A Dim View of a ‘Posthuman Future’

It was in listening to a speech by Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev
that Dr. Fukuyama had the idea for his first book. Hegel, the
19th-century German philosopher, believed history would culminate in a
constitutional state or, in modern terms, a liberal democracy, whereas
Marx saw a communist state as the likely end point. Hearing Mr.
Gorbachev declare surprisingly in a speech one day that the essence of
socialism was competition, Dr. Fukuyama recalled in an interview, “I
called up a friend and said if Gorbachev was saying that, this is the
end of history,” meaning that Hegel’s prediction had triumphed over
Marx’s.