The thing about Fukuyama is that he's not a historian, he's an International Relations Theorist. "The End of History" is an international relations book born out of the liberal school of international relations theory, not a history book. While history and international relations are related fields, practitioners in the two disciplines have differing methodologies and goals. I wrote a similar answer concerning Henry Kissinger's "Diplomacy" here, examining several of these differences, which you might be interested in reading.

The "Liberal School" of International Relations Theory, which has been the dominant school in academia since the 1990s, believes that peace and prosperity is the natural result of economic cooperation, rendering the disruption brought about by war and other conflicts far too costly, and fostering the spread of inclusive and democratic political ideas. Liberals credit both formal and informal U.S.-led institutions, like NATO, the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, and the World Bank, with fostering interconnectivity through capitalistic economic principles and the exportation of democratic ideas. Although it is a claim disputed by some theorists of the older 'Realist" school, many Liberals will argue that the checks on power intrinsic to democratic states do not allow them to go to war with each other.

In his "The End of History," Fukuyama is not looking to argue in favor of new interpretations of historical facts or evidence as a historian would. He is interpreting history to provide evidence in order to support a social science theory. "History," insofar as Fukuyama is concerned, is the political and social development of mankind, which he argues in his book has reached its ultimate form in the liberal western-style democracy.

It's shockingly good. (And I'm familiar with the article, rather than the book.) Fukuyama, as the Cold War came to an end, recognized that with the collapse of the Soviet state, Marxist dialectic materialism had fizzled and died with a whimper. In short, the breakup of the USSR was proof that labor relations and class warfare did not chart a straight line through history that would lead to international communism. It had not happened.

But if you strip away the rhetoric of Marxist materialism, then you're left with just the Hegelian dialectic—the belief that ideologies are not a superficial veneer of the material means of production but are rather the stuff that history is made from. Again, with the end of the Cold War, circumstances spoke for themselves. Western liberalism had triumphed and its antithesis—communism or the ideology of materialism—had come to naught. With no competing ideology, Western liberalism was left to stand on its own. World without end.

This is such a thoughtful and thought-provoking piece, I think it's an important read for anyone who wants to think about how history works. Of course history did not end in 1989—and Fukuyama thought it would be boring if it did. From a materialist perspective, the Third World seemed to rise from the ashes of the Cold War. From a more Hegelian perspective, perhaps the new synthesis can actually be found in a rise of religious fundamentalism of all stripes.

I don't pretend to speak for the AH community, but I think Fukuyama's "End of History" remains a relevant piece for challenging historians to think more clearly about the ways in which they do history. The surface read—that Western liberalism now dominates unchallenged—offers little, but the thought process required to reach that conclusion demands careful thought.