Why the Libertarian Party Fights with Itself
Jason Kuznicki on May 14th 2008
I’m reading some issues of Libertarian Forum from the late 70s and early 80s. In my defense, it’s work-related.
But I’m finding that it’s just sad, ugly reading — lots of infighting about issues that seem tangential or irrelevant, with little to offer an outsider about the value of having a Libertarian Party at all. Sometimes the articles don’t even explain why these people are fighting each other in the first place, leaving me rather mystified. And that’s saying quite a lot, coming from a guy who has just spent the last year of his life helping to edit the Encyclopedia of Libertarianism.
I look at the great philosophy of liberty, and the promise it offers mankind. And then I look at this stuff, and I want to weep.
It occurs to me that if you’re a Democratic or a Republican political insider and you’re trying to milk the system for personal gain, the best way to do this is to work hard for electoral victory. You can expect to win fairly often, whereupon your loyalty will be rewarded by an appointment to the bureaucracy, to a legislator’s staff, or to a cushy ambassadorship (Ned L. Siegel, our ambassador to the Bahamas, was a plaintiff in George W. Bush’s lawsuit to stop the Florida recount. He also donated tens of thousands of dollars in Republican campaign money. I won’t say he’s in it only for himself, but the appeal to someone who is should be obvious).
But if you’re an insider to the Libertarian Party, and if you’re wanting to advance, you can’t look forward to many election victories, and these few won’t carry too many appointed posts for party stalwarts, either. In a minor party, the way to use politics selfishly is to take over the organization, and that’s going to mean stepping on some toes.
Thesis: Bureaucracy does a lot of bad things, but it does domesticate the insiders of the major parties. Minor parties are beset by infighting in part because the electoral stakes are so low for them, while the pre-electoral fights — against fellow party members — are the only decisive ones in terms of advancement.
Second data point: The Green party of the United States. The political principles could hardly be more removed, but the social dynamics seem about the same, no? Rojas, you’re watching the LP convention a lot more closely than I will be. What do you think?
Filed in The Bureau
I think your thesis has a lot of merit.
I guess I would extend upon it by saying that, by its very nature, a minor political party tends to attract people who are ill-suited to compromise or consensus-building. If they had those skills, they’d be members of a major party.
This tends to mean that minor parties such as the LP are pretty terrific at adhering to principle, but pretty terrible at dealing with people who don’t agree with them on every issue.
Add to that a sort of junior high school social aesthetic…the party is small enough that literally every figure of importance knows everyone else personally. Which tends to mean that policy fights turn personal.
So…one winds up with a situation where things can’t become more civil until the party grows, and the party can’t grow until it becomes more civil.
In the case of the LP, we’ve been told we’re right on the cusp of explosive growth since 1980. Some of us have stopped buying that line, and with the Ron Paul movement demonstrating that pro-liberty alternatives to the LP exist, we’re contemplating other options.
Well, just look at the Ron Paul campaign. A semi-plausible candidate that did well with fundraising, could possibly have elevated the profile of the party. What happened?
He demonstrated bad judgment 15, 20 years ago in letting his name be used inappropriately and suddenly LOTS of Libertarians are jumping off the ship.
There will never be a sufficiently perfect candidate for an ideological party.
That’s why I don’t call myself a Libertarian even though I agree with many of their positions. When I worked with the national party 10 years ago, it became clear that no one had sufficient power, in terms of rewarding or withholding perks, to enforce party discipline.
When you become involved in local politics you begin to realize just how primary the carrots and sticks are and how secondary party identification is.
Until the Libertarians have a sufficiently charismatic leader who has some source of external authority or validation, they’re going nowhere.