Platform - Libertarian Party Mises Caucus

Mises Caucus Platform

Statement of Purpose: The purpose of the Libertarian Party Mises Caucus is to recruit, train and support the liberty vanguard for perpetual libertarian political,
cultural and educational action and to use grassroots organization to ensure that the Libertarian Party is an effective vehicle toward these ends.

We believe in radical libertarian principles based on self ownership, property rights, the non-aggression principle, political self-determination, and an understanding of economics as taught by the Austrian school.

We promote peace, radical political decentralization, the non-corporatist privatization of state activities and a complete separation of state from money and banking as the most urgent political goals for all libertarians,

We will work towards these goals using our four-point Decentralized Revolution strategy:

The Four-Point Decentralized Revolution Strategy

Party Organizing – This encompasses everything from recruiting members into the Libertarian Party, the state and county Libertarian Parties and creating new county level Libertarian Party affiliates where there are currently none, encouraging attendance and involvement in them and organizing around state and national conventions.

Candidates – Training, equipping, volunteering for, and financially or otherwise supporting local candidates running for offices that have the authority to make an impact on liberty issues, ideally to help a local area nullify federal and/or state laws. Ensuring that campaigns for high visibility, difficult-to-win races such as president, governor, etc. are headed by candidates and campaign teams that effectively convey the libertarian message.

Issue Coalitions – Creating issue initiatives and/or building relationships with other organizations, elected officials, and private individuals who support the libertarian position on one specific issue, and coordinating with them to, where possible, achieve a libertarian political outcome.

Liberty Culture – Creating events and media, as well as relationships with other media figures and platforms, that draw in audiences from the general public and the liberty movement to educate them on Austrian economics and libertarian principles, then funnel them into the Mises Caucus, the Libertarian Party in general, or another project in the liberty movement that is suitable for their talents and interests. To foster and sustain a culture and/or counterculture of liberty in the United States of America.

Statement of Principles:

Plank 1—Property Rights: We recognize the right to property as natural and self-evident, and advocate private property rights from both a deontological and utilitarian perspective. We affirm that private property rights extend from self-ownership and that scarcity is inherent to our material existence. We condemn all fraud and initiatory violence towards a person’s life, liberty, and property. We contend that private property is the best way to reduce and reconcile conflict among individuals. We advocate non-corporatist privatization wherever possible. We categorically reject socialism, defined as the non-private collective ownership of resources. We hold that the Non-Aggression Principle cannot be properly applied outside the context of sound property rights.

Plank 2—Economics: Economics is the study of human action in the context of scarcity. We recognize the Austrian School of Economics as the preeminent body of economic science, whose analysis should inform libertarian policy prescriptions.

Plank 3—Money: We reject all forms of State intervention into money and banking, with the understanding that competing monies are the cornerstone of a functional economy. We define State intervention to include, but not be limited to, private or public central banking, State issue of currency, banking regulations, legal tender laws, and trading and other attempts to manipulate the market by the State or its cronies. We advocate the aggression-free competition of free-market monies and currencies in all their forms.

Plank 4—Decentralization: We support decentralization—subsidiarity, secession, nullification, and localism—of political units all the way down to the individual as a moral end and as a means of expanding choice and competition in governance for all individuals. We recognize and affirm that the State is not the same thing as governance.

Plank 5—War: We advocate the abolition of the empire including ending the terror war, bringing all the troops home, and closing at least all foreign bases. We advocate a policy of armed neutrality in all conflicts where the United States of America are not directly attacked. We advocate the non-corporatist transition of defense and security services from the State to the free market whenever and however feasible, including the abolition of all laws regulating private ownership of firearms. We advocate peace and trade with all and alliances with none. We advocate a precipitous reduction of nuclear weapons. We reject non-defensive war against State actors, and reject war as a means of pursuing justice against non-state aggressors. We reject the first use of sanctions, which are a form of siege and therefore an act of war. We reject the subsidy of corporations through taxpayer-funded security and intelligence services. We reject the State’s use of proxy entities to perform any of these activities.

Plank 6—Lifestyle Choices: We take no stance on the personal, cultural, or social preferences of individuals or groups. One’s lifestyle is merely an extension of one’s property rights. We assert only that any and all lifestyle choices must not violate the Non-Aggression Principle.

Plank 7—Identity Politics: We affirm that the rights to self-ownership and to be secure in one’s life, liberty, and property are natural rights inherent in every individual human being and are not contingent on any other characteristic. Therefore, we categorically reject all forms of identity politics, defined as the State persecuting or conferring privilege on any person or group based on real or perceived membership in any identity group. We oppose any effort by the State or non-state actors to enforce abstract notions of equality or equity by any action that violates the Non-Aggression Principle. We also oppose any effort by the State and its corporate, academic, media, or other allies to encourage political tribalism, which only serves to pit individuals against one another and distract from the crimes of the State and its allies. We affirm the right of all individuals to associate voluntarily based on any criteria they wish and to act collectively to achieve their desired ends, so long as they do not violate the Non-Aggression Principle.

Plank 8—Corporatism: We oppose the combination of State, corporate, and/or labor union power known as corporatism or fascism. Likewise, our support of the free market does not compel us to endorse the criminality of individuals, privateers, mercenaries, contractors, proxies, so-called “non-governmental organizations,” academic institutions, media outlets, or any other non-state actor that performs duties in support of the State or any other criminal enterprise, as such actions are as immoral as more obvious violations of the Non-Aggression Principle such as socialism, communism, and welfarism.

Plank 9—Absentee Tyranny: When the State appears to remove itself from governing a part of society, and yet prevents the free market from establishing its own governance in its place, it creates a destructive state of manufactured chaos and injustice that we refer to as “absentee tyranny”. We recognise this as a false form of anarchism or the free market that is actually the State using its illegitimate monopoly privilege for the purpose of manipulating and abusing those under its rule to further its aims. We reject the policy of absentee tyranny and advocate for state involvement in the market to be permanently and completely abolished, not temporarily or partially suspended. We advocate that market governance replaces the state when it withdraws from anything.

Plank 10—Omissions: Our silence about any other particular government policy, law, regulation, ordinance, directive, edict, control, regulatory agency ruling, or machination should not be construed to imply approval. We seek to enunciate our top priorities, not the entirety of our positions.