Stand Up for Liberty! Table of Contents
Stand Up for Liberty!
Chapter Four
What Are We Going to Do?
Local Organization -- The Path to Libertarian Victory
I begin with the most fundamental issue
The Purpose of a Political Party is
Our objective is to create a Libertarian Party that achieves its purpose in our lifetimes. Our objective is to use democratic practices to put into practice our political agenda, the agenda of freedom, small government, low taxes, and the entire Bill of Rights. Our objective is to elect Libertarians who will put Libertarian policies into effect everywhere. Our objective is Libertarian control of town halls, statehouses, the Federal Congress, and executive branches across the Republic. Our objective is political victory.
We can talk all we want about a libertarian world, but to attain a libertarian world we must first create a Libertarian electoral majority. To create that majority, we need to create a major political party that is as strong as the other major political parties.
How are we going to win elections? We're in 1999. This year, the election of a second Libertarian state legislator to join Neil Randall of Vermont would be a triumph. How do we reach the future in which strong Libertarian majorities control Congress, state houses, and town halls from sea to shining sea?
We choose our path to the future by choosing a political strategy. The last chapter discussed different strategies. One and only one of those strategies is consistent with libertarian principles, promises effective use of all of our resources, and minimizes practical hazards arising from human weakness. That strategy is
Local Organization.
The Path to Libertarian Victory is through Local Organization. Local Organization will build the Libertarian movement in every county, every town, every ward and precinct. Local Organization will give us the strength to nominate and elect candidates to local political office. Local Organization will identify and develop local libertarian political figures, giving us more, more credible, high-quality candidates for higher office. Local Organization will create the political apparatus that elects Libertarians to state and Federal office.
Most important, Local Organization leads to Local Victory. Local victories install Libertarians in town, city, and district offices. Local victories let our friends and neighbors see who we really are and what causes we support. Local Victory lets our fellow Americans see Libertarian politicians put into effect successful Libertarian solutions to community problems. Local Victory prepares the foundation for victories at higher levels.
When strong Libertarian organizations are found in every city and town, higher political offices will inevitably fall into our hands. Until the Libertarian Party has widespread local success, victories at higher levels will be scattered.
Without Local Organization and local victories, isolated victories at higher levels will in any event be meaningless, because isolated Libertarian office- holders cannot put Libertarian policies into effect. As Richard Nixon discovered in 1968, a Republican President without a Republican Congress, Republican think tanks and pundits, and Republican bureaucrats in the Senior Executive Service is a man pushing on a rope: he can wave his hands as fast as he wants, but no real work gets done. If we elected a Libertarian President, he would be in the same boat.
The Local Organization strategy does not oppose running candidates for Federal and statewide office. Quite the opposite, in fact! Candidates for higher office get publicity that more local candidates cannot. A candidate for President or Governor or Senator can make local appearances, shedding light on Libertarian candidates who run in winnable local elections. A well-run state or national campaign can send the message Vote Libertarian! and spread the Libertarian message to millions of Americans who would otherwise miss it.
Federal candidates aid the Party's credibility in other ways. When we run a full slate of Congressional candidates, we prove we're not the one-man show of Ross Perot's Reform Party. Right now, our chance of taking control of Congress is as good as the chance that the Republican Party had in the mid-1960s. Besides, some Libertarians have the credentials to be believable candidates for Federal office, but lack the credentials to be believable candidates for local office. Either we run these people for Federal office, or their talents go to waste.
At the other extreme from Federal campaigning, Stand Up for Liberty! recognizes that many Libertarians are not interested in political activism. There's nothing wrong with the Libertarian Supper club that meets once a month to debate the finer points of Libertarian doctrine. If you want to do something other than partisan political activity, Stand Up for Liberty! has plenty of room for you. Political Parties do not live in a vacuum. They succeed because they surround themselves with social, community, and special- interest organizations, each having its own non-political purposes, each supporting Libertarian political endeavors on election day.
Local Organization relies in the first instance on Libertarians running for local and district office. We also salute those brave Libertarians who offer themselves and run for Federal and statewide offices. We equally honor those dedicated libertarians who work to deepen our collective understanding of libertarianism through camaraderie and mutual support.
Nonetheless...
The Path to Libertarian Victory is through Local Organization and Local Victory.
Well, that's very nice to say.
It really is very nice to say that.
Now, how do we actually do it? How do we put the Local Organization strategy into effect? How do we advance from local organization and local victories to the Libertarian future?
The rest of this book proposes the answer. Stand Up for Liberty! describes implementation steps for putting the Local Organization strategy into effect. I categorically deny that my list of steps is complete. I have tried to cover some of the more important issues. It is certainly the case that you and your fellow readers will do a great deal to refine the implementation, add new steps and delete others. I claim only to offer a foundation for future discussion and progress.
What will you find in the rest of the book?
Activities for Local, State, and Federal Organizations The Local Organization strategy calls for Libertarian activities on the local, state, and national levels. Each level has its special role to play. Local organizations will do much of the critical work in building a Libertarian future. However, state and national groups also have important, well-defined tasks. Chapter 5 considers activities that every Party group should perform, including developing the Libertarian voter base, inciting members to activism, and external and internal outreach. Chapter 6 discusses roles that are more appropriate for one party group or another, from Libertarian supper clubs to the Presidential Ballot Access effort.
Campaigns The purpose of a political party is to run candidates for office. Political campaigns and their support should be the focus of our efforts. Chapter 7 discusses why we should run candidates for office. It considers how many candidates we should run, how we use campaigns to build a stronger Libertarian Party, and what sorts of races our candidates run. We can run umbrella campaigns, so every citizen can Vote Libertarian! We can run serious campaigns to win, and informational campaigns to bring out voters.
Human Resources We have local and Federal and special-interest groups to develop and apply our resources. Chapter 8 discusses our most important resource, our activists and specialists and members. Chapter 8 also discusses human resources within political campaigns, the candidates and staffers and volunteers and voters who eventually get Libertarians into office.
Electronic Resources The Libertarian Party is the party of the future. Chapter 9 discusses how Libertarian activists can exploit the Internet, the electronic resource of the future, to develop local organizations and run stronger political campaigns.
PACS, Support Networks, and Special Interest Groups. The other major parties have strengths beyond their own internal organization. They surround themselves with swarms of political action committees, special interest groups, and cabals of specialist spokesmen, all seemingly independent from the party but all actually working to support their party's programs. We need go no further than the Abortion Rights group that supports pro-life Democrats and ignores pro-choice Libertarians in the same race. We need go no further than the Second Amendment group that supports anti-RKBA Republicans and attacks pro- RKBA Libertarians in the same race, as if the organization were actually the National Republican Association. A successful political party has its army of support groups and one-issue vote siphoners. Chapter 10 shows how to Make Liberty Happen! by creating Libertarian political action committees and special interest groups.
Implementing the Marketplace of Ideas In his 1983 pamphlet "Hierarchy or Market?" Jorge Amador advocated the superiority of Market Decentralism as a Libertarian Party strategy. Amador emphasized the costs of Libertarian Party internal politics. Amador proposed to replace a central party with market relationships. Chapters 11-13 discuss supplementing a centralist political organization with the Marketplace of Ideas. Chapter 11 presents some of Amador's ideas. Chapter 12 discusses how we could implement the marketplace of ideas. Chapter 13 considers educating Libertarian investors: an informed investor is a good investor.
Information management Even in Massachusetts, many people would hesitate to drive the Mass Pike at rush hour while wearing a blindfold. Many Libertarians are far less hesitant to race down the political highway while wearing data blindfolds, not knowing what is going on, what has already been learned, and what might support fellow Libertarians. Chapter 14 discusses Information Management, the technical tool for removing Libertarian data blindfolds and multiplying the effectiveness of all Libertarian groups. To use information, you have to find it, analyze it, store it, and get it into the hands of the people who need it.
What Are We To Do? How do we, the advocates of the Local Organization strategy, put our plans into effect within the Libertarian Party? Chapter 15 deals with this important question. Chapter 15 answers such questions as: How do we deal with present Party structures? What should our relationships be with advocates of Membership Recruitment? Where do we invest our resources to put Local Organization into effect?
*Once upon a time, the late unlamented gangster V. I. Lenin wrote a book under the title "What is to be done?" Note the highly appropriate difference in syntax between his title and mine. Lenin, a democratic centralist, assumed that he the Executive Secretary would decree what actions were to be taken by his Communist Party, and the party apparatchiki would leap to carry out the will of their central committee before the secret police came to their door. In contrast, I propose voluntary acts that individual Libertarians may choose to perform. I encourage spontaneous self-organization to advance the libertarian movement. I note interesting places and topics for self- organization. We shall have victory if we choose to organize. We shall have defeat if we do not. However, unlike Lenin's party faithful, Libertarians need not fear a midnight knock on their front doors from the Party's secret police.
The same Lenin displayed his precognitive skills by predicting when the Tsar would fall. He predicted a time seven decades in the future. The Tsar actually abdicated after seven weeks.
I am not going to predict when we will elect a Libertarian government. However, there are a variety of symptoms. We will not win at large until we start seeing large-scale defections of members and activists from the Democratic and the Republican parties. When we are ready to elect a President of the United States, we will also have a serious chance of taking control of Congress, and vice versa: If our Congressional campaigns are feeble, there is no possibility that our candidate will be elected President. Under current conditions, our candidates for Congress often get 2-5 percent of the vote, while our candidate for President gets a tenth that.
We've got a ways to go. Local Organization will get us there.