the French philosopher Lyotard's attack on meta-narratives would be emasculated if it was not applied to all such overarching narratives, not excluding the great religions and the liberal democratic discourses emerging from the enlightenment. Although lesser intellectuals would have mixed together the anti-meta-narrative and the end-of-history themes, Prof. Friggieri warned his readers that strictly speaking the two were incompatible. Fukuyama spoke of the final victory of the "western" meta-narrative over all other meta-narratives. A consistent Lyotardian position spelt a plague on all possible houses.

This commendable distinction, however, did not prevent Prof. Friggieri from depicting the 1987-1992 government and the first two years of the 1992-1996 one (he was writing in 1994) as a "return to the matriċi" (matrix), to the right path and the preceding 16 years as "a parenthesis full of contradictions and paradoxes, a strange adventure that took us against the current". Without committing himself to the finality of Fukuyama's end-of-history thesis, a light reading of his article would have certainly impressed the politically inebriated readers of Politika that the PN was the end of Malta's history and would be there forever.

I prefer what Norberto Bobbio calls "a lay vision (not a mythico-religious one) of history, a liberal and realistic one (not totalising and utopian), whereby nothing is definitive". As the title of a PN document published in 1993 says, "change continues".

Dr Vella blogs at watersbroken.wordpress.com.