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Last week, I started posting about my investigation into the apparent implosion of the Libertarian Party. You can read my previous posts here, here, and here. In this post, I try to draw some conclusions, and I hope to hear your reactions.

When you talk with leaders from each side of this conflict its clear that even though both camps are much, much closer ideologically than theyd admit, ultimately Aristotle was right humans are fundamentally political creatures. The entire episode reminds me of a conversation I had at one of my first Liberty Fund conferences when I was hired, directed by Pierre Lemieux. I was talking with a conferee who was eyeing me suspiciously and asked me, which economist I preferred, Mises or Hayek. I told him that as a political scientist I was more drawn to Hayek, and this prompted him to label me a socialist, turn away from me and find someone more orthodox to chat with.

The broad contours of a liberty-based political movement would be simply less government and more personal freedom and responsibility in realm x. One would hope people could compromise on the range of constriction on government and expansion of individual freedom somewhere between 100% and 5%. But for more than 5 decades the Libertarian Party has been unable to create a broad consensus on how to pursue those goals. That leaves the world without the prospect of seriously considering more liberty during public deliberations over governance alternatives. Elections, admittedly highly imperfect ways to decide governance, are worse for not providing voters with a wide range of options and choices. The frustration for observers and non-combatant libertarians in this conflict is that we face an upcoming election featuring two deeply unpopular, anti-liberty candidates. The fear that libertarians will findno representation in this election is not invalid.

Before the infamous Aleppo moment, there was a world in which Gary Johnson and Bill Weld might have done even better in 2016, regardless of who won. But after the meltdown, Welds statements were hardly consistent with what most libertarians believed. Frustration and unrest caught up with the Old Guard. Conversely theres no reason to believe that maintaining a hard core, dont tread on me, Rothbard/Paul line is the only way forward for the party. The question has been how to bridge that gap and maintain the energy and enthusiasm that the Mises Caucus brings with the mainstream demand for a more professional, unified LP during national and state elections. In theory, the two sides need each other. If Nick Sarwark and Steven Nekhaila are both right, the energetic, idealistic, younger crowd complements and needs some of the experience and pragmatism of the Old Guard. Conversely, the Old Guard wont win by strategy alone. There wont be success without a motivated core.

If recent events tell us anything it is during crises, periods in which voter dissatisfaction is at its peak, that non-mainstream alternatives are taken most seriously. For evidence of this, look no further than Javier Milei, who just became the president of Argentina, armed with many of the ideas of intellectual libertarian economists. His election only happens in a context that creates the unique conditions for a highly unconventional alternative an economic basket case. Is libertarianism likely to win in the short term? No. But one can easily imagine current fiscal and monetary policy leading us closer to a crisis, if not of Argentine proportions. Might that be the LPs moment?

One unique feature of the US is our federal system, and the LPs decentralized nature will provide an interesting experiment for comparing the two approaches. In theory, we should see if one model, the Old Guard or Mises Caucus, is more successful in state and local races over the next few election cycles. That might be a useful guide for the future of the party, and allow for different versions of the ideas to flourish is the remarkably diverse political geography in the US.

Or perhaps libertarianism, or the liberty movement generally, is ironically, simply unsuited to solve collective action problems. A group of strong-willed individuals- whether they are raised on Austrian economics, Ayn Rands novels, or John Stuart Mills defense of liberty with limits, will frequently disagree on the foundation of individual freedom and limited government, and not be amenable to compromise and consensus building. It is not merely cat herding; it is the equivalent to teaching a group of cats synchronized swimming.

Libertarians will be well served to heed the prescient words of James Buchanan on this matter. Buchanan wrote in 2005, that while collectivist ideas at that time were largely in disrepute, he believed that the appeal of such governance was undeniable because individuals typically want to evade personal responsibility for their personal circumstances and challenges. If the participants in this conflict looked in the mirror they might very well know deep down who to blame for the failure to coordinate and compromise. Its not the other side; it is themselves.

G. Patrick Lynch is a Senior Fellow at Liberty Fund.

The rest is here:
When Will the Libertarian Party Have Its Moment? - Econlib

Argentinas new president, Javier Milei, has been in office for just over 100 days. Since his inauguration on Dec. 10, Mr. Milei, a far-right libertarian, has been on a mission to end what he has described as an orgy of public spending by previous administrations that left him with the worst inheritance of any government in Argentinas history.

The extreme libertarian program that Mr. Milei says will make Argentina great again along with his unruly hair and tongue has attracted countless comparisons to Donald Trump and won him high praise from Mr. Trump and other powerful admirers. Elon Musk indicated that Mr. Mileis speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this year was so hot that it distracted from the act of sex.

But this political outsider is having a harder time convincing his fellow Argentines of his vision. A self-proclaimed anarcho-capitalist, Mr. Milei won the presidential race in November on promises to end Argentinas sky-high inflation through a free-market transformation of the state. So far, hes failed to deliver: Inflation doubled during his first month in office, though it has slowed down recently. Poverty rates have shot up; retail sales have plummeted. Mr. Milei has both faced widespread protests on the streets and hit a wall in Congress, which has twice so far rejected the plans he says will transform Argentina into a world power once again.

All of these headwinds have left a troubling question hanging over his new administration: Who is the real Javier Milei? Is he the economic visionary who won over voters and prompted Mr. Musk to predict that prosperity is ahead for Argentina? Or is he the power-hungry villain that tens of thousands of Argentines now march against on the streets, chanting The country is not for sale!

This much is certain: Mr. Milei is no Donald Trump. While his anti-establishment persona and inflammatory rhetoric invite easy comparisons to the former president, Mr. Milei is a product of a long South American history in which authoritarianism has been the norm and democracy the exception. Although he embraces some elements of the Trump populism flowing from North to South America including the Dont Tread on Me Gadsden flags he likes to pose with Mr. Milei is more archetypal South American caudillo, or strongman, than Trump aspirer.

Mr. Milei, like the Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chvez, his ideological opposite, is seeking extraordinary powers in the name of saving his country. For decades, Argentina has been held up by free-market economists as one of the worlds pre-eminent examples of how progressive economic policies can lead to disaster. The argument goes that while Argentina was ruled by conservatives in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the country was among the worlds top economies, before left-leaning governments came to power and bloated spending with unaffordable social welfare programs, generating Argentinas chronic inflation problem. In his Dec. 10 inaugural speech, Mr. Milei waxed nostalgic for this long-ago time, boasting with undisguised exaggeration that Argentina was the richest country in the world and a beacon of light of the West.

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Excerpt from:
Opinion | 100 Days of Javier Milei - The New York Times

Two Thursdays ago, while Joe Biden and Donald Trump were heading back from the southern border, five spryer Presidential candidates were at a soundstage in Hells Kitchen, waiting to debate the real issues. The libertarian guys are in this greenroom, the socialists are across the hall in hair and makeup, and I believe Jill Stein is taking a nap in here, an employee of Free & Equal, the nonprofit producing the debate, said. We invited Cornel West and Bobby Kennedy, too, but they were holding out for a big-name moderator.

Larry King moderated a Free & Equal debate in 2012, but this time the duties fell to Caitlin Sinclair, of One America News Network; Christina Tobin, the founder of Free & Equal and a longtime activist against the two-party system; and Jason Palmer, an entrepreneur and a long-shot candidate himself. (Last week, somehow, Palmer beat Biden in the American Samoa caucuses, in which a total of ninety-one votes were cast.) Jill Steinthe Green Party candidate in 2012 and 2016, and the debates front-runnerwalked out of her greenroom, refreshed, wearing a pantsuit. We need to talk about crushing inequality, and militarism, and the decline of the American empire, she said in the hallway. The audience filed in: a few dozen of the candidates personal guests, plus a handful of diehard fans of multiparty democracy. The cameras were rolling; the event would be live-streamed on Rumble and broadcast later on C-SPAN. A singer named Marie Tatti warmed up nearby, preparing to sing the national anthem. The candidates arent even out yet, and apparently weve already got a heckler, she said.

The libertarian guys were indeed all guystwelve or so, in a greenroom, standing around a TV tuned to Wheel of Fortune. Two of them, Chase Oliver and Lars Mapstead, were candidates vying for the Libertarian Partys nomination; the others were former candidates, podcasters, entourage members, or all of the above. Lars and I were just in North Carolina debating each other, Oliver said. Tomorrow we fly to Indiana for a convention, then a debate in Pennsylvania, then another one in New Jersey. Libertarians love to debate, especially against each other. Oliver, who describes himself as armed and gay, wore a lapel pin inscribed with the Starfleet insignia. Yes, Im a Trekkie, he said. After being a libertarian, its the second most nerdy thing about me. Mapstead wore a lapel pin of his own design, bearing the words Unrig the System. Thats my message, he said. The systems rigged. Its the one thing everyone can agree on. In the 2016 election, Jill Stein got more votes in decisive swing states than the differential between the votes for Trump and Hillary Clinton; in the 2022 Georgia Senate race, Oliver got eighty-one thousand votes, forcing a runoff. They call us spoilers, he said, scoffing. Its the system thats spoiled.

The socialists were Claudia De la Cruz, of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and Jasmine Sherman, of the Unicorn Party. Im also running for the Green Party nomination, even though everyone acts like shes got it in the bag, Sherman said, casting a withering glance in the direction of Steins greenroom. Im not here to be chummy with the other candidates. Im here to win.

The Trump and Biden and Clinton people, its all a game to them, De la Cruz said. They vacation together, they wage war together. Her campaign manager sat next to her, monitoring social media and eating gummy worms.

One day, son, all these skyscrapers that we built for no reason and lie empty will be yours.

Cartoon by Anjali Chandrashekar

Bernie didnt actually want to win, Sherman said. If he did, he wouldnt have run as a Democrat.

The Democratic Party is where all dreams and aspirations go to die, De la Cruz said. She wore a red dress and a matching kaffiyeh. Kanye tried to wear one of these, but he didnt know what he was doing, she said. A stagehand brought the candidates backstage, where they waited for their cue. Two fans, Frankie Lozada and Gabriel Cornejo, stood nearby, hoping to take selfies with the debaters. Were also candidates for President, Lozada said.

I want to get the basics out of the way, Sherman said, in the opening statements. Im fat, Im Black, and Im a socialist running for President of the United StatesI would recommend that you listen to the candidates that have a plan to put money in your pocket tomorrow. Stein stood center stage. Sherman and Oliver agreed that Cop City, a proposed police complex in Atlanta, should not be built; all five candidates agreed that Julian Assange and Edward Snowden were political prisoners; the only real disagreement was about regulating nuclear power plants. I have thirty-seven pieces of policy on my Web site to unrig the system, Mapstead said, in closing. Our republic is cracking, and it is unfunctional.

Sherman put on a face mask and walked offstage, glad-handing with audience members: Lovely to meet you. Im Jasmine Sherman, the next President of the United States. Jasmine like the flower, Sherman like the tank.

See the original post:
Libertarians and Socialists and Jill SteinOh, My! - The New Yorker

Libertarianism has always suffered from some cognitive dissonance. It combines a certain hopeful, perhaps nave, optimism about human social relations with a clear eyed realism about individual self interest. While libertarians acknowledge that people pursue individual goals they also tend to believe that properly organized social institutions, particularly markets and self governance, can coordinate those individual pursuits and protect people from the risks of centralized government power. That same general outlook has informed the Libertarian Party (LP) since its founding in 1971.

Throughout US history, none of the dominant parties have held consistent beliefs about much of anything, let alone individual liberty. Rather, the major parties have shamelessly chased voters in ragtag coalitions with little concern for a philosophically grounded vision of the good society. Todays Democratic party of racial diversity and wokeness was once the party of racial segregation and Roman Catholicism in the mid 20th century and prior to that the Confederacy. Todays Republican Party, which is now largely white, and more committed to government intervention in the economy, was once the party of Lincoln and later the party of Reagan and free markets. The two party duopoly is blissfully free of ideological consistency over time.

And yet while one set of consistent principles animates the LP, that hasnt had much resonance with the voting public. Perhaps thats understandable since voters themselves typically dont have strong or consistent philosophical views. And of course the single member, winner take all districts in the American political system discourage third party success. But more recently the party with one set of principles is in the midst of a sectarian conflict over the essence of those principles and how they should be achieved. Unsurprisingly libertarianism attracts strong individualists who believe that cooperative solutions to social problems are possible except apparently for themselves.

On the one hand we have the current leadership, the so-called Mises Caucus, animated by a commitment to what they believe is a purer representation of libertarian principles with roots in the Murray Rothbard/Ron Paul wing of the movement. Their beliefs frequently crossover into anarcho-capitalism and contain elements of conservative social views. They are regular and frequent users of social media, and so far have shown less aptitude towards old school politics and compromise. Their adversaries are the previous leadership group lets call them the Old Guard, who had been more flexible on policy and willing to dilute the partys purity while widening the electoral appeal. This group had both brought record high vote totals to the party in the form of the Johnson-Weld ticket in 2016, but also a late plea from Governor Weld to support Mrs. Clinton in 2016 and other significant deviations from core principles.

There are echoes of this divide throughout the history of the party and the liberty movement the 20th and 21st centuries. But social media, generational turnover in the party, and the changes in the political context have made the division starker and, as Ill argue later, perhaps more costly than in the past. The conflict raises questions not only about the future of the LP, but also the future of libertarian thought and perhaps even the branding of the term libertarian.

As Brian Dohertys widely read and cited book Radicals for Capitalism documented, the history of the Libertarian Party has been filled with internal strife and conflict that mirror this current rift. Doherty entertainingly describes the early years of the partys founding and formation that featured many prominent libertarians refusing to participate in the partys work while others tried to function within the mainstream party system. And the history of the party is full of people who began their careers with the LP only to leave for DC in hopes of moving the needle in concrete ways that cat herding never would.

Why does this dispute matter in particular now? We are facing an election with two profoundly unpopular candidates from the duopoly. President Biden is wildly unpopular having overseen relatively poor economic performance during his term in office and widely viewed by voters asbeing too old to run again. President Trump, who was polarizing 3 years ago, has doubled down on divisive politics and is facing numerous criminal indictments for his actions during the January 6th, 2021 riots at the US Capitol.

A legitimate third party alternative committed to liberty principles, one that was perhaps on the ballot in all 50 states and seriously interested in running a nationwide competitive campaign, would pose an interesting alternative to the duopoly as it is currently constituted. I am describing the LP, which was still on the ballot in all 50 states in 2020 and remains a bastion of freedom, but the internal conflict between the Old Guard and the Mises Caucus has derailed any chance that the party might unify behind a viable candidate.

This may of course merely be wishful thinking. Third parties have never seriously threatened the two party system in the US, and the institutional and legal deck is heavily stacked against any alternative. But philosophically, both the Democrats and Republicans have moved away from significant positions on issues of liberty. Democrats, supposed the party of inclusion and personal freedom, after 3 years of controlling the White House and briefly both houses of Congress, have done very little on ending the Drug War, appear to be working against significant immigration reform, and seem intent on increasing the size and scope of government. The Republican party under Trump has jettisoned any pretense of defending a smaller national government and believing in free markets. The former president is campaigning on a platform of revenge against his enemies and personal attacks. The political landscape is devoid of any liberty oriented candidates. But before we speculate on the prospect that the LP would have any direct or indirect influence on promoting liberty oriented issues, we have to explore how it became so fractured.

G. Patrick Lynch is a Senior Fellow at Liberty Fund.

Here is the original post:
The Libertarian Party: Too Principled to Win? - Econlib

The first issue of The Spark: A Journal of Contemporary Anarchist Thought was published in July, 1983, and the final issue in June 1984. A total of five issues were published. A list of the writers includes:

Steve OKeefe, editor & publisher

Patrick Michael, staff

Rosemary Fury, staff

Bob Black

Karl Hess

Kerry Wendell Thornley

Gerry Reith

Terry Epton

Tom Croft

Judy Kroll

G. Michael OHara

Hakim Bey (Letter to the Editor)

I moved to Port Townsend, Washington, in early 1983, with no money and no place to live. Months earlier, when I was executive director of the Libertarian Party of Michigan, I had been offered a job by Bill Bradford, a precious metals dealer and the editor of Liberty magazine who had moved to Port Townsend from Lansing, Michigan. When I arrived, the job offer had vanished, but he let me stay at his mansion until I got my bearings.

I went to work as a typesetter for Loompanics Unlimited, publishers and sellers of controversial and unusual books. The owner, Mike Hoy, used to work for Bill Bradford at a coin shop in Lansing, Michigan, before he started Loompanics. I knew Mike from Libertarian events in Michigan. Bradford lured both of us to Port Townsend, and he was not wrong: The town was a paradise of drop outs and slackers and I loved living there!

I had spent the previous four years working for the Libertarian Party while putting myself through college at Michigan State University. In 1979, I helped the Libertarians win ballot access in several states. In 1980, I worked for the Ed Clark for President campaign in Las Vegas, Nevada. When Clark got a sickening 1% of the vote, I went back to Michigan and became executive director of the state party.

In school I was studying Karl Marx and Albert Camus and for work I was reading Ayn Rand and Friedrich Hayek and my brain just about exploded. I became very enamored of the early American anarchists: Benjamin Tucker, Lysander Spooner, and Emma Goldman. In the 1982 midterm elections, the Libertarian Party of Michigan fielded over 50 candidates and I was campaign manager for 49 of them.

When the Libertarians were crushed in the 1982 election, I had enough of conventional, electoral politics. I sold everything I owned, bought a backpack and a rain suit, and spent the next month in the Grand Canyon. I followed that with two weeks camping in Death Valley, then I hitchhiked up the coast from San Diego to Seattle and took a bus to Port Townsend.

A Journal of Contemporary Anarchist Thought

The Spark was my answer to the electoral disaster of the Libertarian Party. I felt that even if they were successful, they would become Republicans Lite, and thats what has become of the Libertarian Party. I felt there were almost no voices representing the right wing of anarchism, the free-markets free-minds wing. I tried to steer The Spark into that space between Lysander Spooner anarchism and Kropotkin anarchism.

The first issue had a long revisionist piece on the Declaration of Independence. It was a shot across the bow to Libertarians that the Founding Fathers nonsense is pure bullshit. The white, male aristocrats in the colonies wanted freedom to govern America themselves. They never believed in freedom and equality for all, and their Constitution was never put to a public vote: it was imposed upon the people.

The second issue of The Spark was on anarchy and violence. The Vancouver 5 had been arrested in January for bombing a power substation on Vancouver Island, bombing a plant in Toronto that produced guidance systems for cruise missiles, and firebombing three Red Hot Video outlets in Vancouver, British Columbia. The issue had writers defending the 5, against the 5, against violence, and pro violence.

By issue three, on inequality, we had our first letters to the editor. The issue included writing from a free-market feminist, an African-American black supremacist, and a gay rights piece addressing AIDS hysteria. Issue number four saw the birth of Bob Blacks seminal piece, Feminism as Facism, which really got people unglued.

Things changed rapidly for me after that. I fell in love with a woman named Storme and we made plans to move to Seattle together. I put out one long, last issue of The Spark which I had been working on for months. Called, Redefining Anarchy, I secured pieces from the Village Voice writer, Karl Hess; Kerry Wendell Thornley, the father, with Robert Anton Wilson, of the Principia Discordia; and Gerry Reith, the phenomenal founder of Minitrue and the author of Neutron Gun.

When Thornley delivered his hand-written submission, I mailed back a typewriter. I paid some of the writers and sent books to others. Loompanics gave me multiple copies of several books as part of my compensation for editing. When I left Port Townsend for Seattle, I donated my massive library on anarchism perhaps 50 titles to Mike Hoy because he had an even bigger library. He ended up with hundreds of books on anarchism and I had rights to use his library.

Seattle wore me out and I returned to Port Townsend four years later to take the job of editorial director at Loompanics. We put out about 20 new titles a year with one editor, one typesetter, and one marketing person: me. Summing up the influence of The Spark, I believe it heralded a shift away from political anarchism and toward lifestyle anarchism: making yourself free rather than making society free.

I left Loompanics in 1994 to start Internet Publicity Services for book publishers and authors. Ive written several books since then. My latest is Set the Page On Fire: Secrets of Successful Writers (New World Library, 2019) based on hundreds of interviews. Im still a cranky anarchist writer.

See more here:
A Brief History of The Spark: A Journal of Contemporary Anarchist Thought - CounterPunch