Revisiting an essay by Professor Hiroshi Furuta, this chapter questions the idea that history inevitably progresses.
It examines Hegelian and Marxist historical views, the realities of socialist regimes, and how agricultural collectivization resembled a return to ancient economic structures.
The text also critiques modern media narratives and calls for a reassessment of historical understanding.

2019-01-16
It became disastrous because the state directly exploited farmers through “agricultural collectivization.”
Was this not a return to an ancient economy?
I am reprinting the chapter I posted on September 4, 2018, titled “Was this not a return to an ancient economy?”
The following is from an article titled “There Is No ‘Progress’ or ‘Inevitability’ in History” by Professor Hiroshi Furuta of the University of Tsukuba Graduate School, published on page 13 of this morning’s Sankei Shimbun.
It is an essay that not only the Japanese people but people all over the world should read.
I first learned of this truly extraordinary scholar and one of the world’s leading experts on Korea only after August four years ago.
Until then I had long subscribed to and carefully read the Asahi Shimbun, so I knew nothing about him.
The biased reporting of the Asahi Shimbun, which deliberately excluded such a learned and exceptional scholar, had reached an extreme.
Asahi never informed readers about genuine scholars and journalists such as him or Masayuki Takayama.
Instead, like identical candy pieces, it continued to feature scholars and so-called cultural figures who spoke only of a masochistic view of history and the resulting anti-Japan ideology, wrapped in pseudo-moralism and political correctness.
Subscribers were forced to read commentaries aligned with Asahi’s intentions.
They were also made to read the “plausible lies” of those who “sell anti-Japan spring in Iwanami salons.”
As one result, all Asahi readers were subconsciously implanted with the utterly baseless nonsense that, for example, one must never speak ill of Korea.
Because the counterpart was a nation of “bottomless malice” and “plausible lies,” it is a clear fact that Japan and its people have suffered enormous losses to this day.
It is also a clear fact that the Asahi Shimbun has yet to inform the world that its reporting was fabricated.
All emphasis in the text, except headlines, is mine.
In the 1970s, the French began to proclaim that the “grand narrative” had ended and that modernity was over.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the British calmly said modernity had ended.
In the 1990s, Germans insisted that only “small modernity” had ended and that true modernity was just beginning, calling it “reflexive modernization,” but this too faded away.
Americans are different.
They have neither antiquity nor the Middle Ages, so they have little interest in the concept of modernity as a historical period.
For them, it is always the present.
Deceived by German philosophy.
As for the Japanese, due to a long-standing educational system rooted in German philosophy, they were deeply immersed in “modernity.”
They believed that “history progresses.”
Calm reflection shows this cannot be true.
The Inca, which emerged as an ancient empire in the 15th century, was destroyed in the 16th century by Pizarro from medieval Spain.
Antiquity and the Middle Ages coexisted at the same time, and one ended as antiquity.
Those who thought, “Wait, we’ve been deceived,” began to say that “history is jagged.”
Yes, we had been deceived—by Hegel and Marx.
Philosopher Wataru Hiromatsu said that Hegel believed history unfolded through the age of the Father, the age of the Son, and then the age of the Holy Spirit, and that Hegel himself likely saw himself as a prophet of the age of the Holy Spirit.
Marx was even more cunning.
He encouraged revolutionaries by saying that history progresses in stages and will ultimately arrive at socialism and communism.
As a result, revolutions occurred in several countries, socialist systems were established, and many people became unhappy under despotic rule and rigid hierarchies.
Indeed, are not despotic rule and class systems characteristics of antiquity?
On top of that, the state directly exploited farmers through “agricultural collectivization,” making matters disastrous.
Was this not a return to an ancient economy?
To be continued.