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Title: Libertarian Strategy Author: Samuel Edward Konkin III Date: May 1975--Sept 1976 Language: en Topics: strategy; libertarianism; 1970s Source: Retrieved on November 3, 2022 from https://www.sek3.net/libertarian-strategy.html] Notes: Southern Libertarian Review, Volume 1 Number 11 / May, 1975Southern Libertarian Review, Volume 2 Number 12 / October, 1976
In six years the Libertarian Movement has learned a lot of lessons.
While libertarian theory continues to evolve and grow, the basic
ideology of 1969 remains valid. In fact, libertarian theory has reacted
to the stimulation of the swings and jolts from conflicting strategies.
So that we are not condemned to relive it, let’s review our history. As
of December, 1968, libertarian strategy was directed either toward
influence of the conservatives or conversion of the independents. It was
wholly educational or retreatist. Robert LeFevre’s Rampart College,
Leonard Read’s FEE, Joe Galambos’ FEI, Nathaniel Branden’s NBI, F. A.
Harper’s IHS, and Frank Chodorov’s ISI were all educational institutes.
The VonuLifers, Atlantis group, and Oliverites were seeking escape.
Except for the LIBERAL INNOVATOR’s leafletting of the Cow Palace in
1964, no libertarians were involved in a political campaign except as
deviationist individuals. Many supported Nixon in 1968, but they were
clearly of conservative leanings.
The very victory of Nixon and sell-out of libertarian-conservative
modest goals soured these “campaigning individualists.” The rise of
activist organizing as an alternative to political campaigning and the
seeming possibility of New Left revolution attracted the campaigners to
a plausible alternative. Libertarians organized a caucus within YAF with
results we all know. In December 1968, Rothbard and his small group of
radical libertarians—Block, Tuccille, Childs. et al.—moved to bring
libertarianism into SDS and the New Left. The Radical Libertarian
Alliance was formed.
In 1969 the right-coalition tactic exploded in St. Louis. But within a
month the New Left-alliance tactic also shattered in New York. To both
the Libertarian Caucus and RLA leaders’ surprise, the result was the
formation Of independent Libertarian Alliances across the country, with
the RLA and SIL central organizations becoming just “tendencies.” SIL
adapted, becoming a clearing house to the more scattered locals. RLA
turned briefly from a revolutionary group to a political campaign group
in late 1971, and the Citizens for a Restructured Republic promptly died
on the campaign trail of 1972.
Graduation from universities began to decay the campus-based libertarian
alliances from 1970-72, and the LA’s began to replant themselves in the
straight communities. Eventually they would exhibit themselves as Supper
Clubs. Libertarian Churches, or just meetings (e.g.: Gary Greenberg’s
NYLA). These were sound roots being set, but hardly the spectacular,
“shake-the-world” activities of the 1969-71 period.
More escapism offered itself (Minerva, Abaco) and the educators kept
educating. Many libertarians pursued more valuable long-range
activities, combining their business or professional careers with
libertarian advocacy: running businesses on agoric bases, pursuing
journalism, academic research, and even television and radio (Lowell
Ponte, Ron Kimberling).
Many libertarians also turned inward with incessant psychology sessions
and in-group self-criticism. This was the Movement as reflected in 1972
in, say, NEW LIBERTARIAN NOTES, and which could be pieced together from
RAP, LIBERTARIAN FORUM, REASON, ACADEMIC ASSOCIATES LETTER, VONULIFE,
FREEMAN, SIL NEWS, PACIFIC LIBERTARIAN, and many local newsletters.
But in December of 1971, the political campaign heresy arose again. To
put it mildly, Your Friendly Neighborhood Anarcho-columnist was hardly
an impartial observer of this weed in our garden. But even then it
seemed Obvious to me from where it drew its appeal. First, the need for
a public “mass movement” visibility of many libertarians who were
otherwise quite sound on doctrine. And, second, there were a lot of
newcomers who had not “learned their lesson” in 1968 and were confused
enough to believe that freedom can be imposed, i.e., “voted in.”
The Libertarian Party should have collapsed as fast as the CRR, since
its popular vote was so far below the number of eligible libertarians as
to show its rejection and then some.
While it was obvious in N.Y. and Calif., the libertarians in the rest of
the country were too scattered to realize their true strength (about
100,000, according to the lists of the time, with less than 10,000
voting for Hospers). Also, the electoral fast shuffle of Roger MacBride
diverted attention from the overwhelming rejection of the LP.
Other libertarians campaigned for Nixon (believe it or not), McGovern,
Schmitz, and Spock; and I have even heard of one or two who voted for
Linda Jenness (Trotskyite). Most libertarians didn’t vote, and Sy Leon’s
League of Non-Voters got excellent coverage on and off.
1973 was the year of the LP. The most viable Opposition seemed to be a
radical faction within the LP, though again this was misleading. The
radical caucus (RC) was firmly rooted in the anti-political libertarian
tradition, and nurtured by all the Movement outside the Party—from
LeFevrians to Brownians, and even a token Galombosian!
As soon as a real live political campaign occurred in 1973,
disillusionment began and the rc’s ranks began to swell. Many partyites
simply dropped out immediately. The re broke away at the state and
national LP conventions of 1974. By Spring of 1975 only the smallest
state parties on the E. Coast had not suffered a large split, some
“splits” involving nearly the entire party. Significantly, those who
bolted were often the top activists, newsletter editors, and
theoreticians.
The long, painstaking construction of a free society via a
Counter-Economy cannot be short-cut then. But, it may yet be argued, is
there no way to harness this deep-seated drive to campaign publicly, and
to draw in the new recruits that the Goldwater/YAF and McGovern
campaigns did? Is there no such thing as a “pure” campaign which can get
all the benefits of the LP electioneering, but avoid the deadly problems
of monopoly organization, power-tripping, and, ultimately, being Judas
Goat for the State?
Obviously, there is Nobody we could run.
---
Among the myriad programs for reform, revolution, emigration, and escape
underground, into the forests, in and under the ocean and to outer
space, the Libertarian Caucus Technique (LCT) stands out for one
distinguishing characteristic: it has been observed to work.
This paper is not a whole-cloth fabrication or an attempt to apply other
modes of successful anti-State action to libertarian requirements. This
paper rather puts forward the underlying principles behind an already
proven successful tactic so that it may be systematically applied and
used where appropriate and necessary.
Like all plans leading to battle, the LCT can be thwarted, and the
troops can lose themselves in the process. Since you are fighting for
the minds, hearts and souls of others, that is what you are laying on
the line.
The key to success of a Libertarian Caucus is strategic infiltration.
The terms sound cold and calculated and are meant to. Failure to trigger
the strategy at the appropriate time—regardless of personal
feelings—will blow the technique. It’s not for the soft-hearted.
Finally, LCT is political judo. The pivot is the “sanction of the
victim,” the always-present vulnerable spot in the State apparatus. Like
all forms of judo, it requires the opponent coming to you and throwing
his weight. You merely adjust the direction of his trajectory so that he
lands flat on his back, rather than on top of you.
That requires patience and detachment. The strategic infiltrator can
never force the issue, nor can he initiate action (beyond setting up the
LC). He must always respond, react to the issues that the opposition
gives him. Of course, he can be incredibly adept discovering issues
where others may not have noticed them. But ego-tripping “leadership”
just doesn’t work.
Caucus technique is an old political trick, much more prevalent on the
Left in the U.S., but cross-spectrum in parliamentary countries. A
caucus is simply a gathering of vote-holders within a larger voting
bloc. A bloc or coalition in parliamentary countries votes to keep
itself in power. The parties themselves go “into caucus,” but usually
they have separate internal caucuses representing their ideological
sources of strength. (Notice how close the idea is to the “sanction of
the victim.“)
The Conservative Party of Great Britain has a “Monday Club” of free
enterprise right-wingers who form a caucus to exert pressure on the
Party to maintain ideology in the face of pragmatism. The Labour Party
has the Tribune Group which does the same for Leftist ideological
purity. The Free Democrats of Germany had both a Left-caucus and a
National Liberal Action Right-caucus, though the leaders of the latter
have dropped out and joined the Christian Democrats. The Italian
Christian Democrats are heavily faction-ridden, and their Left-caucus
seeks coalition with Communists while their Right-caucus contemplates
the neo-fascists.
In the U.S., one could think of parliamentary examples such as the
Wednesday Club, Conservative Study Group, Black Democratic Caucus and so
on.
The Students for a Democratic Society, which was an umbrella group of
the New Left, was loaded with caucuses: Worker-Student Alliance,
Revolutionary Youth Movement, Anarchist Caucus, Independent Socialist
Caucus, several Trotskyite caucuses, and so on.
A caucus serves two functions: one for the group as a whole, the other
for the caucus members. It serves the former by keeping the caucused
faction pacified and part of the group, and it serves the latter by
putting forward their position in hopes of making it the dominant one.
The first function is realistic and obviously works, at least for a
time. The latter is not and does not.
Caucuses which capture temporary control of the American political
parties have either gone down to defeat (William Jennings Bryan for the
Populists, George McGovern for the radiclibs), sold out (Thomas
Jefferson for the Old Republicans, Abe Lincoln for the Free Soilers), Or
both (Barry Goldwater for the conservatives). In a case by itself was
the takeover of the Peace and Freedom Party by the California
“Libertarian” Alliance, where the CLA ended up with a corpse.
Perhaps a group simply organized for taking over a Party would
succeed—except that such a “Power Caucus” would not fulfill the first
function of gaining the sanction of some principally principled victims.
Contradiction.
To defeat this real contradiction, the apparent one is given up. The
strategists of the Libertarian Caucus enter with the full understanding
that they will not take power. In fact, the less influence they seem to
have, the better for the strategy!
The goal of libertarian activists is the construction of a viable
libertarian society. A viable libertarian society is a collection of
individuals who possess the following characteristics: rejection of all
claims to their lives and property, refusal to subjugate their selves
(egos) into a collective, and acceptance of an alliance with other
individuals possessing the first two characteristics for purposes of
defense. Any given individual in a libertarian society need not possess
these characteristics; but it is necessary that a sufficient number do
to fulfill the goal.
I need not belabor what is obvious at this point: libertarianism cannot
be imposed from the top down. Failure to impose libertarianism is, in
fact, a measure of success of libertarianism. Contradiction.
Such collectives as political parties and related ideological
organizations and pressure groups operate counter to the libertarian’s
goals. Thus, the strategic infiltrator has an incomparable advantage if
he is a libertarian: he does not fear the destruction of the collective
he is infiltrating. In fact, he welcomes it.
With this point driven home, one must point out that the short-term or
even medium-range survival of the infiltrated group is a lesser
consequence to the strategic infiltrator than his primary goal: to
create libertarians, to add to his ranks of allies.
Therefore, the strategic infiltrator employs those tactics which foster
rejection of the collectivist ethic, which encourage rejection of
self-sacrifice, and which raise the consciousness of the non-aware
members to see the concealed fraud and coercion starkly.
The Party members are put through a trauma where they must choose
between alternatives which they earlier felt were compatible. At one of
these crises, the member will reject membership or embrace it without
further reservation. The latter will join the ranks of the enemy. The
former, if exposed to libertarian thought along the way, may finally
raise their consciousness to your level and join you, or work for your
ends on their own.
Some will basically go into shock from the trauma, and simply “Browne
out.” They reject the reality of the choice but cannot maintain the
evasion that the choice is not real. They shut down their brains.
The tactics you work out for use of the LCT are specific to the group
you are in. Clearly, a tactic for use in the Student Mobilization
Committee Against the War etc. will be different from one usable in the
John Birch Society. On the other hand, some tactics in the Democratic
Party infiltration may be applicable to Republican Party infiltration.
Let’s run through some historical examples and see what worked. The
first case attempted never got off the ground, i.e., the RLA
infiltration of SDS. The second case, the RLA infiltration of YAF, was
incredibly successful.
The infiltrators set up an Anarchist Caucus (AC) to explicitly push the
hard-core, pure libertarian position. However, the action was really
fought in the “Libertarian” Caucus, where those who felt libertarians
could work with the conservative Statists were to be found in large
numbers. The “agit-prop” before the Con raised the consciousness of the
target group. The literature distributed at the St. Louis Convention was
a deliberate incitement to the “Trads” (traditionalist
conservatives)—The Tranquil Statement of the RLA, The Match! from SLAM,
and Rothbard’s “Listen YAF” in The Libertarian Forum. Rothbard
explicitly begins his agitation by calling for a Schism—equivalent to
“seizing the high ground” in military terms.
The AC brought Karl Hess to speak under the Arch. Some trad called the
cops to break up the gathering. The AC exploited their put-upon image
and challenged Buckley to debate Hess. Buckley refused, and the AC now
had evidence to back their claims that the conservative Trads wanted no
compromise with the libertarians. A defection from the LC slate to the
Trad National Office slate was picked up and used as evidence that one
could not be in both camps.
Still, when the issue came up, the Trads throttled back their own
hard-liners to pass a wishy-washy position on conscription to give the
LCers hope of victory “next time.” The AC struck back with a hard-core
position on the draft, which actually got through committee with some
sympathetic help to become a minority plank. When it became obvious the
delegates were willing to accept compromise over schism, one AC
provocateur ignited what appeared to be his draft card. A simple act—but
a contradiction with the compromise being voted. The resulting
polarisation, split of YAF, and formation of the modern libertarian
movement is well-known, but the strategic infiltration is not.
A couple of early attempts by myself to convert what I observed in St.
Louis into a science brought inconclusive results—a split in the
Anti-War in Cambodia marchers, and the Anarchist Caucus at a Wisconsin
Young Republican Convention. A move into the Wisconsin Alliance (a new
Leftist party) showed signs of bearing fruit but could not be completed
as I left for New York. Just to keep in practice, I split up a YIP
chapter at U.W.
In New York, various anti-war groups were infiltrated, but with the
exception of the War Tax Resistors, we met with little success. The
reason is that we had no common identity with those whom we were seeking
to win over. Our vast differences made it nearly impossible to have the
“better crowd“ see us as articulating their positions consistently, so
the power-trippers could appear closer to them. (We did pick up a few
anarcho-Leftists at a rally when we started a chant against a Trotskyist
Speaker of “Remember Kronstadt! Trotsky was a butcher!”)
Then came the classic success story of strategic infiltration, the
break-up of the “Libertarian” Party. I followed the above formula
rigorously, with one error, though I knew at the time I was rushing
things.
By 1973, the emerging LP had created the image of a small band of
anti-politicians on the fringes of the movement, mostly Browne-outs,
coral reefers and pacifists, impotent against the politicians. Two years
later, the radical caucus had succeeded in restoring the anti-political
wing of the libertarian movement to at least equal status with the
politicians (e.g., Libertarian Review’s “Essay Review” debate between
Crane and myself), the hard-core, consistent position was conceded to be
(or feared to be when not conceded) on the anti-political side, and
Party members were purged, shunned and attacked for merely having
associated with the powerful and deadly rc and myself—a witch-hunt in
the classic tradition.
The details of how it was done are in New Libertarian Notes, especially
issues # 32 & 33; I have no intention of repeating them here. Those
reading this publication and seeing the events of 1974 from Hr. Royce’s
view now have the answer to their common question. “But what was Konkin
after?”
One has to choose between friends, who will not ally, and allies who
just aren’t going to make good Friends. I did, with regrets, perhaps.
One has to be ready to turn everything into a success. When the
“establishment” (call it National Office, call it Trads, call it
“Partyarchy,” call it bosses—but make sure to delineate a clear, strong,
visible enemy) defeats your issue for more principles, charge them with
repression. When they accept your reforms, charge them with a co-opt—and
immediately hike your demand. The establishment can do no right—which
is, in fact, one of the truths you are trying to convey. Do not ever
lose sight of this—never start thinking that you have a chance to win
the enemy over, and that they can’t be such bad guys. Then their caucus
function is working.
One must be ready to smash what one has built. In November 1973, the
disaster of the Youngstein campaign swelled the ranks of the radical
caucus anti-Partyarchy ranks to the point where I foresaw victory for
the reformers at the next convention in Spring. I thus resigned. (Two
years later they took over and drove Rothbard out—but without the
hard-core in their ranks.)
Can others be trusted not to “sell out” if they organize a “strategic
Infiltration”? Well, if they have the benefit of watchful support that I
had in the LP such as Andy Thornton, Neil Schulman, Abby Goldsmith and
others right in the inner circle, maybe. It’s a real risk.
Can this strategy work, say, in the Republican Party? I think it can, at
least at the lower levels where the idealists man the ranks of pavement
pounders. I have no inclination to pursue the strategy any further for
the foreseeable future. But for those with strong constitutions, high
degrees of control over their emotions, and strong stomachs for the
political sewers, you’re welcome to the ideas here. Let me know how you
do and we can compare notes.
Politics, as the great Frank Chodorov so well analyzed, is the conflict
over plunder yet to come. Like him, I am willing to soil my hands in
this inescapably rotten, immoral game; and again like him, I would
welcome the day when our scorn and derision will be sufficient to deal
with politics.
On that day, we shall have the free society for which we long.