Railways and The End Of History

I was rolling a model railway car over the cover of Francis Fukuyama's book "The End Of History". I wondered what it meant, if anything. I had just repaired the car and was running it on the book's cover to see if it was working smoothly. 

It may sound mischievous of me thinking that a model railway car and The End Of History could have something in common. It sounds absurd. But as I stared at them both, wondering what possible connection they might have, it came to me that it had to do with an order, a railway order and a world order. Looking at the railway car I  began thinking of all the railways in the world.  And I thought, without railway systems and the networks they established throughout the world there would be no end of history as Fukuyama postulated. What he postulated is that humankind has arrived at a final world order in human governance. And as I see it, that final world order could not have come without the initial order railways brought to the world, which was quite significant and revolutionary. The railways brought an organization and a standardization to the world that had never existed before. Without that organization and standardization occurring first it is very doubtful we would have reached the end point in human governance Fukuyama believes we’ve reached today.

The railway ushered in the modern world. For one, it increased human mobility, thus facilitated democracy and individualism, fundamental building blocks of modernity and progress. It was the first form of networking, starting off the complex and feedback systems that would run and connect the modern world. It introduced the world to new methods of communication and the time zones that would help things run more smoothly. It expanded the management skills essential for large enterprises to maintain and sustain our future. In all it helped bridge the differences between nations in a common activity.

‘The end of the line’ is a railway terminology. It refers to a terminus, a train station at the end of a rail line. There is a similarity with Fukuyama's The End Of  History and its idea that we have reached a terminus in human governance. However, Fukuyama is not saying that because we have reach an end point we’ve come to a finish and there is no more to accomplish. We can still journey on. The railway terminus, like the end point it human governance, doesn’t mean we have come to a complete stop or reached an absolute but to a reference point from which to expand. What the terminus at the end of history is saying is that we reached an end but not an end end, for  we can improve on what we have ended up with.

   

Just to explain, Fukuyama's end of history treatise was predicated on the collapse of communism and the downing of the Berlin Wall in 1989. To him it meant that the battle between East and West was over and the West had won. For years East and West, Communism vs Democracy,  had been in a power struggle to determine what form of human governance the world would most benefit from. Today, after centuries of experimentation with many types of government, Fukuyama has observed that we are now left with one, the liberal democracy, not a governance that just materialized but that has been fomenting in the West for centuries. 

Globalization has been integrating and unifying the world for centuries, at least since the time of Christopher Columbus coming to the New World. And throughout the centuries many forms of human governance have been employed, from monarchies to authoritarianism to the liberal democracy that is in ascendency today. One thing that Fukuyama argues about why liberal democracy triumphed is because it has proven best at maintaining and sustaining our modern world, and best at meeting human needs and aspirations. But one thing he didn’t delve into was that as the world has integrated and become more interdependent under globalization there was need for a standardized system of doing business. For efficiency and continuity it could no longer do with competing systems that tended to obstruct the other. The world has been on a trajectory of consolidation. It’s hard to imagine History having a trajectory, an aim, such as devising means of sustainability, like railways and liberal democracy. 

A further connection between the two is duality. With the railway it is obvious, there are two parallel tracks on which trains run. And the end of history culminates with a dualistic form of human governance, liberal democracy, liberal satisfying human material needs, democracy, idealistic needs. If there is a difference it’s that with railway tracks the twain shall never meet since that would defeat its function. But with liberal democracy the twain often meets and clash, challenging the other so that they remain vital and legitimate (which is another story). The rigid steel tracks of railways are meant to stay separate while the to strands (double helix) of liberal democracy have evolved to mingle with each other.

I don’t thing it’s an accident or coincidence  that the railway and liberal democracy were invented in the same nation, Britain, a nation that was at the forefront of building the modern world. 

                                                                             xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I'd like to mention the Trans-Siberian Railway, a video of which I watched the other day. Tsar Nicholas II really pushed for it to be built, for the honor and glory of Russia. I am thinking that by building this railroad, which was devilishly difficult because of the terrains it went through, the Tsar may have sown the seeds of  his own demise. Without that railroad it would have been very difficult for the Bolsheviks to bring the forces of revolution together in such a vast country. The railway was a network that played right into the hands of  the revolutionaries. Furthermore, the Tsar spent so much money on the railway that there was little money left for social programs, programs that may have ameliorated the discontent among his people, thus preventing the Russian Revolution.