The Anti-politics of Market Liberalism: the Libertarian Party, 1972–84

Abstract

One notable strain of the American character has been a desire, as it were, to “end history” by establishing a Utopian order free of strife and hence free of the need for the “conflict resolution” of politics.¹ From the civic republicanism of the Revolutionary generation to the recent communitarian movement, Americans have often sought a social order that denied or minimized conflict.