Strauss and the Universal Homogeneous State

Remember, Wolfowitz got his Ph.D. in Political Science with Strauss.

At the heart of Leo Strauss’s political thought is an open apology for terrorism. This idea is illuminated in Strauss’s exchange of comments with Alexandre Kojève, a neo-Hegelian official of the French finance ministry, in the 1950s. At the heart of this debate is the question of the universal and homogenous state, and how philosophers should react to its existence. The universal homogenous state means something like a world where war and underdevelopment have been eliminated, and in which leisure time and well-being are rising. For most people, the universal homogenous state would look like a world of peace, progress, and prosperity. But for Strauss and Kojève, peace, progress, and prosperity mean the end of history because they wipe out the higher human values, which depend upon politics, and thus upon war. (Implicit also is the idea that peace, progress, and prosperity are bad for oligarchical domination, a cause dear to Strauss and Kojève.) Strauss sums it up thus: “This end of History would be most exhilarating, but for the fact that, according to Kojève, it is the participation in bloody political struggles as well as in real work or, generally expressed, the negating action, which raises man above the brutes.” (Strauss 208) For Strauss and Kojève, “unlimited technological progress and its accompaniment, which are indispensable conditions of the universal and homogeneous state, are destructive of humanity. It is perhaps possible to say that the universal and homogeneous state is fated to come. But it is certainly impossible to say that man can reasonably be satisfied with it.” (Strauss 208) This view of technology is that of the Greek historian called the Old Oligarch (who did not like the long walls and the Athenian navy), and is certainly not that of Plato. For Strauss, Greek philosophy is a screen upon which he projects his own ignorant opinions. Not caring about what Plato really thought, Strauss advances towards his terrible conclusion: “If the universal and homogeneous state is the goal of History, History is absolutely ‘tragic.’ Its completion will reveal that the human problem, and hence in particular the problem of the relation of philosophy and politics, is insoluble.” (Strauss 208) In Strauss’s view, the imminent coming of the universal homogeneous state means that all progress accomplished by mankind to date has been worthless: “For centuries and centuries men have unconsciously done nothing but work their way through infinite labors and struggles and agonies, yet ever again catching hope, toward the universal and homogeneous state, and as soon as they have arrived at the end of their journey, they realize that through arriving at it they have destroyed their humanity, and thus returned, as in a cycle, to the prehuman beginnings of History.” (Strauss 209) This raises the question of the violent revolt against the universal homogeneous state, which is what Strauss regards as inevitable and desirable: “Yet there is no reason for despair as long as human nature has not been conquered completely, i.e., as long as sun and man still generate man. There will always be men (andres) who will revolt against a state which is destructive of humanity or in which there is no longer a possibility of nobleaction or of great deeds.” (Strauss 209) When the real men revolt against too much peace, progress, and prosperity, what will be their program? Strauss: “They may be forced into a mere negation of the universal and homogeneous state, into a negation not enlightened by any positive goal, into a nihilistic negation. While perhaps doomed to failure, that nihilist revolution may be the only great and noble deed that is possible once the universal and homogeneous state has become inevitable. But no one can know whether it will fail of succeed. (Strauss 209)

What can be understood by nihilistic negation and nihilist revolution? In the nineteenth century, nihilism was an ideology of terrorism; the crazed bomb-throwers who assassinated statesmen and rulers across Europe and America (including President McKinley) were atheists, anarchists and nihilists. In the twentieth century, the nihilist revolution was synonymous with some of the most extreme factions of fascism and Nazis. “Long live death!” was a slogan of some of them. With these lines, Strauss has opened the door to fascism, murder, mayhem, war, genocide, and most emphatically to terrorism. And he is not shy about spelling this out.

LEO STRAUSS: BACK TO THE STONE AGE
What will the nihilist revolution look like? Strauss writes: “Someone may object that the successful revolt against the universal and homogeneous state could have no other effect than that the identical historical process which led from the primitive horde to the final state will be repeated.” (Strauss 209) The primitive horde or primal horde refers to the human communities of the Paleolithic hunting and gathering societies, to the foragers and cave people of the Old Stone Age. Strauss is endorsing a nihilistic revolt that will have the effect of destroying as much as 10,000 years of progress in civilization, and in hurling humanity back to its wretched predicament in the Paleolithic. Here Strauss finds a momentary common ground with Rousseau, who also had a liking for the Paleolithic; here we are close to the ideas which animated the reign of terror in the French Revolution. Strauss comes as a Job’s comforter to those who have been thrown back into the Old Stone Age: “But would such a repetition of the process – a new lease on life for man and humanity – not be preferable to the indefinite continuation of the inhuman end? Do we not enjoy every spring although we know the cycle of the seasons, although we know that winter will come again?” (Strauss 209) Springtime for Leo Strauss has thus acquired the idiosyncratic meaning of a return to the horrors of the Old Stone Age. Short of turning back the clock to the Paleolithic, Strauss sees one promising possibility latent in Kojève’s universal homogeneous state. This concerns the opportunity for political violence, yet another form of terrorism: “Kojève does seem to leave an outlet for action in the universal and homogeneous state. In that state the risk of violent death is still involved in the struggle for political leadership…. But the opportunity for action can exist only for a tiny minority. And besides, is this not a hideous prospect: a state in which
the last refuge of man’s humanity is political assassination in the particularly sordid form of the palace revolution?” (Strauss 209) Such sporadic and limited violence is not enough for Strauss.

(excerpt from W. G. Tarpley, "9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA")