[Marxism] Leo Strauss as myth-maker

[Greg McDonald <sabocat59@xxxxxxx>]

Noble lies and deadly truths

 From Wikipedia:

"Strauss noted that thinkers of the first rank, going back to Plato,  
had raised the problem of whether good and effective politicians  
could be completely truthful and still achieve the necessary ends of  
their society. By implication, Strauss asks his readers to consider  
whether it is true that noble lies have no role at all to play in  
uniting and guiding the polis. Are myths needed to give people  
meaning and purpose and to ensure a stable society? Or can men  
dedicated to relentlessly examining, in Nietzsche's language, those  
"deadly truths," flourish freely? Thus, is there a limit to the  
political, and what can be known absolutely? In The City and Man,  
Strauss discusses the myths outlined in Plato's Republic that are  
required for all governments. These include a belief that the state's  
land belongs to it even though it was likely acquired illegitimately  
and that citizenship is rooted in something more than the accidents  
of birth. Seymour Hersh observes that Strauss endorsed noble lies:  
myths used by political leaders seeking to maintain a cohesive  
society.[14]....

Critics of Strauss accuse him of mendacious populism (while actually  
being elitist), radical illiberalism and anti-democratic sentiment.  
Shadia Drury, in Leo Strauss and the American Right (1999), argues  
that Strauss taught different things to different students and  
inculcated an elitist strain in American political leaders that is  
linked to imperialist militarism and Christian fundamentalism. Drury  
accuses Strauss of teaching that "perpetual deception of the citizens  
by those in power is critical because they need to be led, and they  
need strong rulers to tell them what's good for them." Nicholas Xenos  
similarly argues that Strauss "was not an anti-liberal in the sense  
in which we commonly mean 'anti-liberal' today, but an anti-democrat  
in a fundamental sense, a true reactionary. Strauss was somebody who  
wanted to go back to a previous, pre-liberal, pre-bourgeois era of  
blood and guts, of imperial domination, of authoritarian rule, of  
pure fascism."[2"
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