'"Economy" melted the matter of this & every other world to fit its presuppositions - the greatest theocratic achievement in a history that was never human'
The Best of All Possible World-Systems Theodicy: Capitalist Realism & The End of History
On the symmetry between Leibniz’s ‘best of all possible worlds’ theodicy and Fukuyama’s ‘end of history’ thesis
by Max Ramsahoye
The Allegory of the Earthquake of 1755, João Glama Ströberle. 1756 to 1792 . National Museum of Ancient Art, Lisbon, Portugal.
The 1755 Lisbon Earthquake roused Voltaire to write his Poem on the Lisbon Disaster. According to Adorno, writing over 200 hundred years later, the ‘earthquake of Lisbon sufficed to cure Voltaire of the theodicy of Leibniz’. According to the critical theorists Freyenhagen, ‘What the earthquake of Lisbon did to Voltaire, Auschwitz did to Adorno’: the realisation that we are ‘living [not in the best of all possible worlds, but] in a radically evil world’.
❝ For it must be cried out, at a time when some have the audacity to neo-evangelize in the name of the ideal of a liberal democracy that has finally realized itself as the ideal of human history: never have violence, inequality, exclusion, famine, and thus economic oppression affected as many human beings in the history of the earth and of humanity. Instead of singing the advent of the ideal of liberal democracy and of the capitalist market in the euphoria of the end of history, instead of celebrating the 'end of ideologies' and the end of the great emancipatory discourses, let us never neglect this obvious, macroscopic fact, made up of innumerable, singular sites of suffering: no degree of progress allows one to ignore that never before, in absolute figures, have so many men, women and children been subjugated, starved or exterminated on the earth. ❞
— Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx
Leibnizian Optimism: The ‘Best of All Possible Worlds’ Theodicy
In response to the problem of evil, Leibniz submitted that the existing world is the ‘best of all possible worlds’. With this move, Leibniz eliminated the metaphysical and moral gap between the world as it is (the actual) and the world as it could be (the potential); accordingly, metaphysical violence does not exist. The implication, from the perspective of modal ethics, is that the suffering that exists in our world, as the best of all possible worlds, is the minimum amount of suffering that could possibly exist; as all other possible worlds, as worse possible worlds, contain a greater amount of suffering (or contain less first-order suffering followed by less second-order goods).
By choosing to create the best of all possible worlds over worse possible worlds, even though suffering still exists within it, God's act of creation was the most moral act possible. Hence, the best of all possible worlds theodicy, restores the legitimacy of an omnibenevolent God and produces the subjectivity in Leibnizian (metaphysical) optimists that the world as it is is the most good.
Fukuyamian Optimism: The ‘Best of All Possible World-Systems’ Theodicy
‘Capitalism realism is the idea that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it.’ ‘Fukuyama’s thesis [is] that history has climaxed with liberal capitalism’.
– Mark Fischer, ‘Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?’
‘the end of history...the end-point of mankind's ideological evolution’, ‘an unabashed victory of political and economic liberalism’ ‘the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to Western liberalism’
– Francis Fukuyama, ‘The End of History?’
In response to the problem of suffering under capitalism, capitalist realist’s claim that capitalism is the best of all possible world-systems. With this move, capitalist realists’ eliminate the structural and moral gap between the world as it is, actually-existing capitalism, and the world as it could be, a potentially-existing post-capitalism; accordingly, structural violence relative to alternative systems does not exist, only structural violence relative to variations of capitalism. The implication, from the perspective of comparative economics, is that the suffering that exists under the ideal reformed variation of capitalism, as the best of all possible world-systems, is the minimum amount of suffering that could possibly exist as all other possible world-systems, as worse possible world-systems, produce a greater amount of suffering.
Hence, by preserving and refining capitalism and preventing the transition to worse possible world-systems, capitalist realist’s are ostensibly doing the most good. Consequently, capitalist realists, produced by their belief that capitalism is the best of all possible world-systems, perceive (preserving and reforming) capitalism relative to all other possible systems to be morally good (green), or at least morally permissible (yellow) and perceive (transitioning to) alternative systems as morally bad (red).
