Betrayal in Portland

[cross-posted at Austro-Athenian Empire]

Meeting in Portland over (ironically enough) Independence Day weekend, the Libertarian Party convention ended up gutting the LP Platform, removing nearly all of the more radical planks (including the antiwar one). The new watered-down platform hasn’t been made available online yet, but preliminary details, and some reactions, are available here, here, here, and here.

The outfit behind this move calls itself the Libertarian Reform Caucus. Their theory is a simple one: most voters are not libertarians, so if the Libertarian Party wants to win elections, it must stop being libertarian.

That’s not quite how the Caucus words it, of course. Instead they accuse the Platform of “sacrificing practicality and political appeal in favor of philosophical consistency”; and they call instead for a Platform that sets out “a realistic vision for the next few years, as opposed to an idealistic vision of a libertarian future.”

To this sort of thing I can make no better reply than Hayek’s in his 1949 essay The Intellectuals and Socialism:

We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage. What we lack is a liberal Utopia, a program which seems neither a mere defense of things as they are nor a diluted kind of socialism, but a truly liberal radicalism ... which is not too severely practical, and which does not confine itself to what appears today as politically possible. We need intellectual leaders who are willing to work for an ideal, however small may be the prospects of its early realization. They must be men who are willing to stick to principles and to fight for their full realization, however remote. ... Free trade and freedom of opportunity are ideals which still may arouse the imaginations of large numbers, but a mere “reasonable freedom of trade” or a mere “relaxation of controls” is neither intellectually respectable nor likely to inspire any enthusiasm. The main lesson which the true liberal must learn from the success of the socialists is that it was their courage to be Utopian which gained them the support of the intellectuals and therefore an influence on public opinion which is daily making possible what only recently seemed utterly remote. Those who have concerned themselves exclusively with what seemed practicable in the existing state of opinion have constantly found that even this had rapidly become politically impossible as the result of changes in a public opinion which they have done nothing to guide. Unless we can make the philosophic foundations of a free society once more a living intellectual issue, and its implementation a task which challenges the ingenuity and imagination of our liveliest minds, the prospects of freedom are indeed dark. But if we can regain that belief in the power of ideas which was the mark of liberalism at its best, the battle is not lost.

Or in Garrison’s words: “Gradualism in theory is perpetuity in practice.” (See also Rothbard here and Anthony Gregory here.)

Well, does it matter? If I regarded having a libertarian political party as the essential core of libertarian strategy, I would regard the Portland debacle as a major disaster. If instead I agreed with the Konkinites and Voluntaryists that political parties have no place in libertarian strategy, I would shrug my shoulders and say “what do you expect? good riddance.” But (for reasons I explain toward the end of my recent anarchism lecture) I’m actually somewhere in between: I think libertarian strategy should focus primarily on education and building alternative institutions, but I think a political party has a significant albeit secondary role to play in the process. (I guess that makes me a “Moderate Agorist” – a rara avis indeed?) So from my point of view, the reformist takeover of the LP Convention, while it isn’t the end of the world, is still an evil worth fighting.

The success of the reformists isn’t inevitable. They did a lot of hard work to push their victory through. We who prefer a consistent defense of liberty need to do a lot of hard work to roll that victory back.

The strategic question is, should reformism be fought from within the Party – or from without, by starting a new and more consistent party? At this point it’s probably too soon to say. Accordingly, I favour exploring both strategies in parallel. Specifically, I currently support and recommend both the Grassroots Libertarian Caucus and the Boston Tea Party. (About the latter see here.)

As always, Fight the Power.