What Libertarians Must Understand About Leftist Strategy and Tactics

The very insightful and always welcome commenter at Target Liberty, Eric Morris, leaves this comment at the post, Catalonian Secession to Create the First Feminist Socialist State?:

This party ain't all bad: they feel government debt is "illegitimate" and government should be focused at the smaller levels. Plus, they are a grand total of 10/135 in Catalonia parliament. 

A lot must be considered here.

First, on an individual point, any government
can be found to be on the right side of some policy. It is the totality of policy that must be considered.  Not just one policy in isolation.

But second and very important, a small group should never be dismissed because they are simply small.Their tactics must be analyzed and how they use alliances. The Left is often exceptional in terms of tactics and alliances that advance a cause that the general public, if they saw the full picture, would reject.

Murray Rothbard in his unpublished paper, Toward a Strategy for Libertarian Change, writes:

Lenin saw that every ideological movement necessarily begins as a congeries of small, local discussion circles, in which each member is an undifferentiated amateur, and whose actions are "spontaneous" and unplanned, engaged without thought to fundamental strategy. But at a certain point in the growth of a movement, a coherent national organization, an organization run by a cadre of professional, becomes necessary.

I urge readers to re-read the original post.This is exactly what has occurred with the secessionist Catalonian feminist group,  the Candidatura d’Unitat Popular:

The CUP has seen a meteoric rise to power over the last decade, from grass-roots activism to securing 10 Catalan Parliament seats in 2015. It vows to build a “socialist, feminist and ecologically sustainable Catalan republic.” 

From there, it is about developing what Rothbard called the "pyramid of ideology":

[T]he actual condition at any given time is akin to a pyramid, with the cadre at the top of the ideological pyramid as the consistent and uncompromising ideologists, and then with others at lower rungs in possession of varying degrees of approximation to "the truth."...this implies that the stages will assume a pyramid form, with a smaller number of people at each higher stage.

The major task of the cadre, then is to try to get as many people as high up the pyramid as possible. From this task, there follows the importance of ideological coalitions, of working with allies on various ideological issues...

A coalition---of what Marxists-Leinists call a "united front" strategy--- accomplishes several things. In the first place, it maximizes the influence of the numerically small cadre on important social issues, and does so by allying oneself with people who agree on that particular issue, albeit on few others...

While using coalitions with numerically larger allies on concrete issues [there is] a double strategy; namely to recruit more people, if not for the top cadre...at least a few rungs up...

Normally, the proper tactic will be to begin with the concerns of the people being worked on, to show that you are with them on this particular issue, and then to 'widen...their consciousness." 

The feminist CUP separatists are executing this ideological pyramid strategy brilliantly.

From the original post:

Though polls released prior to the referendum suggested only 40 percent of Catalans supported independence, the CUP, despite its perceived extremism, has managed to shore up unprecedented support over the years, largely due to Spain’s refusal to negotiate terms for greater Catalan autonomy. Working alongside other secessionist parties, the CUP's habit of discussing Spanish “colonialism” and abuse using the language of gender violence and patriarchal hegemony has also gone mainstream. Sunday’s events are likely to make more people adopt the rhetoric....

The hairy-legged ones should not be dismissed because their cadre is small. The cadre always is small. They must be feared because they appear to be brilliant tacticians who understand how to build and takeover a larger movement---for central planning purposes.

Do not think for a minute that if the battle for secession has been won they have not also thought out the Leninist strategy for gaining power over the masses after the battle.

  -RW