The Torch: Go Forth and Set the World on Fire.
This is The Torch: LPAlliance’s flagship journal for libertarian and Libertarian Party discourse, news, and debate.
The Torch is a free publication igniting broad-range discussions in libertarian theory and Libertarian Party strategy; and it is your home for original reporting on Libertarian Party and LPAlliance news and events. Our contributors, representing multiple schools of libertarian thought, help provide a platform for rigorous yet constructive debate on the future of libertarianism and the Libertarian Party in a political era marred by collectivism, demagoguery, and state engorgement.
Here, you will find critical information about the latest goings-on in the Libertarian Party and learn about the Alliance’s current work, including past and upcoming events, discussions, and investigative journalism. You will also find various arguments for and against bylaw and policy reforms, proposals for Party strategy and initiatives, and theory and critique pertaining to libertarianism, mutualism, Anarchism, and politics writ large.
You will also be able to write for us, if you like.
For this first article, I have been asked to tell you a bit about who we are, why we are here, and where we are going. Rather than regurgitating the articulation of our principles printed elsewhere, I want to tell you who we are—and make clear that when we say, “we want to know who you are,” we mean it—by telling you how we are organized.
Our structure is part of our strategy; and each a reflection of libertarianism itself. This is intentional. Collective action does not come easily to the individualist. We have witnessed inside and outside our Party how devastatingly common it is to situate our strategy on a terrain foreign to our ideology; and suddenly to find our principles corrupted by the motives native to the field. Engaging in collective organization without becoming subservient to the notion of hierarchy itself, without succumbing to the twin scourge of centralization and bureaucracy—and all without falling victim, meanwhile, to the Occupy Wall Street effect—requires a particular approach. Briefly, any rhizomatic and individualistic model of group organization must be merged with a very clear, targeted, and tangible set of aims; those aims must be supported by a malleable, multi-front strategy for achieving them; and business must be conducted as transparently as possible with as little friction of access as possible (that is to say, while traversing as little digital or geographic space as possible).
Here is what we mean by “rhizomatic and individualistic”:
We do not have officers. We do not have a chain of command. We have committees (created as members volunteer particular talents or ideas), but we do not limit committee participation to those with formal assignments. We hold meetings in fora open to all vetted members.
While we maintain an administrative “board” and build specific teams for members with specific skill sets and interests (often at their own prompting), and while we vet new entrants before admitting them to various points of access, we do not have leadership positions beyond these loosest of designations. The coalition’s board grows at the coalition’s discretion; there is no set number of seats available; and appointment depends on activity level more than anything else. Our resources are pooled and their ownership shared.
All decisions are deliberated upon as a coalition, and usually in conversation with any vetted members who care to volunteer a position or argument. Yet decisions are made swiftly and efficiently. We do not always reach unanimous consensus, but we hear objections, revisit policies periodically, and—speaking personally—I can tell you that when a decision has not gone my way, I have discovered in fairly short order either that it is not worth leaving and losing the Libertarian Party over; or that I did not know as much as I thought I did, and the person who made that decision was in fact the best person to make it.
If there is one thing LPAlliance has taught me thus far, it is that radical libertarian mutualism might not work in theory—but it does in practice.
At present, the Alliance has a little over one hundred formally vetted members. They range in ideology from libertarian socialists to right-anarcho-capitalists; they are rooted in twenty-seven states around the country; and they represent all six regions of the Libertarian National Committee along with each of the Libertarian Party’s most active caucuses, although the majority of our membership is unaffiliated.
Not incorporated within this tally are members of the other Libertarian Party dissident groups with whom we communicate and coordinate on strategy. The practical differences between us refer to locus of action (for instance, some organize by region and others by members’ talents; some are oriented toward delegate recruitment and others direct engagement; some operate with an eye toward long-term reforms and others toward combatting imminent offenses from the LNC or state affiliates); and to technique. Our orientation and our tactics, in other words, vary. Our allegiances and ambitions do not.
Within this dissident network, LPAlliance is known as The Loud Group™. After some observation and thought, I would venture that we are The Spontaneous Group as well. Our spontaneity owes not only to our organizational philosophy, but also to our operational ambit. Being vocal means embracing a high degree of tactical versatility. While the Alliance has definitive and clear cut goals, arrived at via various campaigns crafted in advance, many of these campaigns are interactive, making them prone to improvisation. Added to that, our model thrives off of adventitiousness: The more that we can populate each dimension of engagement with unique projects and initiatives, every one colored by our members’ personalities and abilities, the more pathways we can forge from one node of action to the next; and from there, the more avenues we can create to success. That is another virtue of working rhizomatically.
If you want to be loud—and we can help you maintain your confidentiality while doing so if you are facing retaliation—we want your voice. If you want to be spontaneous and innovative, we want your wit. If you want to be part of strategic discussions, we want your ideas.
Beyond any of that: If you want the Libertarian Party to be the strongest, fiercest, most powerful, and most libertarian it’s ever been—we want to know who you are.
Our efforts are holistic—fundraising, convention planning, promotion, engagement, education, recruitment—so your uniqueness will have a home here. Our initiatives are ongoing, pitched and developed by our members—so your mind and your creativity will have a playground. We are radically rhizomatic, and we are organized in a manner meant for your strengths, knowledge, and individuality to find a means of expressing and enriching themselves through the work we do together. We are excited to meet you.
We have not organized ourselves in this way because it sounds fun (although it does), or because we think it will encourage you to enlist and fight with us (although we do). We have organized ourselves in this way because it works. It works because we libertarians are a group of intelligent and stubborn individualists, pathologically self-directed, and averse to centralized planning. We are all of these things because we know that action means nothing if it is not for cause; and the decision as to a cause is an act of radical personal sovereignty.
When, therefore, we as libertarians watch our Party leadership capitulate in cause to deputies of the state, when we see them circulate in secret bylaw amendments that would strip regions of their sovereignty, when we find them promoting false principles to the public that contravene the decisions of our platform committee, when we catch them misdirecting our money, our donations, our dues—our speech—such that every payment we make becomes an action in service of the state and every payment made from our political opposition to our Party Chair suffices as a retainer for those services while she plunges our Party from surplus into debt—
—When we witness all this we are rightly enraged; because now, by deception and by coercion alike, our agency has been conscripted in the service of authoritarianism.
On at least one cause, then, are we aligned: The restoration of the spirit of liberty to the Libertarian Party.
It is this alliance—this tenacious dedication to this cause—that gives us cause to defy factional boundaries and unite to fight for what unites us all. Here, we are alike in will. Here, we are superior in the necessity for victory.
That is our secret: We are able to organize, collectively, in the way that we have—individualistically—and, in so doing, augment the strength of our individual and collective efforts because those efforts aim at something at once singular and shared.
Our efforts aim at liberty, and at renewing the leadership, institutions, and initiatives of the Libertarian Party so that it finally becomes a vehicle for the victory of the vision that binds us:
Liberty in our time, enduring well beyond it.
Go forth and set the world on fire.
To write for The Torch, please join https://discord.gg/lp-alliance and submit a pitch and/or draft (as a Word file or Google docs link) to Amanda G. via direct message.
