Foundational Documents of the Libertarian Socialist Caucus, Part 1

The Pledge

I certify that I oppose all forms of aggression, exploitation, and hierarchical relationships of domination to achieve economic goals.

The Mission Statement

The Libertarian Socialist Caucus seeks to honor the principles of non-aggression through recognizing exploitation, and specifically economic exploitation, as aggression, which should therefore be opposed by the Libertarian Party.



State secured monopolies over the means of production and continuing state enforcement of unnatural, hierarchical property relations throughout the economy coercively limit choices, thwart individual autonomy, and artificially prop up generalized wage labor and non-labor incomes. As such, exploitation and its enforcement via state secured privilege necessarily constitutes both theft and aggression, and should be recognized as such by the Libertarian Party.

Statement of Principles

We, the members of the Libertarian Socialist Caucus of the Libertarian Party, join our voices with libertarians everywhere to resist the authoritarian state and its politically privileged, ruling class. We hold that every human being on this planet deserves respect for their autonomous choice to live a life that is fully self-determined, and reject the idea that coercive systems of domination have any place in the lives of a voluntary, open society of equals.



We emphatically reject that exploitation, oppression, and hierarchies of domination are voluntary or without aggression, and in seeking the radical goal of complete and equal liberty - the full autonomy and self determination of all people, we hold that hierarchies must neither exploit nor dominate other human beings. As libertarian socialists, we envision society as universalized mutuality, and as maximal, consensually-sustained social experimentation. We concur that “imposed communism would be the most detestable tyranny that the human mind could conceive, and free and voluntary communism is ironical if one has not the right and the possibility to live in a different regime, collectivist, mutualist, individualist — as one wishes, always on condition that there is no oppression or exploitation of others.” As such we reject all state secured privileges and monopolies, all totalizing visions, and all imposed, absentee, hierarchical, central planning by the state, state capitalism, and its politically connected ruling class of politicians, lobbyists, bureaucrats, bankers, corporations, CEOs, and their violent enforcers, of our lives, the economy, and the means to human flourishing and productivity.



In its place we seek radical decentralization of the economy, and the complete flourishing of freely associated, directly accountable relationships and institutions that maximize individual autonomy, and full control by individuals over their own lives and over the things which directly affect them. Libertarian socialists will often support a diversity of voluntary mutual associations such as worker managed coops, mutual banks, informal peer to peer networks, artisan self employment, non exploitative markets, barter, communes, and gift economies.



We reject attempts to do away with the violent state’s “crutches” for the most marginalized and at-risk among us, while still maintaining its “teeth”, and we seek abolition now of its most violent and oppressive elements. We ask the coercive state and its ruling class to stand down and allow for people to, in mutuality and solidarity, take direct action to improve their own lives and the lives of their neighbors, for “we do not wish to liberate the people, we wish for the people to liberate themselves”.