Stuart has
criticised libertarians for not taking part in elections:
"Libertarians" are disnonourable, they are not democrats: they shun elections.
I think that it is useful to have a look at the very first publication of the
Libertarian Alliance, the UK's leading libertarian organisation. Here is part of what was written way back in 1979:
IDEAS CHANGE SLOWLY
Although ideas sometimes change slightly as a
direct result of the political cut-and-thrust,
fundamental ideas usually change slowly.
There are entrenched assumptions which cannot
be challenged by anyone who wishes to be
politically influential. Politicians of a reflective
disposition will often admit that a certain
policy has great merits, but will add that it is
“politically impossible”, because it goes
against ruling opinions inherited from the past.
BUT IDEAS CHANGE
Yet these fundamental ideas do change. In the
Wealth of Nations Smith ridiculed the possibility
that free trade could ever be introduced
in Britain. A few decades later, it substantially
had been, and the Wealth of Nations was
largely responsible. Other examples include
the rapid spread of Marxism in Europe before
the First World War, and in recent years the
sudden collapse of the monolithic Keynesian
consensus. In both these cases, preparatory
developments in earlier decades, which might
have seemed quite inconsequential to many,
were vital.
As a result of such changes, the parameters of
politics shift. What was politically possible
becomes politically impossible, and what was
politically impossible may even become impossible
to resist.
HOW IDEAS CHANGE
It is a mistake to think that these changes
occur by means of a gradual diffusion of slight
influences affecting the mass of people uniformly.
Free trade, Marxism and monetarism
did not gain influence because millions of ordinary
people found them day by day that bit
more appealing. They spread because they
were adopted by small groups of people who
turned out to be influential propagandists.
These ideas were picked up by individuals
atypical of the mass, variously known as “intellectuals”,
“propagandists” or “purveyors of
second-hand ideas”. After decades of these
ideas being discussed by little coteries in unprepossessing
journals and grubby meeting
halls, barely noticed by the surounding world
and without any great effect upon it, the ideas
were disseminated more widely and in due
course played their part in the rise and fall of
empires.
Within the community of intellectuals there is
the same hierarchial relationship as within society
at large: the groundling intellectuals tardily
accept the ideas advanced earlier by
higher-order intellectuals.
Very roughly, the ideas which make the running
in current social policy are the ideas embraced
by the lower-order intellectuals twenty
years earlier, and by the higher-order intellectuals
fifty years earlier. There are many important
exceptions and qualifications to this
picture, but it is much more accurate than the
theory that millions of people spontaneously
change their ideas, a bit at a time, in a direction
which appeals to them. Very few people
would accept that latter theory if stated in
those words, but they implicitly accept it when
they come to the task of persuading the world
to implement whatever particular policies they
hold dear. They ask themselves how all those
people out there in the street can be directly
worked upon in order to imbue them with the
desired outlook and assumptions. But that is
an adman’s question, the wrong question, and
if it is asked, the correct answer (that there is
no way it can be done) will be unnecessarily
dispiriting.
The use of the term “intellectuals” above
should not be misinterpreted. The intellectuals
or propagandists who matter are not necessarily
very intelligent or well-qualified. A few
may happen to be academics, but most will
not be.
MASS PUBLICY NOT THE AIM
What all this means in concrete terms is that a
libertarian propaganda group primarily aims to
recruit a number (small by necessity) of committed
and knowledgeable adherents to libertarian
doctrine. The group should not be much
concerned with the direct results of publicityseeking
efforts or of campaigning for particular
political measures.
All of the group’s activities should be judged
in the light of long-term propaganda. The
group will seek some media attention and will
effortlessly receive more, and will agitate and
campaign on particular issues. It will be a
welcome bonus if any of these efforts are intrinsically
successful, but it will be no great
tragedy if they have no effect on legislation or
on mass opinion. Their main value is in recruiting
the few potential libertarian propagandists,
and in helping to educate those already
recruited.
The recruiting of one committed and knowledgeable
libertarian activist is of immensely
more value than thousands of pages of publicity
in the national press or thousands of
hours of TV exposure. Those pages and hours
of media coverage might result in the obtaining
of several recruits. But recruits to what?
If it be recruits to an organisation for getting
further pages and hours of coverage, it is futile,
if not harmful.
Shallow free market sympathisers sometimes
come to us and say: “Why don’t you do something?”
The answer is that we are doing
something, invariably far more even in crude
man-hours than the speaker, and he is welcome
to help us in what we are doing, provided
he understands and sympathizes with it.
What he has in mind, however, is some attention-
getting campaign. In other words he
wants us to allocate time and energy we now
allocate to doing something important (higherorder,
long-term propaganda) and allocate it to
doing something ephemeral and silly.
And in conclusion:
NO NEED FOR A LINE
Among matters controversial within the libertarian
movement, on which the group does not
at this stage need to have a settled “line” are:
the comparative merits of various economic
methodologies (e.g. Austrian or Chicago), the
ethical bases of libertarianism (e.g. natural
rights or utilitarianism), foreign policy in the
current world situation (e.g. unilateral disarmament
or support for NATO), the political
organization of a libertarian society (anarchism
or minimal statism), the merits of particular
productive techniques (e.g. nuclear
generation of electricity), abortion and the
rights of children. These are debated vigorously
within the group, and it may be that in
years to come some of the issues will be so
clarified that a definite line is indicated. Or it
may be that when the group is much bigger
there will be room for more independent
groups taking a definite stand on such questions,
in addition to continuing the LA as the
broad “alliance”.
There is also a wide area of propaganda
strategy on which no uniform line is necessary.
For example, most members of the Libertarian
Alliance are not members or supporters
of any political party. There are a few LA
members in each of several political parties.
So far as we can judge, most are opposed to
forming a libertarian political party, but a few
would favour that. There is continuing debate
about the merits of these strategies, and it
would be quite inappropriate for the LA as an
organization to rule which was the best. There
are similar differences on the wisdom of working
within various pressure groups, such as
Amnesty International or the National Council
for Civil Liberties.
For obvious historical reasons there are far more libertarians in the US than elsewhere and some of them do indeed take part in elections. Have a look at
what happened on Tuesday:Badnarik's total of 379,229 votes continued to increase as late vote counts trickled in. Trailing behind were the Constitution Party's Michael Peroutka, with 130,285 votes, and the Green Party's David Cobb, with 105,808. [All vote totals from USA Today's web site.] Badnarik's name appeared on 48 state ballots, plus D.C., compared to 35 for Peroutka and 27 for Cobb.
So some libertarians do contest elections - even for the US presidency - and perform better than the Greens. In Britain, most of us chose to follow the strategy laid out in the LA's document that I have quoted from.
