What happens when there is no large, vibrant middle class?

It's a sign of these unsettled times that the analyst who famously announced "the end of history" in 1989, when the Soviet empire was crumbling and liberal, free-market democracy seemed inevitable, has just published a new essay with the provocative title "The Future of History."

Francis Fukuyama's article appears in the January edition of the journal Foreign Affairs. It offers a good introduction to what may be the biggest political issue of 2012 -- the decline of the middle class in the United States and around the world. Without this middle class, Fukuyama argues, liberal democracy loses its anchor.

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Fukuyama is a useful bellwether. "The End of History" was widely cited as the apogee of post-Cold War optimism, and then derided after Sept. 11, 2001, when history seemed to have returned with a vengeance.

Fukuyama isn't revising his enthusiasm for liberal democracy, which he still sees as "the default ideology around much of the world today." Instead, he's questioning whether the global market may be the enemy of liberal democracy, rather than its handmaiden. In 1989, he saw the technology-driven global marketplace -- and its ever spreading wealth -- as a crucial reason for "the end of history" and the universal embrace of democratic values. Now, he worries that globalization is eroding the middle classes that are, historically, the bulwark of a liberal political order.

http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20120105/OPINION16/201050307/What-happens-when-there-no-large-vibrant-middle-class-