# What Is a Libertarian? **URL:** **By** Walter E. Grinder **Published:** December 1, 1971 --- “A person in the role of a libertarian is devoted to the attainment of liberty, dedicated to ridding his social system of all coercive barriers to personal freedom.” Perhaps the answer to the question, What is a Libertarian? is so obvious that it requires no discussion or clarification, but I am inclined to think otherwise. A person in the role of a libertarian is devoted to the attainment of liberty, dedicated to ridding his social system of all coercive barriers to personal freedom. It is, of course, true that many libertarians also have enlightened, latitudinarian, and humanitarian views on many other aspects of daily life. Looking to the history of libertarian thinkers over the last 170 years from Godwin to Goodman, we find writings on a wide variety of subjects ranging from impassioned pleas for educational reform, to calls for uninhibited hedonism, to the glorification of bisexualism, and to a variety of codes for personal behavior, tastes, and attitudes just to name a few. But to confuse the cause of liberty with the manifold ways in which one can enjoy that liberty is to seriously cloud the vital and central point of libertarianism. Lately, we hear more and more about the “libertarian” life style. The praises of the “libertarian” mind opening experiences of grass and acid are unending. Hard rock is supposedly synonymous for “libertarian” music. Uninhibited sexual orgies are positive “libertarian” experiences. Mind blowing, shock value non-conformism, “doing one’s own thing,” whatever that might be, all of these and others are being paraded under the rubric of libertarianism. Some or all of these activities may very well have positive merit and increase the desirability of living. I am not passing judgement on any of them except to say that they have as much to do with libertarianism as, say, playing checkers or being particularly found of the concertos of Rachmaninoff. All of these private bags being passed off under the name of libertarianism take the emphasis off the vital role of libertarianism which is and must be a dedication to the cause of liberty. Liberty and its attainment is not a “do your own thing” kind of issue. To act as if it were is to do the cause of liberty a grave disservice. To fight for liberty is purely and solely a political (in the broad sense) issue, not one of life style. It is little damned wonder that libertarians have never accomplished much to speak of. “Libertarians” are running off to their mountain retreats, paddling off to their “sovereign” islands, listening to lectures on aesthetics or the stock market, selling hotdogs or teaspoons, or buying up real estate and silver bullion to beat the “omnipresent depression” and calling what they are doing libertarian. Now we are being told that revelries of hedonistic self-gratification and a swinging life style are an essential ingredient of libertarianism. Poppycock! I know quite a few people with “bourgeois” tastes and attitudes who are excellent libertarians, and I know a lot of pot heads who do not know liberty from Pepsi Cola. So if those who are circulating the spurious myth that an “if it feels good, do it” life style is essential to libertarianism will cease in their assertions, I will not engage in the propagation of the equally posterous “libertarian” symbiotic relationship between liberty and the game of checkers. Hopefully we can get to the serious business of discussing the nature of libertarianism. In my travels among libertarian circles, I have heard the following hailed with equal fervor as the leading spokesmen for libertarianism: Leonard Read, Paul Goodman, F.A. Harper, Jeffery St. John, Noam Chomsky, Karl Hess, Murray Rothbard, Robert Heinlein, Joan Baez, A.J. Galambos, Ayn Rand, Carl Oglesby and many others. Surely just a cursory examination of the positions of these varied “spokesmen” shows shard disagreement on basic ideology, ultimate goals, and on strategy. Are we who are being “connected” all this far apart? And are we going to be able to reach enough of a consensus to work together in a meaningful manner? To be a libertarian in any meaningful sense of the term, several requirements must be met. The first such required principle is that of _inviolable individualism_. I use the term individualism advisedly in order to clarify as issue, not too add confusion. Individualism in this context does not mean non-conformism, hedonism or ’do your own thingism,' Individualism here means that _only individuals_ are real social entities and as such they are the logical first causes, units, or building blocks, as it were, in all social relationships. Libertarians must rid themselves of the confusion between these two concepts of individualism. Both are perfectly valid concepts, but they are analytically separable and must be treated as such: Inviolable individualism means simply that the individual is a singular entity who owns his own person and those possessions which he has _justly_ gained through production, exchange and/or inheritance (assuming that the previously accumulated wealth was likewise justly gained). The individual has the “right” not to have his person or possessions aggressed upon. (All libertarians must respect and advocate the non-aggression principle no matter what their philosophical background—Utilitarianism, Natural Law, Stirnerism, Randism, Existentialism, etc. What is important is that in order to be a libertarian one must accept and councel the principle that each individual has the equal and absolute right not to be aggressed upon. This may be what Stirner calls a ’wheel in the head,' but it is one which must be retained in order to call oneself a libertarian.) Since the individual has the right not to be aggressed upon, it can be inferred that he has the perogative to protect himself from the initiation of violence. There is some unusual dispute over this issue, but such a self-defense in inference seems clearly self-evident. There are also some libertarians who hold no truck with the concept of rights. Stirnerites and others are welcome to put it in their own wording; the inviolable individualism principle remains the same. The second required principle is that of voluntaryism; it is merely a corollary of the principle of inviolable individualism. It can legitimately be asked—Then why the redundancy? Simply because that which is implicit in a principle is not always self evident, and sometimes must be stated explicitly. In this case it should be clear what course the relationships between individuals should take, but it seems important to verbalize the implications so that there can be no doubt or confusion remaining. The principle of voluntaryism requires that _all_ social relationships and the social institutions arising from those relations must be the result of individuals and groups of individuals acting on the basis of mutual agreement. Making certain, then, that the right not to be aggressed upon of any third party who might become involved is not violated, voluntaryism must be the standard of all social relationships. The third requirement is not so much a principle as it is an action requirement. When the principles of individualism and voluntaryism are violated (particularly in an institutional manner) the third requirement demands of the libertarian that he stand up and be heard. It demands that he do all that he possibly can to root out and destroy the injustice. The libertarian must develop the cold, hard, _art of hating injustice_, i.e., he must be motivated to action by a “passion for justice.” Merely a slight bit of empirical investigation shows us which institution and which people are responsible for the consistent and continued violation of the principles of individualism and volantaryism. In abstract terms, it is the state which is the single most vicious perpetrator of injustice. In the real world and in the magnificent words of Lysander Spooner, it is the gang of plunderers and murders who are in control of the State apparatus upon whom our action requirement demand of us libertarians that we focus our attention. It demands of us that we attack them for the inequity which they represent, unveil them as the virulent oppressors which they are, and drag them to the bar of justice for the crimes which they have committed! Libertarians must learn not only to hate injustice in the abstract, but they must also learn to develop and vent an abolitionist fury upon the perpetrators of injustice. Libertarians must direct their coldly tempered and finely tuned hatred towards the proper and culpable target, towards the _criminals against_ _the people the ruling elite in control of the State apparatus_. For those of us libertarians living within the “domain” of the U.S. Government, our action requirement demands of us that we become comrades in subverting the system. The U.S. Government and its corrupt and venemous superstructure spawned by its ruling elite stands between us and liberty; therefore, to all libertarians living in America the Beautiful, Uncle Sam must be considered the number one enemy. Our action requirement shows us that libertarianism is not an island retreat issue, not a get-ready-for-the-depression issue, and certainly not a life style issue; rather, the third requirement makes it crystal clear that libertarianism is necessarily a political issue of the first order. The action requirement demands that libertarians not be retreaters, profiteers nor swingers; it requires that libertarians become radical abolitionists, committed to attacking, unveiling, rooting out and ultimately, to destroying the U.S. Government-Monopoly/Capitalist-Imperialist system. Nothing less will satisfy the action requirement We have seen that the libertarian must believe in inviolable individualism, be committed to voluntaryism, be motivated by a “passion for justice,” and that for the libertarian to consistently follow his libertarian ideals in today’s all too real world, he must become a revolutionary. What does all this mean for the libertarian right now, today? Of course, it does not mean going out and manning the barricades next week, but it does mean that libertarians must understand the revolutionary implications of their ideological convictions and develop a radical consciousness, and that we must direct our activities in relation to the radical abolitionist goal of extirpating the U.S. Government-Industrial-University-Foundation-Labor complex. Libertarians must develop what George Woodcock, when describing Bakunin in his book _Anarchism_, calls the “destructive urge.” For the destruction of the American State Leviathin must, indeed, be the battle cry of all libertarians. > Men have sought for ages to discover the science of government; and lo! here it is, that men cease totally to attempt to govern each other at all! that they learn to know the consequences of their own acts, and that they arrange their relations with each other upon such a basis of science that the disagreeable consequences shall be assumed by the agent himself. Stephen Pearl Andrews _Walter E. Grinder teaches economics at Rutgers University._