Something that Libertarians often fail to do is to learn from our enemies. It is unquestionable that many different ideologies have had much greater success in the 20th century than libertarianism or classical liberalism. No matter how repressive these ideologies may be, it’s worth studying their strategies for getting into power. Libertarians love to talk about ideas but when it comes to making a plan for their implementation well… let’s be honest guys: As a movement we suffer from a chronic passivity or in some cases an outright disinterest in victory. At some point we’re going to have to decide if we want to keep arguing about whether beekeeping violates the NAP for the rest of our lives or we want to actually win. Murray Rothbard, one of the founders of modern libertarian thought saw this problem even in his time and addressed it. Rothbard had a name for the unfortunate tendency a lot of us have to focus solely on spreading the good word: Educationism.
There’s nothing wrong with making arguments, in fact it’s an essential part of winning, but not all arguments are created equal, and not everyone is worth the argument. Our enemies understand this, as did Rothbard. He called on Libertarians to be “Ideological Entrepreneurs” in the vein of Vladimir Lenin, that is, political activists willing to mold their tactics to the situation at hand. Just as entrepreneurship is ultimately an art and not a science that can be learned by rote, so ideological tactics, the findings of the right path at the right time, is an entrepreneurial art at which some people will be better than others. Ludwig von Mises’ insight that timing is the essence of entrepreneurship, and that some people are more able at such timing and insight than others, applies to ideological as well as economic entrepreneurship.
For Lenin, political activities often fell into one of two opposite but equally dangerous extremes. On one side you have Adventurism, which is characterized by rash and immediate direct action, as well as complete refusal of established political channels. On the other hand we have Opportunism, a tendency towards halfway measures and compromise without a strong commitment to longer term goals. Rothbard saw that this was a useful set of terms to define differences in political strategy in the Libertarian movement as well.
Lenin’s strategic flexibility between these two extremes allowed him to weather the events following the failed 1905 Revolution in Russia. While radical tactics were proper during the Revolution, the later years of revolutionary collapse and reaction were times for caution and retreat. Lenin then had to battle against the ultra-adventurism of Alexander Bogdanov and others…who called for a futile armed uprising. To quote Lenin himself on the necessary political strategy after 1905. “During the Revolution we learned to ‘speak french’, i.e to…raise the energy of the direct struggle of the masses and extend its scope. Now, in this time of stagnation, reaction and disintegration, we must learn to ‘speak German’, i.e. to work slowly until things revive, systematically, steadily…winning inch by inch”.
After resisting the Bogdanov Adventurism that would most likely have destroyed the Bolshevik movement in its cradle, Lenin also avoided the pitfall of Opportunism in 1917 when the Bolsheviks were part of the big tent February Government which had deposed the Czar. Lenin’s Bolsheviks had gained a substantial amount of power by this point but they were still a minority in the centrist liberal dominated government, which was led by Alexander Kerensky. Before long, forces loyal to the conservative General Kornilov attempted to overthrow the February government and restore the monarchy.
This pivotal moment presented both danger and opportunity for the Bolsheviks. The Adventurist Bolsheviks were tempted to continue their previous tactics of all-out opposition to Kerensky’s Liberal regime and to stand aloof from the battle– but this would probably have meant victory for Kornilov and the probable end of the chances for revolution. In contrast the Opportunist Bolsheviks were tempted to fight unconditionally, but that unprincipled action might well have demoralized the Bolshevik militants, and undercut the larger strategic goal of a Bolshevik revolution.Lenin’s solution managed to avoid both fatal errors. He chose to to come to the aid of Kerensky against Kornilov’s forces, but not for free. Lenin demanded radical and painful concessions from Kerensky, which included arming the workers, bringing Bolshevik troops to the fore, and legalizing peasant takeovers of landed estates. From his weakened position, there was little Kerensky could do about this, and this led to the Bolsheviks being accepted as the de facto leaders of the forces opposed to Kornilov, despite not being a majority. This kind of strategic thinking could serve libertarians well, not in the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat but in the struggle for a free society.
But how can this kind of thinking be applied to the current situation of Libertarians in the United States? Right now the US has two major political parties which are increasingly polarized along an axis orthogonal to freedom, leftism vs conservatism. As I mentioned in my video on the political spectrum, it seems clear that of the two, the conservative faction, the Republicans are more aligned with the Libertarians on account of their vestigial association with the classical liberal ideology of the American Revolution.
There is an active clique of ideologically libertarian politicians who are members or former members of the Republican party among them Rand and Ron Paul, Thomas Massey and Justin Amash. However, when it comes to the Democrats one struggles to find an equivalent. Mike Gravel is probably the closest, with our foreign policy fellow traveler Tulsi Gabbard in second. But both of these politicians have become extremely peripheral and even maligned figures within the Democratic party, in contrast with Rand Paul for example, who despite openly acknowledging Rothbardian Anarcho-Capitalism as a great influence on his thought, and is still generally accepted by Republicans.
This is not a perfect analogy, but if you had to compare the two situations, We’re the Bolshiviks, The Republicans are Kerensky, and the Democrats are with a few honorable exceptions, Kornilov. It’s not 1917, but this is how we should be thinking.
So, should Libertarians pursue a strategy of uncritically voting Republican and hoping for the best? Certainly not, anyone advocating that would be gravely guilty of what Rothbard borrowed Lenin’s terminology to describe as Opportunism. Too often we’ve seen Libertarians fall into the trap of becoming Republican because they want to be “taken seriously” by the enemy. When has the GOP winning an election *ever* resulted in a net decrease in government spending? How about a net decrease in the amount of federal laws on the books?
Essentially never. Even in the 1980s, the height of the Libertarian movement’s influence over the GOP, when Milton Friedman was an official advisor to Reagan, as soon as Reagan took power he almost instantly abandoned Libertarian ideals in all but rhetoric. His presidency failed abysmally by any reasonable metric at reducing the size and scope of government. Rothbard observed that despite his social democratic rhetoric, Jimmy Carter was probably slightly better than Reagan in terms of the overall policies he implemented, if only by accident.
Despite its Libertarian adjacency, the right is inherently structured towards losing by way of many slow concessions. To paraphrase Ayn Rand, their intellectual posture has long been a pleading, self abasing whine of apology. Or to quote Michael Malice, conservatism is progressivism driving the speed limit.
Every election cycle the Republicans and their opportunist enablers tell us that this is the most important election of our lifetimes, and we can’t afford to let the Democrats win! At this point it’s becoming almost comical. Then on the other hand you have the adventurists: Libertarians who won’t vote for anyone with an R in their name, or even reject voting all together. This latter position is usually taken because of a moral position that by voting one is consenting to the state as it exists. I think the problem with this argument can be demonstrated by a thought experiment. Suppose that you and your family were kidnapped by a lunatic who threatened your children and demanded you pick only one whose life he should spare. Obviously this is a terrible situation, but if you were to choose, this would certainly not mean that you consented to having any of them murdered, or that you were morally responsible for his action. So it is with the state. We didn’t consent to the state’s violence or its elections, but that doesn’t mean we can’t use them against it.
So its not immoral to use the system against itself, but is it practical? And if so, what’s the best way to do this? And what can we do outside of the system? Well, I have some ideas on these subjects that I’d like to share with you all, but this video would be pretty long if I got into all of that here. The main point I want to make right now is that politics is not a theoretical exercise, our actions have real implications for real people who are really suffering. So, if you really care about freedom, you should be willing to fight for it, and when you fight, the goal should be to win. That means having the discipline to use the most effective tactics available, which can be harder than it sounds.
In part one of this video we discussed some general strategic lessons Libertarians might learn from the Bolshevik movement’s path to power in Russia. We also talked about the pitfalls of opportunism and adventurism, and made an analogy between the Bolsheviks’ relationship with Russia’s social democrats and Libertarianism’s relationship with elements of the American right. This week I’d like to follow up with a few ideas about what American Libertarians can do today.
Ok, so before we can even think about strategy we need to think about our win conditions. If a time traveler from the future came back and told you that within your lifetime, a free society would be established, how would you guess that this happened? If your answer is that we voted in the most important election of our lifetimes and the statists all went home, then I hate to tell you mr. hypothetical opportunist, but you’re probably wrong. As I mentioned in the last video, conservative politicians have been claiming they’ll make the government smaller for decades, but have never done anything like that despite winning plenty of elections.
A lot of that is because they care more about their careers than about protecting liberty. But even the sincere ones have the deck stacked against them. If Ron Paul for example had won one of his presidential campaigns, that would have been fantastic, but it would not have automatically meant victory for us. Rather, it would have signalled the beginning of a brutal struggle as every deep state bureaucrat did everything in their power to stop him from doing anything good.
If you think the deep state went after Trump hard, imagine the absolute frenzy if instead of an easily manipulated boomer with some good instincts but no coherent ideology, they were faced with a libertarian dedicated to destroying their power and livelihoods. Things would escalate quickly, and while we can only speculate on the details, suffice to say the ensuing power struggle would probably result in a complete reconstitution of the government as we know it.
As Henry David Thoreau once said, There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root. The system cannot be reformed, the state has a natural life cycle which goes in one direction. It expands like a cancer until it either kills its host or is completely extinguished. If you’re spending your time watching this video instead of tiktok dances, then you are the vanguard, you are called to strike the root.
In order to do this effectively, there are three conditions we must work to meet.
First, existing tensions and polarization must be exacerbated and successfully framed as a struggle between Liberty and Authoritarianism. As the state expands its power, it will naturally rub up against the interests of many different groups. We have to attune our ears to the grievances of the people, which are varied and highly culturally contextual. From this we can understand what issues are appropriate to emphasize when. For instance, right now the two biggest issues in popular American politics are probably the COVID-19 lockdowns, and the anti-police protests. Libertarianism has a position on both of these issues, against the lockdowns and against the police.
Although these positions are associated with opposite sides of the conservative leftist dichotomy, Libertarians should boldly and unapologetically insert ourselves into both, organizing protests and taking leadership positions whenever possible. In this way we can harness the people’s justified anger and guide it towards a holistic understanding of their enemy.
Leftists will certainly be hostile to attempts to frame the police protests as people vs government, because this will distract from their agenda of inciting racial conflict. Still there are plenty of people who are aghast at police behavior, but simultaneously repelled by the leftist’s overt disparagement of white americans.
As a general principle, whenever there’s tumult, the vanguard should move towards it, not away. Highly abstract economics and moral philosophy are important, but should be discussed mainly with people who have already agreed with us on the more topical issues.
One way I see people doing this wrong is being timid or overly deferential to ideological rivals when agreeing with them on some particular issue. Take the lead. It’s our coalition, fellow travelers are welcome to join, but we won’t be offering concessions on principle. This will result in fierce denunciations, but these should be confidently ignored.
This bleeds into what I see as our second win condition: To secure for ourselves a place in the popular imagination as the main alternative to the system. When people think about how society might be restructured, they should think immediately of libertarianism. Even if they bitterly oppose this change, if we can get people to acknowledge that dichotomy, that’s a win for us. Despite his incompetence, one thing Trump showed us during the 2016 election was the power of being the center of attention, even if that’s negative attention. Conservatism fails because it defines itself as a reaction to what its not instead of a positive vision to be aspired to.
If we can draw the open ire of the worst of the social democrats and make them react to us specifically, anyone who has even a vaguely bad taste in their mouth about social justice will be drawn to us by default, and not to the haphazard pile of random positions and compromises that is conservatism. As I mentioned in my video on the election, when a state encounters serious problems, people start looking for alternatives. Eventually there will come a time when people don’t feel comfortable and safe, and when it does, we’ll be there.
And this brings me to our third win condition: we need to build disciplined organization and institutional power in preparation to assert ourselves in a moment of crisis. While doing everything possible to increase our numbers, we should not assume that we will reach a majority of the population. Radical ideologies normally don’t until after they win, because most people tend to go along with the accepted dogmas of whatever society they’re born into. That being said, there are many force multipliers we can use to build up our power, even with a small portion of the population.
First, we should work to implement an excellent idea that has already come from the Libertarian movement, concentrating ourselves geographically. Plans like the Free State Project, which calls for at least twenty thousand libertarians moving to the relatively less populated New Hampshire could be game changing if done successfully. When a crisis comes, we’ll have a much better chance of carving out a small chunk of land than trying to get the whole vast empire on board with freedom.
Moving to a different state is certainly a personal investment, but it can pay enormous dividends in freedom. We’re already seeing people leave certain states en masse, and with the rise of working from home it’s getting easier and easier. Libertarians rightfully prize their individuality, but when things start going south you’re going to need like minded people to watch your back.
But the work doesn’t start in a crisis, it starts with a few Libertarians making a commitment to get together on a regular basis, and working together to do something. That something could be within established political channels, like a protest driven by a topical issue, putting up flyers or campaigning for a libertarian candidate, but it could also be a longer term investment, like teaching your comrades a skill. Are you knowledgeable about firearms? Give your fellow libertarians a gun safety class. Do you know the ins and outs of crypto currency? Show your friends how to invest. Direct action is good too.
Find out about your local politicians and coordinate direct pressure. Multiple calls from different people in one day politely telling them you’re concerned they aren’t doing enough on libertarian issues can be powerful. The point of this isn’t that to change a politician’s mind, assume you can’t. The point is to make libertarianism loom over politics like a shadow, something politicians are thinking about and talking about. Even if they don’t actually do anything different, if they publicly pay us lip service or attack us, that’s a victory. Because now you’ve helped solidify libertarianism as an idea on the table in the minds of regular people watching.
Ultimately, what you specifically do is less important than the fact that you’re working together with other libertarians. Well functioning teams don’t just instantly come together, as anyone who’s been on one can tell you. People take time to get used to working together before they hit their stride and become really effective. In part one, I talked about how the February government was forced to rely on the Bolsheviks to fight off general Kornilov’s coup in 1917, even though the Bolsheviks were fewer in number. Why was that? Because the Bolsheviks had practice. Not military experience, but practice working as a team. They had already been running trade unions and the Petrograd Soviet like an army, so when the time came all they needed were guns.
So now let’s talk about voting. As I’ve said before, we should do it. And more than that, I think there’s a specific way we should do it in order to be most effective which I’d like to propose now. If we think back to our three win conditions, we’ll find that voting can serve all three. By creating a highly visible, strategic minded bloc of libertarian voters, we can certainly frame existing issues as liberty vs authoritarianism. (that’s win condition 1). Since most people think about politics primarily through the lens of elections, voting also helps portray libertarianism as the main alternative to the system (that’s win condition 2). And finally, get out the vote efforts are textbook community organizing which is building institutional power (that’s win condition 3).
So, should we vote strategically? I made a flowchart here
In a general election, our first choice should be to vote for a libertarian candidate who has won the nomination of a major party. This option will rarely be available, but when it does occur its normally better than voting LP, because the better libertarian candidates do in the major parties, the more attention the Libertarian movement will get from the media, which ultimately translates to more power and leverage.
Our second choice, which is available much more often is to vote LP. Unless the candidate is an entryist who substantially deviates from Libertarian principles in terms of their actual policies, it shouldn’t really matter who they are. They’re usually not going to win anyway, we’re voting for the party, not the person. If we create a spoiler effect by getting enough votes that it could have swung the election’s outcome, that’s all the better. The losing major party will wail and rage about how we should have voted for them, and by voting LP we’ve sent them a strong message which might influence their policy emphases next time around. A politician on the fence about legalizing marijuana for instance will see that if they don’t align with Libertarians, there will be consequences. Oh did we spoil the election for you? Maybe you should have thought about that.
Before discussing our third choice, I want to note that In a presidential election we should almost always vote LP. Any party that crosses the threshold of 5% of the vote in a presidential election receives funding from the federal election committee. Is it hypocritical for us to seek this? Absolutely not. This money comes exclusively from voluntary contributions on the part of taxpayers, not stolen money. The benefits of this extra funding would be substantial. Every dollar gives us more advertising organization and infrastructure, and therefore more power, leverage and relevance. Because the LP receives many fewer votes than the major parties, each single vote it receives constitutes a much bigger percentage of the total. You might consider Trump better than Joe Biden, but if you had voted for Jo Jorgensen, your vote would be in this sense about 70 times more impactful.
We almost reached the 5% threshold in 2016, when the major party candidates were both extremely unpopular. Unfortunately Gary Johnson wasn’t the best suited to exploit this opportunity, but you’re damn right I voted for him anyway. That’s strategic discipline.
In any case, if there’s no libertarian candidate running on a major party ticket, and no LP candidate on the ballot, we should still register to vote but, but not not actually vote. This lowers the voter participation rate, which helps to delegitimize the state. Or, if there’s another election you should vote in on the same ballot, you can simply write in count chocula or your favorite breakfast cereal mascot. This decreases the percentage of the vote the winner will get, while making it more likely that your vote is counted as opposed to a blank ballot. Winning with a low percentage can be used to attack and delegitimize that politician later.
What we should not do is vote for the lesser of two evils. That’s giving away your leverage and encouraging bad behavior.
First, look to vote in primaries. They are probably more important than general election races, because the greater number of candidates increases the likelihood that one of the candidates will be libertarian aligned. This is most often going to be the Republican primary, but if you happen to live in a rare district with a libertarian leaning or fellow traveler democrat, vote for them.
The threshold of how libertarian a candidate has to be to earn our votes in a primary should be significantly lower than in a general election. This is because in a general election, we have two options which become more appealing, voting for the libertarian party, and not voting at all. In local races the LP often doesn’t have primaries, but will field a candidate to vote for in the general. If they don’t however, and there’s no Rand Paul or Tulsi Gabbard on the ballot, not voting while being registered to vote is a good option to lower the voter participation rate, thus depriving the system of some legitimacy.
A lot of libertarians are concerned that if the LP focuses too heavily on getting as many votes as possible it will become ideologically diluted, and this is certainly a valid concern. That’s why the work of groups like the Libertarian Party Mises Caucus is so valuable. Ideology works like a pyramid, the boldest and most radical in a movement are enabled by the passive support of a much larger base of less committed sympathizers. Take the rise of Antifa for example. Antifa is a decentralized revolutionary communist movement which advocates violent direct action against political opponents.
The term has its origins in the paramilitary wing of the German Communist Party during the Weimar Republic, although the label and tactics were adopted by western European communists in the 80s and 90s. However, in the US, it emerged quickly and seemingly out of nowhere in the aftermath of the 2016 election. Where did they come from? Well, mostly from the ranks of the Democratic Socialist movement rapidly grown by Bernie Sanders.
Sanders took a lot of impressionable young people and introduced them to socialism, and then a fraction of those people became more radical and started throwing bricks. That didn’t happen on its own. These people were guided in their intellectual development by a vanguard of more dedicated, disciplined and radical communists who led them from their original impetus of hating Trump and supporting Sanders to more revolutionary thought.
A 2014 Pew Survey found that 14% of Americans self identified as Libertarians, while an earlier Gallup survey found that number to be as high as 23%.
Of course, many of these people won’t know exactly what it means to be a libertarian, but that’s ok. Most people are not
As disastrous as the effects of Lenin’s victory in the October Revolution of 1917 were for the world, there is no denying that he was no “lucky fool” but a very successful ideological entrepreneur whose long term plan for a Bolshevik victory paid off with hard work and a careful threading of movement action between the two extremes of Opportunism and Adventurism. If libertarians want a victory comparable to Lenin’s, in America or elsewhere, they would do well to translate Marxist-Leninist tactics into a coherent Libertarian Strategy, as Rothbard advised.