art-e-conomy _ reader - marko stamenkovic

party. The present situation, however, carries implications beyond these temporary
conclusions (which is not to say that new tendencies could already be outlined with
absolute certainty). Nationalism has failed, but it has not been replaced by new
and constructive integrative models and opportunities. Driven by their short-term
objectives, various political and economic interests groups have tried instead to fill
the present vacuum. Hence the diffident, indecisive and hesitant attitudes in reaction
to the defeat of nationalism.
The various expectations concerning post-socialist nationalism have also been
well represented at the level of political and social rhetoric. Two important notions of
Hungarian political terminology have been derived from the ‘discourse’ of nationalism:
‘populism’ (previously not in use in Hungarian political terminology) and ‘exclusion’
(also only interpretable within the framework of the nationalist ‘discourse’). The
defeat of nationalism is also reflected in current rhetoric (and so are the two most
important consequences of this defeat: the transformation of nationalism into one
particular movement of the well-known ‘New Right’, and the post-nationalist state
of general intellectual confusion).
The application of the ‘end of history’ ‘discourse’ to the analysis of the post-socialist
transition relies on Francis Fukuyama’s famous theory. With some exaggeration it
could be argued that Fukuyama’s theory is the only systematic intellectual response
to the changes in 1989. It deserves credit for recounting the ‘conflict of values’, in
the course of which the values of human-rights oriented liberalism, emerging in the
middle of the 1970s, have overcome the values of feasible socialism (provided that
socialism in its pragmatic phase has concerned itself with the representation of
values at all). It is also remarkable that Fukuyama has extended his account of the
conflict of values, tracing the values of feasible socialism back to Marxism, Marx’s
original notions and Hegel’s philosophy. In this way he is able to put Gorbatschev’s
abandoning of the legitimations and aspirations of feasible socialism into a historical
and even universal perspective. Fukuyama’s theory cannot present an exhaustive
interpretation of the various processes of the post-socialist transition anymore.
Nevertheless, the insufficiency of his theory is not due to any particular shortcoming,
but to the fact that there has been no formal theoretical attempt to put a concretised
version of Fukuyama’s universal theory to use in individual instances. This insufficiency
corresponds precisely to the fact that the post-socialist transition lacks a theoretical
model. For in one way or another this theoretical model should have been based on
Fukuyama’s theory.
The ways in which political and social rhetoric reflected the philosophically-oriented
‘end of history’ ‘discourse’ has also failed to fulfil previous expectations. Political
journalism has represented one level of this rhetoric with almost ritualistic critical
attacks on Fukuyama, always arguing that history does go on and ‘it has not come
to an end’. This negative rhetoric does not only reveal an indifference towards the
philosophical substance of Fukuyama’s theory (unjustifiably reducing a theoretical
‘discourse’ to an ordinary political utterance), but also exposes distinct political aims.
Those rejecting Fukuyama at this rhetorical level understand his theory to be claiming
the victory of liberalism as a political movement which would also imply the defeat of
conservative or socialist movements. It is unfortunate and will not be without further
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