139 THE ROLE OF SOLIDARITY IN AN OPEN SOCIETY Andrzej Kobyliński In 1989, Francis Fukuyama published a widely discussed article The End of History?, whose main ideas were developed three years later in a famous book entitled The End of History and the Last Man 1 . The American philosopher argued that the fall of Communism in Eastern and Central Europe meant the death of history understood as Hegel’s war of worldviews. From this perspective, the events of 1989 brought not only the end of the Cold War, but were first of all the victory of liberal democracy as the ultimate form of government*. The diagnosis made by the author of The End of History proved to be essentially false on two points. Firstly, Fukuyama was wrong to announce the beginning of the rule of liberal democracy around the entire globe. We know very well the rule of totalitarian regimes continues in certain parts of the world until this very day, and it is a safe prediction democracy will not appear in many countries in the foreseeable future. Secondly, Fukuyama was not right to believe there existed no more history understood as a conflict of ideas. His words concerning the end of history sound particularly incredible after September 11, 2001, since the current social and political situation has been analyzed again in terms of a conflict of civilizations and war of cultures. The fundamental thesis of The End of History, concerning the supremacy of liberal democracy, which in our civilization has never had any serious rivals, would be difficult to challenge, however. No other form of social and national life appears today to be equally good or just. In this sense, this regime is the crowning achievement of history: it may and should be improved, but it cannot be replaced with any better form. 1. Liberal Democracy and an Open Society Liberal democracy can be defined as a regime in which people maximize such goods as freedom or self-government in the conditions of equality. Of course, there is no single definitive model of a liberal society today. Instead, we are dealing with a mosaic of various concepts, considerably differing from one another. Representatives of the 1 Cf. FUKUYAMA, F.: The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Free Press, 1992.