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IT USUALLY BEGINS WITH AYN RAND 267
of state parties, coordinated by an elected central committee. They
adopted organizational bylaws and a platform calling for withdrawal
from Vietnam, draft amnesty, and abolition of victimless crimes and
the Federal Communications Commission. The Party’s statement of
principles declared, in hyperbolic language, “We, the members of the
Libertarian Party, challenge the cult of the omnipotent state and defend
the rights of the individual.” 57 By libertarian standards the Party was a
smashing success. At the June convention the Party claimed one thousand
members and doubled its numbers by election day. By the end of
1973 it had three thousand members, with organizations in thirty-two
states.
In the early years there was a distinctly Objectivist fl avor to the
Party. Nolan remembered that many early members were “fans, admirers,
students of Ayn Rand . . . heavy Objectivist infl uence.” The Colorado
Libertarian Newsletter, published by the founding chapter of the Party,
was studded with Randian ideas and references. Authors and advertisers
took for granted that readers would know what was meant by “the
Randian sense-of-life” or that they would be interested in seminars held
by Nathaniel Branden. A survey of Californian Libertarian Party members
revealed that 75 percent of members had read Atlas Shrugged, more
than any other book. The third most popular book was The Virtue of
Selfi shness. Party members were “required to sign a pledge against the
initiation of physical force as a means of achieving social and political
goals,” thus enshrining a principle Rand had articulated more than
thirty years earlier in her “Textbook of Americanism.” 58
Like Rand, the Libertarian Party was controversial within libertarian
movement circles. Some libertarians worried about hypocrisy. How
could a movement opposed to the state become part of the formal electoral
system? Don Ernsberger, one of SIL’s founders, took the Randian
line that the formation of a Libertarian Party was premature: “My negativism
stems from the fact that social change never results from politics
but rather politics stems from social change.” 59 He also worried that libertarians
would become morally tainted by their venture into the political
world. The Southern Libertarian Review and the Libertarian Forum,
among other publications, made similar arguments against the Party.
Party supporters countered that their electoral campaigns were a form
of education and an effective way to reach the masses.
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