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25 OPINION Bill Clinton's New Democrats won two elections, Tony Blair's New Labour won the first of three victories, Paul Keating's Labor Party gov- erned until 1996 in Australia and in Germany Gerhard Schröder's SPD formed an al- liance with the Greens. There was, as my colleague Richard Carr argued, a march of the moderates in this decade, as Blair and Clinton searched for a "third way" be- tween the free-market capital- ism of Reagan and Thatcher, and the state-led ideal of the USSR. Although the third way was not an ideology, it was based on a specific set of ideas and ideals, formulated by thinkers like the sociologist Anthony Giddens, who advo- cated introducing a "differ- ent framework" that avoided "the bureaucratic, top-down government favoured by the old left and the aspiration of the right to dismantle govern- ment altogether". This was a short-lived hiatus between the march of neoliberalism that characterised the 1980s and the 2000s, but it showed that ideas still mattered as mod- erate politicians sought to theorise their pragmatism. Despite this, the global victory of liberal democracy assumed by Fukuyama did not happen. He suggested that in China, "the pull of the lib- eral idea continues to be very strong as economic power devolves and the economy be- comes more open to the out- side world". But the Chinese Communist Party continued to refuse the democratic demand. This was despite Fukuyama's belief that: "The student demonstra- tions in Beijing that broke out first in December 1986 and recurred recently … were only the beginning of what will in- evitably be mounting pressure for change in the political system as well." Yes, China has continued with its market-based reforms and 850m people have been lifted out of poverty. But there has been nothing to suggest that it will reform politically. Liberal democracy is as far away today as it was in 1989. And in Russia, Boris Yelt- sin – Gorbachev's successor – was more concerned with establishing the free market than democracy. There was a belief in the 1990s that Rus- sia's transition to a free-mar- ket liberal democracy would be smooth, but the bombing of parliament in 1993, the terrible consequence of eco- nomic shock therapy, and the reliance on oligarchs to keep Yeltsin in power, undermined any claim that Russia could move towards anything but a managed democracy. A bleak reality Fukuyama's conclusion – that the end of the "world- wide ideological struggle" would be "replaced by eco- nomic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems, environmental concerns, and the satisfaction of sophisti- cated consumer goods" – was proving to be wrong. Anti-globalisers challenged the new world order in the late 1990s and anarchists, socialists, anti-poverty cam- paigners and religious groups came together to reject the emerging global order that put profit before people. From Birmingham in Britain to Seattle in the US, the WTO- vision of the world inspired protest and new thinking amongst liberal and social democrats. Even though no coherent idea emerged to unite the various groups, the post-1989 environment helped bring people together to discuss shaping the world along different socio-econom- ic and political lines. So rather than taking 1989 as the point when history ended, we can see it as the point when it moved into a new stage. The "victory of liberalism" lasted far less time than Fukuyama predicted. He was right to state that "the struggle between two op- posing systems is no longer a determining tendency of the present-day era", but was wrong to see a future where "material wealth" was built up and distributed fairly, or where "the resources neces- sary for mankind's survival" were protected. Instead, in the 30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, a rapacious capitalism emerged from the neoliberal turn of the 1980s and the gap between rich and poor has grown ever wider. And then the crash... The weakness of the neo- liberal economic model that had developed in the 1980s became evident in 2008, with the most serious global financial crisis since the Great Depression. This inspired new thinking about globalisation and gave currency to con- cerns about inequality and a deregulated financial sector. But as yet, there is no con- sensus as to which way liber- alism, democracy and capital- ism will go. After the global crash, there was a renewed interest in both Keynesian- ism and Marxism. Electoral victories for politicians on the left like Jacinda Arden in New Zealand and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the US sug- gests a wider disillusionment with neoliberalism. Discussions about a Green New Deal also ties new think- ing about capitalism to the most serious problem the world faces. The prevailing wind in global politics may be with the right, but there is no agreement over the future shape of global capi- talism among supporters of open economies and borders and advocates of economic nationalism. Fukuyama's assumption that the forward march of liberal- ism was inevitable proved to be incorrect, and we should note with caution the prob- lems that such an expectation created. Liberalism has come to be seen as "the god that failed" in the former Eastern Bloc. A new opinion poll also finds that many citizens from these countries feel that de- mocracy is being threatened. Fukuyama spoke too soon. Liberal democracy offered a framework for the discussions about 21st-century politics, but it is now just one op- tion and may not even be the chosen one. A different, less liberal, strand of capitalism based on surveillance capital- ism or the neoliberal assault on democracy may yet define the future. Or progressive politicians may once again find a col- lective voice and reshape the world along different demo- cratic lines. But 30 years after the Berlin Wall fell and history suppos- edly ended, we can see a new battleground for alternative visions of the future being laid. And with that being the case, 1989 should be seen as the point when history started again. maltatoday | SUNDAY • 10 NOVEMBER 2019